The Catholic Book Club discussion

0. A Postcard from the Volcano: A Novel of Pre-War Germany is not a short book. But you don't need to wait before sharing your thoughts as you read. This is the thread for that conversation. How are you enjoying the book? Is it interesting? Does it change your perspective on anything?

One request: Some readers avoid the other discussion questions to avoid spoilers while they are reading. This thread is intended to enable everyone to participate in a general discussion, so please try to avoid including spoilers in your comments in this thread.

I found interesting the conversation in chapter 3 between Max and Adam Zapolski, who is a Polish atheist. His arguments for atheism are just the same that current atheists use. Did Beckett lean on her experience with atheists in the present to write this chapter? Is this an anachronism? I'd say it isn't. Atheists now are using precisely the same arguments used by atheists in the nineteenth century. They haven't adapted their arguments, they are still using the same old-fashioned mantras, because they don't care to study what their opponents are doing. I wrote about this in my blog:
http://populscience.blogspot.com/2014...

After having read one third of the pages in this book, I cannot help but wondering about to what extent Beckett knew about the private life of post-war German nobles. Yes, I know she says that she has studied the period in depth, and I'm sure that when she handles the political situation she is correct (Rathenau's role in government and his murder, antisemitism in Germany and Poland, and the like). But I still wonder.

On the other hand, the traces of homosexuality in the novel make me wonder whether the author has been led by current ideologies. Perhaps she'd better read C.S.Lewis's The four loves to discover that friendship between two males is possible, and totally different from Eros. Present writers seem to have forgotten this.

Manuel wrote: "After having read one third of the pages in this book, I cannot help but wondering about to what extent Beckett knew about the private life of post-war German nobles. Yes, I know she says that she ..."

I was wondering the same thing about the way Beckett is casting the relationship between Max and Adam.

Manuel wrote: "I found interesting the conversation in chapter 3 between Max and Adam Zapolski, who is a Polish atheist. His arguments for atheism are just the same that current atheists use. Did Beckett lean on ..."

I thought it was well done in the emphasis on Nietzsche, which reflects, I think the excitement of new ideas boldly expressed. I thought Max's criticisms (this may have been later than Chap. 3) of Nietzsche we interesting. I don't hear many atheists rely on Nietzsche these days. It does remind me of one of my favorite bits of graffiti:

"God is dead." Nietzsche.
"Nietzsche is dead." God.

John wrote: "I don't hear many atheists rely on Nietzsche these days..."

But they do, without naming him. All that cant about transhumanism is just Nietzsche's superman with a different name.

I have now read chapter 8. All seven signers of the postcard are now there. Every hint of homosexuality has gone away. Perhaps the author thinks this is a phase every male teenager goes through. If so, she is wrong, I never went through that phase. But I can't tell about everybody else.

When I was fourteen, a priest in my school asked me point blank whether I liked girls. I'm sure they were watching for hints of homosexuality. I answered that I didn't know, the idea had never passed through my mind. But this was a question needing an answer, and my scientific constitution gave me the way to find the answer. During the next week I took care to look at the girls passing by and finding out whether I liked them. One week after he had asked me the question, I went to find him and said: "Last week you asked me whether I like girls. I have experimented and found out that I do." Then he seemed outraged and exclaimed: "I never told you to experiment!" I never bothered to clear the misunderstanding. In fact, I didn't know why he was so upset.

But neither then nor later have I felt the slightest erotic attraction for a man.

I have read chapter 9. Boy what a chapter! I must read it again after I finish the book.

I just wonder whether what is written there is what those people (Lithuanian Jews, German, Polish) actually thought about "the Jewish Problem" or whether this is what the author thinks they thought.

But then, this is applicable to every historic novel, no less to mine (:-). For instance, in my novel "The seal of Aeolus" (not translated into English (:-() there is a conversation about religion between four men in the second century (a Greek, a Parthian, a Syrian and a Spanish Roman). The reader can wonder whether their opinions are actually theirs or just what the author (that's me) thinks they were.

In chapter 10, music is replaced by the plastic arts -mainly painting and architecture- as God's fishing tackle to draw Adam and Max to Catholicism.

