A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction Review

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A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction ReviewThis jewel of a book addresses difficult questions concerning the representation and narration of the Holocaust and also the use of that dark episode of history as material for creative writing.
My apprehensions about it, having read only one of the books the author considers, were soon put to rest. The author provided enough relevant detail to give me a sense of those books and steer me through her argument. If anything, I'm now looking forward to reading some of them.
The writing is clear, elegant and direct. The book is evidently based on extensive research and draws on a number of authors and texts, many predating the Holocaust, Oscar Wilde, for instance. The tone of the book is lively and engaging and I think it was this that kept the grimness of the subject from overwhelming my reading experience.
Quite possibly the only uncontroversial thing one can say on the subject of the representation and literary treatment of the Holocaust is that it's fraught with controversy. I hope it's not too controversial to suggest that books such as these might have a wider relevance than only to issues arising out of the literary treatment of the Holocaust. The author's discussion and argument must have some use in thinking about how we reflect on major historical events generally, not just artistically and not just the Holocaust.
A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction OverviewWhat is the difference between writing a novel about the Holocaust and fabricating a memoir? Do narratives about the Holocaust have a special obligation to be 'truthful'--that is, faithful to the facts of history?Or is it okay to lie in such works? In her provocative study A Thousand Darknesses, Ruth Franklin investigates these questions as they arise in the most significant works of Holocaust fiction, from Tadeusz Borowski's Auschwitz stories to Jonathan Safran Foer's postmodernist family history. Franklin argues that the memory-obsessed culture of the last few decades has led us to mistakenly focus on testimony as the only valid form of Holocaust writing. As even the most canonical texts have come under scrutiny for their fidelity to the facts, we have lost sight of the essential role that imagination plays in the creation of any literary work, including the memoir. Taking a fresh look at memoirs by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, and examining novels by writers such as Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, W.G. Sebald, and Wolfgang Koeppen, Franklin makes a persuasive case for literature as an equally vital vehicle for understanding the Holocaust (and for memoir as an equally ambiguous form). The result is a study of immense depth and range that offers a lucid view of an often cloudy field.

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