Review: "Berlin Alexanderplatz" by Alfred Doblin

My reading goal for 2019 is still a bit vague, but I knew for sure that the first book I was going to read was Alfred Doblin’s modernist classic, Berlin Alexanderplatz. With this brand new translation being put out last year and after the poorly received first one back in 1931 and the series based on the novel directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder being re-released on Criterion, this seemed like the right time to check it out. It is not an easy read: it tells its story indirectly, using multiple viewpoints in the form of character’s deities and even disembodied voices, characterized by a playful yet cynical narrator who pops in every now in then and at some points, disregards Franz’s story entirely to show Berlin’s gay underworld, or a virtuoso extended sequence in a slaughterhouse. It comes off as a book that demands to be read twice, filled with puzzles told in it sown distinct language and syntax, but even reading it once is enough to feel the full force of it’s brutal power. At the center of the story is the hulking and malleable Franz Biberkopf who is being released from prison for the accidental killing of his girlfriend and finds life on the outside in Weimar-era Germany wearing on his sanity. One interaction with a pair of Jews that provide a bit of solace and a lot of tall tales provides a good example of this book’s scattered, energized structure (as well as historical context not yet fully realized at the time of this book’s publication in 1929). The theme of the book is Franz’s attempts to lead a good life despite always being screwed over by those he trusts. It isn’t until the disturbingly rendered Reinhold enters Franz’s life that the true horror begins: first he loses a limb and then he loses much more. The last 100 pages of this book is a it’s true dark heart, where the lines between Franz’s reality and imagination bleed away, his past, present and doubtful future co-mingle and Doblin’s cinematic, snapshot approach to the story reaches it’s apex. Terrifying yet profound, this book that can now be easily read and admired in the U. S. 

Rating: 4/5