by Milo Clark
Book Review
Estrin, Marc: The Education of Arnold Hitler, Unbridled Books, Denver, Colorado, 2005, ISBN 1-932961-03-8; 336 pages, $15.95
(Swans - July 4, 2005) Having accepted a request to review a book, such as Marc Estrin's late-life and Talmudic tome, The Education of Arnold Hitler, I feel obliged to follow through.
Estrin's blurb picture suggests a 1960s escapee from Bensonhurst now, of course, de rigueur, d'accord, living in Burlington, Vermont. He plays cello in the local symphony. Espouses liberal causes, too. Took up writing at 57.
Arnold Hitler, akin to Estrin, is a bit of polymath. The book and, I suppose, their likely intertwined lives, slips into sophism much too easily. Perhaps, I should also say, into sophistry.
My fine eastern establishment education and pretensions to intellectualisms should prepare me for Estrin. Alas, I may have been away too long.
Arnold Hitler comes by his last name naturally. It is his father's last name. His father, George Hitler, in WWII Italy, threw a hand grenade into a building, naturally an old synagogue, blowing off a leg of Anna. In guilt and lust and such, he ends up marrying Anna and siring Arnold. Anna's father Jacobo, Jewish, naturally, becomes a mentor for Arnold through the device of knee communication. Don't ask. It is all perfectly natural.
Arnold grows up in Mansfield, Texas emerging in the turbulent 1960s as tall, handsome, erudite, athletic and wounded. He finds himself attractive to and attracted to monotonously brainy women who, naturally, are good looking and well into their sexuality as a bonus.
Harvard is his destiny fulfilled. There, as one may expect, being Texan and a Hitler are a bit much. His adventures take a nasty turn as a very brainy sociopath elects to complicate his life complexly.
Enter "Cliffie" Ariel Bernstein, svelte and sexy daughter of Leonard Bernstein, with whom Arnold enters into a fantasy life, naturally, although unrequited at the critical level of sexual engagement.
Ariel, however, exposes Arnold to all sorts of elegant situations, such as a summer as a parking lot attendant at Tanglewood. Daddy, under Ariel's urging, slips Arnold, incognito as Jake, into a Mahler performance chorus. Arnold's adventures incognito are a core device of the novel. The Bernstein's are central to the Jewish sub-plot.
Post-Harvard, Arnold attacks New York City. There he encounters new layers of quirky personalities. One of whom, Vdub, don't ask, is his guide into the bowels, quite literally, of the city. Bubbling up (down?) into Bowery, Bronx and Bruckner Boulevard, Arnold runs through a cast of characters of pure charade.
In an improbable plot twist, Arnold is found by a true love, Evelyn Brown, brainy, beautiful queen of the bizarre. They wrap themselves in each other, play out the Jewish sub-plot and marry with Ariel and Leonard applauding.
The last hundred pages are a blur. I sped-read my way to the end out of a sense of obligation. Maybe that should be a sense of challenge. I probably won't search out Estrin's first novel, Insect Dreams -- The Half Life of Gregor Samsa.
Sophisms, I no longer need. And, so proceeds the education of the reviewer.
Marc Estrin's Talmudic tome, The Education of Arnold Hitler, is a novel I should enjoy but didn't. That is, however, not to ignore its merits. A major subplot (perhaps, in actuality, THE plot) has to do with Jewishness. Arnold and his true love, Evelyn Brown (Eva Braun, get it?), at the ending convert to Judaism. Don't ask about the ironic qualities of a Hitler embracing Judaism.
Recently, we watched a movie, Moloch, made by a Russian director for a German company. Moloch consists of a day at the Berghof, Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria. We see Adolf Hitler, Adi, pontificating endlessly about everything. We see the omnipresent stenographer feverishly taking down every word. We see the sycophantic Martin Borman and Joseph Goebbels (very well acted) dancing around in adulation.
We see Eva Braun as the only person attempting to deal with Hitler as a person similar to Evelyn Brown handling Arnold. We suspect, nevertheless, an undercurrent of tension in her public persona related to her role as mistress.
Overall, we see the pettiness of Adi, his overweening narcissism, the nakedness of his power which is given to him by his followers. I give Moloch high marks for this glimpse into a Hitler persona rarely seen or appreciated.
In parallel, I wonder if Marc Estrin is acquainted with Yuri Slezkine, now professor of History at UC Berkeley? Slezkine's book, The Jewish Century (Princeton University Press, 2004, ISBN 0691119953.) offers a radical perspective that we are all Jews. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that behavioral characteristics often related to Jews now describe twenty-first century societies in general. Estrin may, therefore, be describing more than prescribing.
Russell Schoch introduces an interview with Slezkine saying, "One of Slezkine's metaphoric points is that all of us had to become 'Jewish' in the modern age because Jews have long been urban, mobile, literate, articulate, and occupationally flexible [which are] traits the 20th century demanded." (For this interview see:
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001325print.html.)
Slezkine divides the world into two groups: Apollonian and Mercurian. While it helps to have a grasp of Greek mythology, the analogies are relatively simple. Apollonians are earth people, tillers, herders, agricultural in occupations and perspectives. Mercurians, separated and cut off from such pursuits, are ". . . associated with reason, intelligence, restlessness, rootlessness, cleanliness, crossing boundaries, and cultivating people and symbols as opposed to fields and herds. We're all supposed to be Mercurians now, and traditional Mercurians [especially Jews] are better at being Mercurian than anyone else." [Schoch interview].
Therefore, to be with today's situations and demands and to succeed in mastering them, we all need to be Jews. Marc Estrin may have a point in converting Arnold Hitler to Judaism.
Estrin, Marc: The Education of Arnold Hitler, Unbridled Books, Denver, Colorado, 2005, ISBN 1-932961-03-8; 336 pages, $15.95
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