Hans Fallada, born Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen in Greifswald, was one of the most famous German writers of the 20th century. His novel, Little Man, What Now? is generally considered his most famous work and is a classic of German literature. Fallada's pseudonym derives from a combination of characters found in the Grimm fairy tales: The protagonist of Lucky Hans and a horse named Falada in The Goose Girl.
He was the child of a magistrate on his way to becoming a supreme court judge and a mother from a middle-class background, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for music and to a lesser extent, literature. Jenny Williams notes in her biography, More Lives than One that Fallada's father would often read aloud to his children the works authors including Shakespeare and Schiller (Williams, 5).
In 1899 when Fallada was 6, his father relocated the family to Berlin following the first of several promotions he would receive. Fallada had a very difficult time upon first entering school in 1901. As a result, he immersed himself in books, eschewing literature more in line with his age for authors including Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and Dickens. In 1909 the family relocated to Leipzig following his father's appointment to the Imperial Supreme Court.
A rather severe road accident in 1909 (he was run over by a horse-drawn cart, then kicked in the face by the horse) and the contraction of typhoid in 1910 seem to mark a turning point in Fallada's life and the end of his relatively care-free youth. His adolescent years were characterized by increasing isolation and self-doubt, compounded by the lingering effects of these ailments. In addition, his life-long drug problems were born of the pain-killing medications he was taking as the result of his injuries. These issues manifested themselves in multiple suicide attempts. In 1911 he made a pact with his close friend, Hanns Dietrich, to stage a duel to mask their suicides, feeling that the duel would be seen as more honorable. Because of both boys' inexperience with weapons, it was a bungled affair. Dietrich missed Fallada, but Fallada did not miss Dietrich, killing him. Fallada was so distraught that he picked up Dietrich's gun and shot himself in the chest, but miraculously survived. Nonetheless, the death of his friend ensured his status as an outcast from society. Although he was found innocent of murder by way of insanity, from this point on he would serve multiple stints in mental institutions. At one of these institutions, he was assigned to work in a farmyard, thus beginning his lifelong affinity for farm culture.
While in a sanatorium, Fallada took to translation and poetry, albeit unsuccessfully, before finally breaking ground as a novelist in 1920 with the publication of his first book Young Goedeschal. During this period he also struggled with morphine addiction, and the death of his younger brother in the first World War.
In the wake of the war, Fallada worked several farmhand and other agricultural jobs in order to support himself and finance his growing drug addictions. Before the war, Fallada relied on his father for financial support while writing; after the German defeat he was no longer able, nor willing, to depend on his father's assistance. Shortly after the publication of Anton and Gerda, Fallada reported to prison in Greiswald to serve a 6-month sentence for stealing grain from his employer and selling it to support his drug habit. Less than 3 years later, in 1926, Fallada again found himself imprisoned as a result of a drug and alcohol-fueled string of thefts from employers. In February 1928 he finally emerged free of addiction.
Fallada married Suse Issel in 1929 and maintained a string of respectable jobs in journalism, working for newspapers and eventually for the publisher of his novels, Rowohlt. It is around this time that his novels became noticeably political and started to comment
If there is a depressive, addictive, mentally unstable and suicidal author out there, I will seek him out, sooner or later. It is my special superhero power. If I particularly love a book, I now dread to look up the author bio. There seems to be a direct correlation between my admiration of a literary work and the inevitable death by unnatural causes of the author.
This of course was no exception. Fallada is perhaps one of the more unhinged of the lot. Deeeply depressive, with several stints in insane asylums, he finished his lifeas an alcoholic, a chain smoker (200 cigarettes a day. How is this even possible)and a drug addict. Prior to his morphine overdose, his staunch, capable wife had finally had to give up on him. Despite an inauspicious beginning: he鈥檇 written her a week before their marriage: 鈥業 hope you realize that your prospect is one of financial insecurity, that I am in bad health, that I can and must give you no children, that I have been rejected by more social class鈥�, she took him in and kept it together so obligations could be met (read here earn money and pay bills), whilst he went off on bender after bender.
But then, in quick succession, he did two things. First, he had an affair with the au-pair. I don鈥檛 know how he managed it 鈥� alcoholics are notorious for promises they can鈥檛 keep . You know what I mean. Then, he took up with a another woman yet: a partner in crime: a fellow alcoholic and drug addict. The two of them embarked on their very own Selbyesque Requiem for a Dream and 鈥榚rased their own map鈥� within a year of their unholy union.
Hans Fallada is not a Hans Fallada. He is a Rudolph Ditzen who took his pseudonym from Grimms Fairy tales: Hans with Luck and the Goose Girl. Grimm tales, as everyone knows, are bloodthirsty, gruesome and pretty horrific: it boggles the mind how anyone thought them fit for children, sanitised though they are in English. Hans of course has no luck, and Falada the horse in the Goose Girls gets his head chopped off. See?
