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A review by jjupille
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Totally fascinating, challenging for me until I gave in to the rhythms.
Just a few quick updates.
1) the modern city. Pretty obvious, but I guess I came across someone saying this is a very early book to capture the shattering dysphonia, the choppy rhythms, the sensory overload, the vast multitude of the modern (i.e., automobile-era) city. I don't know enough to say whether that's true or not, but it certainly captures all of that amazingly.
2) micro-macro. So, clearly, Franz Bieberkopf isn't really in control of his own destiny. Beyond his impulsiveness and lack of rational decisionmaking and planning, he is buffeted by social structures far beyond not only his control, but his very reckoning. There's something Döblin is doing, with the very micro/local focus on FB and Berlin Alexanderplatz, the one little part of the vast city, that I can't quite put my finger on by that is very effective. It's almost Foucauldian in showing how the huge shit goes all the way down to the capillary. He really captures how any other particular/local manifestations would be completely different in their details, because there's just so much arbitrariness going on, while still operating by the same principles that we are all pretty well fucked to deal, in our partial ways, with whatever life imposes on us. So there's a lot of interest structure-agency, macro-micro, gestalt kind of stuff happening here.
Final note: after putting it down, I rated it 3.75. I think I was just a little exhausted, depleted. Here, maybe a week or ten days later, I have upgraded to 4.25. Why? Because the book is still swirling around in my head. I love when that happens, and that's always to the book's credit.
Just a few quick updates.
1) the modern city. Pretty obvious, but I guess I came across someone saying this is a very early book to capture the shattering dysphonia, the choppy rhythms, the sensory overload, the vast multitude of the modern (i.e., automobile-era) city. I don't know enough to say whether that's true or not, but it certainly captures all of that amazingly.
2) micro-macro. So, clearly, Franz Bieberkopf isn't really in control of his own destiny. Beyond his impulsiveness and lack of rational decisionmaking and planning, he is buffeted by social structures far beyond not only his control, but his very reckoning. There's something Döblin is doing, with the very micro/local focus on FB and Berlin Alexanderplatz, the one little part of the vast city, that I can't quite put my finger on by that is very effective. It's almost Foucauldian in showing how the huge shit goes all the way down to the capillary. He really captures how any other particular/local manifestations would be completely different in their details, because there's just so much arbitrariness going on, while still operating by the same principles that we are all pretty well fucked to deal, in our partial ways, with whatever life imposes on us. So there's a lot of interest structure-agency, macro-micro, gestalt kind of stuff happening here.
Final note: after putting it down, I rated it 3.75. I think I was just a little exhausted, depleted. Here, maybe a week or ten days later, I have upgraded to 4.25. Why? Because the book is still swirling around in my head. I love when that happens, and that's always to the book's credit.