World Famous Comics: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum : Or How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum : Or How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
By: Heinrich Böll Publisher: Penguin Classics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Penguin Classics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 144 Publication Date: June 01, 1994
The story of cutthroat media bloodhounds and the casting aside of truth. Information manipulation, secrets and lies and cover-ups all in the name of providing a service of keeping the public in the "loop" of day-to-day current events are the backdrops of Heinrich Boll's terse and relevant novel, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: Or How Violence Developes and Where It Can Lead. What happens when a person is pushed to the brink of insanity? Do they become a submissive doormat and allow themselves to be completely consumed or do they push back by whatever means necessary in order to obtain the caliber of liberty they once posessed? In this novel-the protagonist-Katharina Blum is placed in just such a scenario where a battle ensues between her and her nemesis, Totges, a hungry reporter who works for a tabloid news outfit appropriately called the "News," an unyielding and unflinching information organization that will stop at nothing-even slander and character assassination-to promote itself as being the ultimate "truth-seeker" despite their limited knowledge and understaning of that which they are seeking. Getting the story and fabricating it in order to remain first is the end-all and be-all, and truth and innocence takes a back seat. In the novel, Katharina is associated with Gotten, a "criminal". And because of that innocent connection, she is placed on par with him as a mastermind of evil, deviancy and debauchery; her life is firmly hybridized with his, and no matter how innocent her actions, she cannot escape the glued-on innuendo solidly attached to her reputation, and as the multi-layered cool and collected Katharina gradually gets stripped away to the bone, she lashes out and evolves into a real criminal, whereby before she was only a fabricated one, fodder for the news media in order to reach to the pinnacles of journalistic success. An example of print media manipulation is best shown on page 105 when Kathharina's mother-Mrs. Blum-is interviewed regarding the goings-on of her daughter: "Why did it have to end like this, why did it have to come to this?" out of which the News made: "It was bound to come to this, it was bound to end like this." Totges accounted for the slight change in Mrs. Blum's statement by saying that as a reporter he was used to "helping simple people to express themselves more clearly." The duality of truth and lies play a game with each other, and in this case, truth finished last. A powerful book that speaks volumes.
Well written, but rather outdated Katharina Blum is a hard working, honest housekeeper with a small car, her own house and, after her divorce from her husband, not much of a social life. One evening during carnaval she decides to go dancing. Here she meets a man who she really likes, but who turns out to have a criminal record. And this is when things start to go wrong... A journalist from the ZEITUNG ("newspaper"), a pulp magazine, claiming to be a respectable newspaper, puts hus teeth into the story and starts damaging Katharina and her family, friends and acquitances. In the end Katharina takes justice into her own hands.
Place and time of this pamphlet (as Böll calls this book in an afterword) are West-Germany, 1974, so a conservative society at the height of the fear for the Red Army Faction, with an unbridled influence of the pulp press, in particular the notorious BILD-Zeitung. Böll has written a convincing accusation against these type of journals and the fact that people actually believe what they say.
The problem with this book is that it is outdated: in the meantime the world has moved on, readers (even those of newspapers like the ZEITUNG) have become more aware of the fact that these type of newspapers tend to lie and the accusations made in those types of newspapers are nowadays even more outrageous than in 1974. I also had some problems with the style of writing: even though the book is well written (what one may expect from a Nobel laureate), the narrator actively comments on what is going on, which is sometimes irritating and does not add anything to the story.
An early attack on the power of tabloid journalism. Katharina Blum's murder of a newspaper reporter, to which she has confessed on the opening page, is not the point of attack for a mystery story, despite that implication on the book jacket. There is too little suspense and character development to make you care much about her. Instead, Boll uses the murder and its aftermath to offer a cautionary tale about overzealous police investigators and the unfettered tabloid press--showing how the press descends on Katharina and everyone who has ever come into contact with her, twisting words, creating false impressions based upon police department leaks, casting aspersions, ruining lives, and inciting Katharina to eventual murder.
Sound familiar? The novel may have been startling, and even controversial, when it was published in 1974, but no contemporary reader familiar with the tabloids at the supermarket checkout or with sensational talk shows conducting outrageously one-sided investigations will find this depiction of the press even slightly shocking. In fact, the methods of the press in this novel seem unrealistic, not because they are so extreme, but because they are so obvious, crude, and lacking in subtlety. Boll may have been prophetic with this novel in 1974, but it is a product of its own time. While it may confirm that the conflict between responsible journalism and irresponsible sensationalism has a long history, it offers few useful insights for the present day.
Mandatory reading! I have to admit, I saw the film before reading the book, and I recommend them both. In today's climate in America, - when the police profession is considered one of the noblest by liberals and conservatives alike, and the so-called "liberal" press, which crossed the line into tabloid journalism awhile ago, and which still hides behind the myth/lie of "objectivity," - this book is as timely and relevant today as it ever was, and should be mandatory viewing/reading.
Fantastic novel that suggests Germany is like Orwell's 1984 Böll has several enemies he seeks to attack: the press, the police, and the German government's secret service. He describes the mud which the tabloid "News" throws at people, mud which sticks. He shows the incompetence and unruthfulness of senior police officers. He also shows how tax payer's money is squandered on tapping people's 'phones for very little useful information. In all Böll shows that Big Brother was really watching West Germans and that the state could make things really nasty. He also showed how all this was supposedly done in the name of anti-communism (a noble cause of course!)
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