CREEPER!!!!!!
As of last time The Reader makes me really think about how I feel on this whole topic of whether there are excuses for worldwide tragedies. I wanted to see if I could find interviews of Bernhard Schlink and I found more blogs. Creepy Right! I thought I should be respectful and read through some of them and see what others have to say. Some are purely summaries of chapters and other have some substance. Here are two blog rolls.
http://goodbookslately.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/the-reader/
http://cooljustice.blogspot.com/2009/01/interviews-with-bernhard-schlink-author.html
Finally I had some success in finding and interview with Bernhard Schlink. I found it very interesting and it tied up some lose ends I had about the book. I know understand that Schlink used this book and plot as the vehicle to portray the conflict between respective generations. He wants to show us the conflict that occurs once we find out that the generation before us whom we love, whether it is parents, teachers, associates, has done something so morally outrageous that we want to hate them but we can’t. We want to detach ourselves from their mistakes but are unable to disconnect the love we once felt for them. This is why he uses a relationship between and 15 and 30 year old because it places them within different generations. Michael suddenly finds the wrongs Hanna committed during the war and is not able to forgive nor forget though he wants to do the latter. Below is a link to the interview…
There was one aspect of the interview that I found especially interesting. I have tried to write down the questions by Charlie Rose and the responses by Bernhard Schlink. Here Rose asks about whether Schlink can forgive the generation that took part in the Holocaust.
CR: “And you have, as of that generation, understanding but not forgiveness?”
BS: “I, uh, can’t forgive. I can’t forgive that, and the problem is to understand, because of course they have to be condemned, but the tension remains.”
I believe that this tension is what makes The Reader so great because Schlink was able to capture this battle for not only understanding but the fight for wanting to understand.
As Michael Berg says, “We are trying to understand!”
