Hitler's Niece: A Novel

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JO:How do you decide what you want to write about? Where does inspiration come from? Have you ever started a work only to find out that it is either impossible to finish or, upon delving deeper, it starts heading in a direction you weren't planning for? Fortunately for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Nebraska-born and Catholic-raised novelist Ron Hansen dismissed reports on the death of Catholic fiction as greatly exaggerated. No doubt such graphic scenes depicting Hitler as a sexual monster are meant to link a perverse sexual psychopathology with his abhorrent politics, but they end up distracting attention from Hitler's public crimes, crimes

The Human and the Monstrous - Boston Review

fat men hoisting steins of foaming beer" and "a lantern that when lit depicted a little boy urinating"). In a recent interview with Mr. Hansen, Dappled Thingshad a chance to speak with the novelist about his work, its connection to his faith and to his vocation as husband and man of the cloth (he was ordained to the permanent diaconate in 2007), and his thoughts on the art of fiction in general.

Springtime for Hitler, in Love With His Niece

As the novel progresses, Hansen's Hitler inexplicably metamorphosizes from an awkward, self-conscious outsider into a charismatic politician, sought after by women, and worshiped by colleagues. His relationship with Geli all her suitors and she longs for the freedom she has lost. As Hitler's sexual demands on her become increasingly importunate, she comes to resemble her captor -- moody, petulant and angry -- and she also secretly JO:Your most recent book, She Loves Me Notis a collection of short stories—a return to the form that began your writing career. Why did you decide to return to this form? Can you speak a little about the collection and why you see this time as propitious for a collection of short stories? in Munich; then, in September 1931, she was found dead in the apartment, a gunshot wound in her chest, an apparent suicide. Though there were rumors of sexual perversion and whispered talk of murder, Geli Raubal's Becoming Hitler’s companion, caretaker, maid and eventually his mistress, Geli catches a glimpse of the inner workings of the Nazi party and its key players’ rise to power. Above all, Hitler’s Niece shows us, up close and personal, how a psychopath capable of genocide “falls in love.” Even after her death, Hitler called Geli the love of his life. Neither Eva Braun, his doting life companion, nor any other woman could compete with his obsession with Geli.

Hitler, in Love With His Niece - The New York Springtime for Hitler, in Love With His Niece - The New York

Many if not all these books are now a fixed and vital part of the Catholic literary landscape. So popular and important is Hansen as a writer that it’s fair to say that for many budding Catholic writers, Hansen titles invariably share shelf space with Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Spark, O’Connor, Percy and theother usual suspects. This evolving relationship between Geli and her uncle is laid out by Hansen in clumsy, stage-managed scenes. He lards his narrative with awkward exposition detailing Hitler's political machinations and he resorts to increasingly Later we’ll witness Hitler’s idea of love, but in the meanwhile we read in a state of queasy disbelief as the "man of destiny" gropes his niece who counts the number of times he’s reached second base. This is simultaneously prurient and grossly trivializing, as if history might have been different if only Hitler wasn’t sexually frustrated. death did not derail her uncle's rise to political power. Hitler would not die for another 14 years, when he committed suicide in his bunker below the garden of the Reich chancellery in Berlin.My impression of Hitler and his close-knit circle had always been based on the impression that they were a cool, impervious, testerone-injected group of well-discplined fanatics. What I failed to realize is that they were a collection of fussy, effiminate, unathletic (although always touting the aryan, athletic ideal) sniveling, whiny, self-absorbed, sexually confused pychopathological misfits. RH:Writing historical fiction has been mostly accidental. In most cases I have come across a true story and been so captivated by it I felt compelled to write it down. I don’t have any rational explanation for the compulsion: I’m fascinated by some stories because they fascinate me. I have always liked history and biography, and I have a good memory and capacity for research, so I was something of a natural for the field of historical fiction, but I only think of myself as a novelist without a qualifying adjective.

A Novel Vocation: A Conversation with Ron Hansen A Novel Vocation: A Conversation with Ron Hansen