The Drinker, it turns out, is a roman a clef. Written in an insane asylum on a scrap paper whilst Fallada was in the process of 鈥榙rying out鈥� , it maps out the ruinous descent into alcoholism of an Edwin Sommer, his rejection of his stalwart, capable wife Magda and infatuation with the 鈥榬eine of alcohol鈥�, his own real life booze partner. Finally, incarceration in an insane asylum and the implication of 鈥榠ndefinite leave to remain鈥� therein.
Fallada writes with aplomb but no fanfare: the initial stages of Edwin鈥檚 alcoholisation are poignantly true-to-life. A petty, insubstantial man, buoyed afloat in his business affairs by his wife, takes the reins of his company in a show of self righteous independence and promptly ruins it. A drink to cope with this fiasco turns to two and ten and then scores of bottles per day: alcohol dumbs down his sense of failure. In fact, failure is no longer a threat: the only important thing is a drink: all else is irrelevant.
Standing in his way, of course, is his wife Magda: a constant reminder of what he can never be: successful, smart, efficient, etc. So, course of action: despise and hate her: transform her in his mind as the harbinger of all his disasters.
Now follow a sequence of escapades in which Erwin reels from one disaster to another: exactly like hapless Pip in Nathaniel Hawthorne鈥檚 鈥楢 Cool Million鈥� (although Fallada may have been thinking more of Hans with luck). Perhaps worthwhile mentioning that Erwin always seems to be the master of his own misfortune in all of this.
Finally, the stay in the insane asylum, from which he never effectively escapes: beautifully rendered, with detailed anecdotal evidence of the intricacies of such a sojourn (obviously experienced firsthand). First prize for 鈥楽addest Sobstory鈥�: Heltz. Incarcerated for sexual offences against young boys. Told he will not be released unless he undergoes a voluntary castration. Takes a year and a half to work up to it. Undergoes procedure. Following which, is denied release and remains interred indefinitely.
I鈥檓 not sure, though, that what we have here your typical 鈥榮ad鈥� ending. It seems to me that, for someone like Erwin Sommer: a failed entrepreneur, husband, citizen, etc on the outside, the therapeutic routine of basket weaving in the asylum provides, for the very first time, a peace and fulfilment to a man wrongly matched with his aspirations in the jurisprudence of life. Brilliant, sardonic noir.
Of course I have not always been a drunkard, the main character, Erwin Sommer, says to begin this tale. Me neither, says I.
This is the tale of a respectable man who takes to drink late in life and then follows a quick spiral downward into insanity. It does not stray far from the outline of the author's own life: drink, marital trouble, more drink, the loss of self-esteem, even more drink, attempted spousal-cide, arrest, incarceration, insane asylum.
As with his other novels, Fallada wrote this in a spurt, about two weeks. It is well-told and, I imagine, wonderfully translated.
The back of the book teases though that Fallada wrote this "in an encrypted notebook". The short author bio at the end of the book continues this, saying the book was written "in code" and is "a brilliant, subversive novel."
So I looked, you know, for the allegory. And if you strain, you could read this as allegory, maybe about the Nazis. You can read any book as an allegory of the Nazis, even books written hundreds of years before the Nazis.
But, the same publishers that suggested that also included a substantial Afterword, whose author convincingly says the book was "not in code as has sometimes been suggested, but in fine criss-crossed lines to economize paper." Sloppiness like that could drive a reader to drink.
I ultimately did not read this as allegory, but rather as the story of the unraveling of a mind. A personal account. The alcohol here is beside the point. Erwin Sommer started his descent before the first drink. His fault, not someone else, not something else. Me neither. And that is story enough.
What a wonderful, devastating book鈥攁n axe, Kafka would call it: my frozen sea inside me is all whacked into slush.
Writers might study this book as a lucid example of crucible, that diabolical equation whereby protagonists are simultaneously repelled and compelled by the central crisis of the story. But don't think that the crucible here is simply a device to keep you reading (it will). Fallada's crucible embodies a deep understanding of human nature. Protag Sommer's short memory of the past, his ability to excuse himself for anything in the present, his tunnel vision of the future (and we shouldn't think just because we don't have a drinking problem that we don't do this, too) lead him into ever lower circles of hell where he meets all kinds of imps and tormentors.
The last chapters of this book had me up way past my bedtime, and then I could not sleep at all. I think this book laid eggs in me.
Man becomes an alcoholic and watches his marriage, business, and life turn to shit.
At first, you're laughing at how stupid he is. But then you're gradually wincing. Then finally, you're shouting:... 'dude, you're drinking another man's spit from a bucket. Get help!'