| | In the middle 1950s, German writer Heinrich Boll took his family to live and travel around Ireland. The book that came out this experience is a tribute to the Land of Saints and Scholars. In Irish Journal he describes life in the Fifites in County Mayo, Limerick, Connemara and Dublin.
He talks to people, who are happy to talk to him even when he disabuses them of the chilling notion that “Hitler wasn’t so bad, only that he went too far.” Boll calls this process of truth-telling “dentistry” because he roots out diseased notions.
Boll describes the hardships and lack of work that drove emigration and depopulated the countryside. He has a wonderful feeling for phrases even in a language not his own when he mines deep meanings of “in a manner of speaking,” “It could be worse,” and “I shouldn’t worry.”
This is the first writing of Boll’s that I’ve ever read. He strikes me as having the qualities I like in a writer: he’s got a big soul, keen eye, and sound judgment. This was translated in the middle 1960s by Leila Vennewitz. I read it for the German Reading Challenge.
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| | Posted 7/7/2009 9:07 AM - 2 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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