The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg

Paul West's fictional memoir, "The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg", has a sort of dreadful rollercoaster quality to it: beginning with the military career of Hitler's would be assassin from Tunisia to Poland, the slow evolution of Stauffenberg from a proud German soldier into another horrified bystandard to the atrocities of the Third Reich painted with agonizing, poetic precision. His court martialing of an "old friend" who brutally shot two elderly Polish women (and subsequent dmoetion for this very action) is the first step in a long journey to Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" and a go-for-broke attempt on "S'gruber's" life. Giving voices to the tragic figures of German Resistance members like Hans Oster, Henning Von Tresckow, Leber, Olbricht and Ludwig Von Beck, West's sometimes skillfull and sometimes awkward poetic, postmodernist style adds color to a little known and little appreciated series of ill fated events inspired by conscience and driven by the manic fury of a few principled men determined to prove that not all of "Hitler's Germany" was in fact "Hitler's Germany". For all the novel's failings--the foremost being West's attempt to transform every common phrase uttered by the Resistance fighters into lofty French Symbolism--the scene in which Stauffenberg plants his briefcase bomb next to Hitler is written with the precision worthy of a real poet: "The texture of the explosion that of a shredded rainbow poising upward as a reverse waterfall. I thought I felt the heat. I knew I smelled the reek of burned hair, and my first thought, pardonable in an assassin, was "That is Hitler burning: his ideas are shrivelling on the pyre of himself, his mustache has gone, his eyes like those of a dead trout, matted and grayish green. I could taste his death on the still summer air. The trademark forelock had gone off with a foaming crack, like guncotton, and the outside snakebite of his nostrils no longer channeled air" (pg 178). If only. Had it not been so tragic, the July 2Oth conspiracy would take on the character of a comic opera or a play written by Ionesco. Misfire after misfire; false step after false step. People bumping themselves off left and right, often only to fail and fall into the hands of the Gestapo half fried. And, behind all of this absurd grisliness, the purest ideals of humanity. In the narrative, Stauffenberg's soul survives his execution by General Fromm and is forced to witness the subsequent loss of lives, kangaroo trials, and horrid deaths of his family and friends. Somehow, in all of this, West's imaginary Colonel manages to find the spirit of life and vitality even amongst the "death feast" that followed the bomb's failure. Stauffenberg indicts himself for the failure, and West seems to as well, though I'm not sure how accurate this is: how could the members of the Conspiracy really believe that a man so badly wounded could pull this off? And how could Stauffenberg possibly have known that Hitler survive

Having read both this book(several times) and Hoffman's definitive biography, I believe that full appreciation of the novel requires considerable factual background of the type provided by Hoffman. That said, though spectacularly difficult to read owing to the horrors of Nazism explored in brilliant imagery, as well as to just the pyrotechnics of the language, the book is ultimately extraordinarily moving. Stauffenberg is presented as a man as self-doubting as Hamlet in his way. At the end, though, willing to risk everything for his beliefs. The last paragraph of the book is unforgettable.