The Hothouse

by Wolfgang Koeppen

Book Overview

A masterpiece by a writer long neglected in America, The Hothouse created a literary stir when it appeared in hardcover. Evoking comparisons to works by James Joyce and Malcolm Lowry, it traces the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393049027
• ISBN13: 9780393049022
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 221 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Gloomy portrait of post-war West Germany

Journalist and author Timothy Garton Ash enthused about Germany in a recent essay on the Oscar winning film The Lives of Others saying that, "No nation has been more brilliant, more persistent, and more innovative in the investigation, communication, and representation--the re-presentation, and re-re-presentation--of its own past evils." I was reminded of these words while reading The Hothouse by German novelist Wolfgang Koeppen. It is a little difficult to summarise but there is no mistaking the accusation underlying the disjointed and disconnected montage of images, thoughts and sense impressions which form the bulk of the book i.e. Germany after the war was in a hurry to "move on." Blinded by the "economic miracle" of the post war boom and the contingencies of a nascent cold war realpolitik, the Germans had enveloped themselves in a collective act of willful amnesia. At the start of the novel Keetenheuve, the middle aged politician and a member of the Bundestag (the German parliament) has just arrived in Bonn to attend a party meeting. His wife has died recently and he seems to be deeply depressed and grieving, even though his relationship with his wife were not so good. He sees the meeting as a final chance to do something for the country and for himself; a way of finally doing something about the "mild futility of his existence." He doesn't succeed in doing anything about it though. Over the course of the next two days the novel charts the process of his mental collapse and psychological dissolution. He feels alienated among the politicians who are more interested in their respective career than real politics. Nobody is interested in mourning the past, everybody is in a hurry to move on and start afresh. He is further oppressed by the willful blindness of everybody to the continuation of the Nazi legacy. He feels the presence of a "Nazi idiom" in the design of the new buildings representing the so-called new Germany. The wheels of the train remind him of Wagner. There are many other similar references to Nazism throughout the novel. It is clear that he is transposing his inner life on to his surroundings and that the basic problem is that of psychology, rather than politics. What he wants is some kind of collective mourning for the past. This inability to mourn, as Freud suggested too in his essay "Mourning and Melancholia," can result in serious psychological consequences. An indeed the novel ends in as gloomy manner as it can be imagined. This need for "collective mourning" was a theme that W.G. Sebald also returned to again and again in his novels. In his essay "On the Natural History of Destruction" he explicitly criticised the post-war Trummerliteratur literary movement ("literature of the ruins") for its failure to tackle, or indeed in perpetuating the collective amnesia about the recent past. In the essay he was talking specifically about the German victims of allied firebombings of German cities but in his fiction too, he always r

Survival of the fittest?

HOTHOUSE is in many ways an unusual book. It is born out of and deeply anchored in the tumultuous days of the young German republic emerging from the devastation of WWII. In that framework, it is both brilliant fiction and a devastating political critique. The novel captures the intense and oppressive atmosphere in the temporary capital, Bonn. The "hothouse" image is aptly applied to the physical environment of this city in the Rhine valley, prone to a hot, muggy and stifling climate. It also pertains to the overwrought political atmosphere, characterized by the ambiguous and contradictory political interests of the key players of the day. Koeppen's hero, Keetenheuve, having returned from voluntary exile in 1945, was elected to the new Parliament four years later. Due to his behaviour and his political views, however, he has remained an outsider: a sensitive intellectual with strong moral and pacifist beliefs. Viewed with suspicion by his opposition party colleagues, monitored by the other side, he is ready for a major political fight. The novel's plot unfolds over a period of two days, starting with Keetenheuve's train ride to Bonn for an important parliamentary debate and ending with his wandering off into oblivion. The issue concerns the planned rearmament of Germany's western part under the control of the Allied Forces. Despite his definite views on the matter that contrast sharply with the spineless compromise attitude of the party, Keetenheuve has been chosen to present its policy in the debate. While the story is related almost exclusively in the third person, the perspective is primarily that of Keetenheuve. The narrative flows and ebbs between assessment of friends and foes or descriptions of events and his inner musings on the past, present and future. Memory and loss of his young wife, a victim of circumstance and recent history, permeate Keetenheuve's consciousness. His feelings of personal guilt fuse with his anger and frustration with the new society that has emerged from the ruins of the war. The chances for learning from the recent past seem to evaporate in political wrangling as the old powers reaffirm themselves. His attempts to escape into the poetry are constantly undermined by the preoccupations of the day. For Keetenheuve his upcoming speech will also be a battle cry. Is he truly fit to win? While HOTHOUSE is without doubt a work of fiction, the context that Koeppen established was real and present at the time. However, he mixed and overlapped realities with the interpretations and compulsive dreams of his hero, interspersing additional identifiable inner monologue sections into the narrative. Furthermore, the novel is rich with literary, historical and cultural allusions, connotations and metaphors. The result is a literary work of emotional intensity and descriptive power, unique for its time and place. Reading HOTHOUSE more than 50 years after its original publication in 1953 does not necessarily do justice t

dense, rich, pleasureable prose

reminiscent of hermann broch at his most accessible, this is marvelous to read, original thoughts popping up again and again and again. the wolfgang koeppen revival is certainly justified.