It has come to my mind with some help of Fonch that this book has exactly the same core as Return to Brideshead, which was read by the club several months ago. Both are an embodiment of Chesterton's parable about God catching us with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let [us] wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring [us] back with a twitch upon the thread. (The Queer Feet, in The Innocence of Father Brown).

Manuel wrote: "In chapter 10, music is replaced by the plastic arts -mainly painting and architecture- as God's fishing tackle to draw Adam and Max to Catholicism.

It has come to my mind with some help of Fonch ..."
I do not think that it was casual. Lucy Beckett is a friend of Piers Paul Read, and Piers Paul Read knows very well the catholic fiction, indeed in his novel Upstar was influenced by Waugh, also by Somerset Maugham, but i do not quote because he is not catholic. Besides it is posible that Lucy knows the reality of Germany thanks to Piers Paul Read. Piers Paul Read`s mother was from Germany, and Piers Paul Read is one of the few english writers that he loves this country. He said to me that Lucy is a riend of his childhood. About the homosexual i agree with my friend Alfonseca, although is possible that it was an excuse perhaps want to tribute Brideshead Revisited, also it is posible that in the future Beckett want to attack the ideology of gender. One of the tactics of Piers Paul Read is that he seems that he is going to praise for example the modernism, and after as Edmund Burke he striked unmercifuly. It is posible that Lucy Beckett copied the tactic.

The homosexuality are present for example in the Alfred Döblin`s novels, and Christopher Isherwood (A shor story of Isherwood inspired Cabaret), perhaps Beckett want to tribute to these writers.

In chapter 11 God makes His first twitch on the tackle line. God wins.

I like the contrast between Protestant and Catholic funerals. Max likes the God-is-on-our-side Protestant one, but it has zero element of robust faith in God or eternity.

I found the conversation about Jews "hoping for faith" interesting. Mendel says a Jew (and this is even more true for Christians, since belief in eternal life is not universal among even believing Jews) doesn't ever quite belong to the country in which he lives. Mendel thinks they try to make themselves a "homeland" like science, music or money-making (and we could add the country of Israel) but are never truly at home except "where God is".

Manuel wrote: ""Last week you asked me whether I like girls. I have experimented and found out that I do." Then he seemed outraged and exclaimed: "I never told you to experiment!" I never bothered to clear the misunderstanding. In fact, I didn't know why he was so upset."

That's hilarious. I agree with you that there is something off in Beckett's understanding of men. She seems to assume that men experience friendship in the same way that women experience friendship and I don't think that's right.

John, do you think men and women experience same-sex friendship differently? Can you spell that out?
One thing I have experienced as a woman is that it's hard to share deep spiritual intimacy with a man (even a spiritual director) without a twinge of romantic attraction.

John wrote: "Manuel wrote: ""Last week you asked me whether I like girls. I have experimented and found out that I do." Then he seemed outraged and exclaimed: "I never told you to experiment!" I never bothered ..."

I agree with both of them in this point the way of friendship depend of the gender. It is very different the friendship if you are a man, or a woman.

Jill, here's what Tolkien wrote to his son regarding 'friendship' between a man and a woman:

" In this fallen world the 'friendship' that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. This 'friendship' has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a 'friendship' quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by 'falling in love'. "

Mariangel wrote: "Jill, here's what Tolkien wrote to his son regarding 'friendship' between a man and a woman:

" In this fallen world the 'friendship' that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually ..."
I totally agree. We could read "The four loves" by C.S. Lewis, and the spanish writer Juan Manuel de Prada defend this idea. PD. In my personal experience i was a friend of woman, at finally i have just fallen in love of her. Unfortunatelly my story did not conclude well :-(.

John, I join Jill in her question.

Jill wrote: "John, do you think men and women experience same-sex friendship differently? Can you spell that out?
One thing I have experienced as a woman is that it's hard to share deep spiritual intimacy with ..."

That wasn't quite what I was trying to say, though it is a fair interpretation of what I wrote. I certainly did not mean to suggest that friendship between women necessarily has a romantic/sexual component that is not present in such friendships between men. I think what I was trying to say is that friendship between men is normally different than friendship between men and women. I agree with you, Fonch, Mariangel and C.S. Lewis, that friendships between men and women almost always have a romantic/sexual tension and it felt like Beckett was importing that experience into the relationship between Max and Adam.