Pigeons on the Grass

Clearly influenced by ULYSSES, Koeppen describes a day in an unnamed city in the American zone of Germany after WW2. The writing, even in translation, is fine throughout: sometimes quite straightforward, concerned with the streets and bars of the city, sometimes rising to poetic heights with multicultural literary allusions. But on the whole Koeppen's style is simpler than Joyce's, his world less glamorous, and his aim less consciously epic. The book is a collage of paragraph- or page-long sections describing the actions of a dozen or more German characters from various walks of life -- decadent, downtrodden, or hopeful -- and a smaller number of Americans. There is little plot, but various characters do meet and cannon off each other in a sort of random Brownian motion, leading to a climax of sorts at the end, potentially serious but unresolved. Some of the characters are more fully realized than others -- I was personally moved, for instance, by the affair between a German ex-prostitute and an African American GI, both living on the fringes of their respective societies -- but the book as a whole is more important than its individual parts. It paints a powerful picture of life in that particular post-Hitler limbo, and therein lies its uniqueness for its time (written even before Gunter Grass' monumental THE TIN DRUM). My four-star rating does not reflect the importance or basic quality of this book, though I do consider it a weakness that several of the characters are less fully realized. It is more a reflection of my own enjoyment. Although short (202 pages), this is not a book to be read quickly; it is difficult to take in its almost musical structure at a single reading; although simple enough from page to page, the book juggles so many balls that it becomes hard to keep track of them. But the subject is important, there is nothing else quite like it, and that alone makes it well worth picking up.

...is Wolfgang Koeppen's magnum opus and in addition, it is one of the greatest German post war novels to date. The english title derives from the motto of the novel, a one liner by Gertrude Stein, that was quoted by the author in the beginning of the book. The novel is great in creating an authentic, general yet intimate picture of Germany in the years after WW II. The novel shows autobiographical strains and indulges in references to the traditions of the western world and especially to ancient greek mythology. Its narrative structure is shaped by a delicate use of stream of consciousness and the fragmentation of the plot, icluding its many intricately designed sub-plots.