I've never read a "Holocaust book" from the perspective of anyone but the Jews, so Christa Wolf's Patterns of Childhood certainly a broadened my literary education. It also feels quite relevant now in the wake of Russia's invasion on Ukraine—the idea of "normal" life on the other side during wartime, and what it means to come to terms with a past in which you didn't understand your actions as you lived them.
Relative the world as it is today, two excerpts stood out:
1. "The Allied Forces did not publish the first news they received of the extermination camps. The reason: they couldn't believe it. They didn't want to become guilty of spreading horror propaganda. We, the people of today don't put anything past anybody We think that anything is possible. This may be the most important difference between our era and the preceding ones."
2. "The ability to adapt is one of the reasons for the survival of the human species, you tell her.
That's clear, says Lenka. But what if humanity adapts to those very things which will destroy the species? Huh? Then what? Say something."
In today's world of fake news and amplified voices, those blurbs feel both radically true and not at the same time and I can't clearly explain what those thoughts stir in me. It's something profound, though.
Anyway, the writing, too, is very interesting. Wolf differentiates the main character (herself?) between childhood and the present, literally, distinguishing them by treating them as 2 separate names; "Nelly" and "you". It's an effective way to think of one's self between then and now and it's also something I don't think I've ever seen done before.
She also writes like you're reading someone's thoughts in real time and it's got to be some sort of insane talent because I still can't comprehend how she does it. Topics and subjects hop from one to the next with such fluidity that it's impossible to even notice when it happens, or to pinpoint at what point it even happened.
Having based my college thesis on the idea of memory, this novel was right up the alley of the type of artful writing that interests me. Wolf tackles so many heavy topics like the tragic mundanity of being blind to what is going on around you, the fallacy of memory, and the gaps in understanding between generations all in a way in which you really live them, as opposed to read about in history books or documentation. I'm sure it would have influenced my work as an art student had I read it back then, but reading it now felt like connecting with a teacher who thinks of things in a similar way as myself.
