GINSTER

One of the most unconventional World War I novels by one of Europe’s most important cultural critics returns to print.

The title character of this 1928 novel by journalist, editor, and film scholar Kracauer (1889-1966) is a 25-year-old architecture student in a German city referred to only as M. It’s 1914 and, with his country now at war, Ginster seems unmoved by the tumult around him. He tells an uncle: “Since a piece of land way out in the East has been occupied by the enemy, they go on about it as if it were their own personal property. They didn’t give a damn about the piece of land before.” Not even the pursuit of his own ambition seems to concern him as he “lack[s] the ability to apply such circumspection to the question of his future place in society. He would have preferred to become nothing at all....” It’s hard not to make comparisons to Melville’s Bartleby, the scrivener, except that Ginster’s passivity about the war doesn’t keep his life from being affected by it. Ginster eventually drifts into military service out of obligation to his family, but he pretends to have a “general physical debility” that puts him on “permanent” home front duty, where he serves his country by “peeling potatoes against the enemy.” At times, Kracauer’s hero, befitting the author’s work as a movie critic, seems like an amalgam of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in his often-deterred efforts to retain his individuality in the face of overpowering forces. Yet the relentless accumulation of raw details about day-to-day life within and outside the military magnifies the absurdity of war and, at times, mitigates the comedic elements of Ginster’s situation. It’s the kind of mix one expects from a conscientious reporter and compulsive aesthetician trying to make sense of a senseless time. The blend doesn’t always work well; sometimes you come across numbing stretches in the narrative reminiscent of those in Kracauer’s later critical works, such as From Caligari to Hitler (1947). But there’s an intensity of vision in this novel that carries the exuberance of a young writer not only discovering his voice but feeling confident enough to test its capacities.

Ginster’s name belongs with modern literature’s antiwar activists from the Good Soldier Švejk to Yossarian.