Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Francine Prose
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Harper, 2014

This novel is woven from several fictional documentary sources, from letters to memoirs, and tells the story of a real person - Lou Villars, a professional athlete, autoracer, lesbian and a spy.
Before us are letters to parents written by famous photographer of Hungarian origin Gabor Tsenyi, the author of the photo, which gave the title to this novel. Gabor is trying to make a living with the camera, making pictures for newspapers, but mostly asking for money from his parents, calling them Mama and Papa. The photographer suffers because his work is not recognized as art.

«I cannot go on like this! My days in journalism are numbered! I must find another way of supplementing your stipend, another job that will let me have my nights free to wander the city, taking pictures. It’s demoralizing enough to be demoted—or promoted, according to my editors—to the sports pages. But when I actually find a subject worth writing an article about, they refuse to print it.
Last week I attended the event described above. This time I only made a few tiny improvements on the truth. That sparkle of saucy feminine beauty was my invention, as were the hurdles and the bike. And Paris is hardly abuzz about Mademoiselle Lou, though they should be buzzing about this young woman who, in our country, would probably be exhibited as a circus freak.

I would never have heard of this girl if not for my friend Lionel. With typical directness—excuse the language, his, not mine—my American pal remarked that the sight of a big, healthy, muscular girl in pants, running and chucking a spear, made him feel like a happy bumblebee was buzzing in his trousers.»

Unrecognized genius is tormented by his uselessness, until two women, both in love with him, appear in his life. One of them is Baroness de Rossignol, wife of Baron Didi, who can kiss women, but prefers men in bed. Baroness starts to sponsor Gabor so he could open his own studio. And there Gabor can do the most laid-back photos, including photos of naked men in masks. The second woman in love with a photographer is Suzanne Dunois, his future wife, and later widow. Suzanne can not support Gabor financially, but offers him moral support.

Biography of Lou Villars is written by Nathalie Dunois, Suzanne’s niece, an emancipated lady of feminist tendencies. Her book is based largely on speculation and her own interpretations.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 in nature is meditation on a single photograph; complex poem; a dance around a photo. Each documentary source, that build the novel, has its catch and is a parody on the source. The photographer Gabor has a prototype, writer Maine is quasi-Henry Miller, and Nathalie Dunois is a collective image of ladies with higher education and creative instincts, who see everything through the prism of feminism.

Each of these characters is certainly strange, but pleasant, and each has its own unique voice. The novel even to some extent can be called an exercise in style, but the stylistic heterogeneity here is not cutting the story. Each fictional document, underlying the book, looks like original.

What eventually happens to the main heroine Villars is clear from the beginning, but the spirit of the book is not really grim. Yes, there are bile, jealousy, contempt, but all the characters are unsophisticated and nobody will disgust you. That’s true, of course, and for Lou Villars, which made her way from the ridiculous athlete to an almost executioner. Dunois the biographer is trying to find an explanation in the behavior and motives of Villars. Like, she worked for the Nazis from good intentions. Villars caused harm to some, so hundreds could be saved. She believed that protects civilians. And among motives the main is France is to blame, which denied Villars in sports, racing, depriving her of the joy of life, not allowing her to be who she is. But Dunois is a dim biographer, and one shouldn’t believe her. Are the reasons so important why a person becomes what he is? And was it all that simple with Villars, with her revenge to the country and the baron, when he refused to fight for her, the best racer of the country? This novel is a powerful statement about why you can not judge others.

Francine Prose won’t let you take a break from reading once you start. The novel radiates benevolence so that even the chapter about meeting between Hitler and Villars gives warm feelings.

Hanns and Rudolf

Thomas Harding
Hanns and Rudolf

William Heinemann, 2013

Thomas Harding, grandnephew of Hanns from the book's title, at the funeral of his uncle first finds out that Hanns Alexander was an investigator in the postwar years and hunted fugitive Nazi war criminals. This information became a reason to find out more about the life of his uncle, along with the most famous criminal who Alexander caught - Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz. Harding spent six years gathering information for this book, in which he tells the story of two different people who were born in one country, but fought for different ones.

Hoss was born in the early XX century, was a lonely child, despite the fact that he was not the only vhild in the family. His father planned that Rudolph will become a priest, but the early death of his father violated these plans. Hoss 's widow was left alone on the edge of poverty, and 14-year-old Rudolph, concealing his age, with the help of a friend 's father went off to war. Hoss fought in the First World War, steeled in battle, turned from a modest boy to a man. Hoss was engaged in agriculture, but the spirit of the war was still in him after the war, and soon he enrolled in Freikorps, a volunteer army to suppress uprisings in Latvia. There Hoss restore order in the Baltics region, but soon Latvians themselves turned against the German troops, and Hoss returned home.

Future investigator Hanns Alexander was born in 1917 into a family of Jewish family doctor. The family was rich and could afford a spacious house and a few servants. But the closer the Nazis were to power in the country, the worse life for the family became. The elder sister of Hans went to London where she married, but Dr. Alexander was in no hurry to leave the country. He hoped that the wave of anti-Semitism would die down and all would go back to how it was. But things are not getting any better: the attacks on the synagogue begins, the children had to be transferred to a private Jewish school, but Hanns soon dropped out, working as a clerk in a bank. Being in London with her daughter, the doctor learned about the pogroms in Berlin and only then realized that to stay in Germany is dangerous. With the start of the Olympics repression towards jews somewhat toned down, and at this opportune moment Hanns straightened a visa to travel to England.

Harding writes early in the book that he will call the two heroes by the names, because they both are still human beings (despite that one of them was a cruel killer). Philanthropy and even mercy - traits that Harding has. His story if Hoss’s life lacks moralizing and hatred. Moreover, Harding might even be accuseв by someone of being too soft in relation to the commandant of Auschwitz. Hoss’s memoirs may have influenced Harding’s perception of Hoss. In his memoirs, Hoss shifts the blame on others, indulges in sentimentality, repents, but partially recognizing that he hates Jews not as individuals, but as a race, curses the war and Hitler's ambitions plans.

Such final testimony should never be regarded as upright. Killer always carries with him part, if not the whole, truth. Hoss could be treated as the executive bureaucrat, if only he didn’t before the war brutally killed a man.

More intriguing is another aspect: Harding still managed to show Hoss from the positive side, specifically - as talented manager. Hoss started organization of concentration camps as if he create something absolutely ordinary, as a shoe factory, for example. Hoss treated killing like the planting of fruits, to be effective and yield. This side of Hoss, however, makes it more creepy: he did not kill anybody, did not beat the prisoners, but his rationalism and the desire to be effective for sure resulted in that more people were killed than, as we would say now, with inefficient management.

Hanns is an intriguing person even without the additional angles. Jews usually perceived as a nation of sufferers, whose role is to suffer and die. Hanns turns this theory on its head. As a youngster, he ruined the Nazi meeting, later with persistence was eager to fight against his native country, and after the war did not come back to Germany, betrayal of his country still fresh. Hanns as an investigator, too, was an extraordinary personality. Not having any skills of an investigator he got his way, ensuring the capture of fugitive Nazis. In the post-war chaos reigning Hanns was able to track down the people in hiding.

Hanns and Rudolf is primarily a double portrait, but not a mystery, based on historical events. Specifically investigation process takes not much space. Harding is a good biographer feeling zeitgeist. Though historians have found a few factual errors in the book, they do not spoil the overall impression of the book. Historical non-fiction books like this opens up new, not hackneyed fragments of history. Fresh and accessible.