I dunno. Ron does do a very good job in painting stroke by stroke Geli’s awful entrapment and predicament. This was not a situation she was going to be allowed to leave and she knew it. That part of this book grabbed me and convinced me (in one of those “yes! it must have been just like that!” moments). But, I dunno. The situation between them was one thing. But Ron goes farther and shows us what he imagines Hitler was “really like”, what he “really wanted” – the truth about Hitler. Which turns out to be fairly pervy S&M sex-game stuff. And even Ron ends up by hinting darkly at stuff he doesn’t wish to describe. “The things he makes me do!” wails Geli, without elaboration. But really, is it not facile – is it not the most lazy form of moral stereotyping, to imagine that because Adolf Hitler was a moral monster , was evil personified, his sexual life must therefore also have been depraved and horrible? Because that's what he was "really like" ? People are funny, you know. Sometimes, even, they’re complex. But, of course, the primary cause of Mr. Bukiet’s dyspepsia is that one of my characters is Adolf Hitler. I have dared to say that a tyrant, a monster, and evil incarnate was first of all a very ordinary man. In fact, the only thing extraordinary about him was the immensity of his hate. RH:A handful of new stories in my collection She Loves Me Not are also located in my home state. Nebraska is my childhood and since I no longer live there it’s also my country of the imagination where things can be exaggerated, made bigger and bolder. No, it’s not like that at all. That’s what it would have been like if I’d written it. Not so good. Hitler’s Niece is a novel that makes you feel queasy and not a little disgusted it’s also impossible to review without spoilers of one magnitude or another, so let me say straight away – this thing between Geli and Hitler? It comes to a bad end. And this guy Hitler, he comes to a bad end too. But not in this book.JO:The notion of “Catholic Fiction” is a slippery one---because its representatives can include everyone from J.R.R. Tolkien to Walker Percy (not to mention everyone from Chaucer to Ron Hansen). Considering the world of difference that exists between Bilbo Baggins and Binx Bolling, though, how do you define this term---“Catholic Fiction”---and how do you understand yourself as a Catholic writer in this mode? Hitler's Niece is a well written book about Adolf Hitler "relationship" with his niece Geli Raubal. It's a entertaining book nonetheless, if your interested in learning about how Adolf Hitler was before he started his Nazi Rise to power. Hitler once said that "Geli was the only woman I've ever loved" and you can see how that statement is true in the book. However his actions clearly show that he doesn't know what love is, he wanted a very controlling relationship where literally Geli couldn't do anything without his premission.

Hitlers Niece by Hansen Ron, First Edition - AbeBooks Hitlers Niece by Hansen Ron, First Edition - AbeBooks

JO:Can you tell us something about your writing habits? Describe your writing workplace. Do you have one place where you go to write or do you have several? Where do you do most of your writing? Describe your desk, your walls, what surrounds you—what you like to have surrounding you—when you write. JO:Speaking of J.F. Powers, who wrote so well and so convincingly about the priesthood in his short stories and novels, is there some unique perspective you bring to writing through your ordination to the permanent diaconate? The deacon’s three main ministries are, based on the Rite of Ordination, to the Word, the Altar and to Charity. How do these ministries play into your work as a fiction writer? One of the proposed plans for Germany’s national Holocaust Memorial includes a wall of a million books–one for every six dead Jews. I assume that this wall would, in recognition of the culture the ancestors of its builders destroyed, include scholarship and literature from The Talmud to Sholom Aleichem, but that most of its scores of thousands of linear feet of shelf space would be devoted to the Holocaust itself. Indeed, practically no other subject has engendered such a sheer volume of print. Maybe this single event has proved so compelling because it invariably provides more questions than answers. Yet if "who,""when" and "where" are relatively easy to answer, and "what" and "how" have led to exhaustive analyses of the machinery of extermination, by far the most enduring questions begin with "why."Hansen's Hitler is a mama's boy who likes to be coddled by women. He likes peanut butter sandwiches, has bad manners and worst taste (his country house features such wall decorations as a picture of "three jolly Well, the main event in this novel is the grisly pas-de-deux of young Geli and the not-quite-fuhrer-yet. There’s a strong and profoundly unhealthy titillation of the reader going on here, of dripping prurience, a literary leer in lederhosen. In the end though Geli at the young age of twenty three commits suicide however the author gives a very graphic view that it was Hitler who had killed her and not Geli herself. We then get to read just how far the Nazis are willing to go to cover up this scandal and protect there Fuhur and the Nazi Party. The book also gives a very good insight into the mantipilative, hard boiled mind of Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s Niece,a novel by Ron Hansen, suggests an answer. Hansen is the author of several other books including Desperadoes,a lucidly deadpan replay of the Wild West, Mariette in Ecstasy,a lyrical portrait of an American saint, and Atticus,a National Book Award nominee. He is an excellent writer, capable of drawing attention to his style when he wishes and letting his narrative speak for itself when need be. He is in command of words and scenes. He has a moral intelligence and a literary curiosity. He cares about letters and he cares about life. Nonetheless, Hitler’s Nieceis a staggeringly misconceived and genuinely atrocious book. Isn’t it healthier (and more useful) to admit that the fiend who fathered the Holocaust could also tell a joke, buy a gift, and fall in love–as is, in fact, true? Otherwise we make Hitler seem entirely exceptional, and the history of even our century shows that he is not. In an ominous and censorious tone, Mr. Bukiet asks why I wrote Hitler’s Niece.The answer is straightforward: education about the past is our greatest defense against the insanities we are bound to meet in the future.