Aue

To this extent, a character like Aue is humanized, but this only makes his and his fellow officer's actions more appalling, since they arise from recognizable human beings rather than caricatures.

December 2009 2009

Perhaps Aue is manipulating the historical record in order to give himself a role in all of these events, but again it doesn't really matter.

December 2009 2009

I just don't perceive any effort on Littell's effort to affirm Aue as a "human brother," as opposed to simply a "human being," and it does not make him into something other than a human being to imply, metaphorically, that Aue is a man pursued by his own sort of "furies."

Translated Texts 2010

Whatever degree of artifice Littell has brought to the plot of The Kindly Ones -- at least that part of the plot devoted to chronicling the extermination program as it leads Aue from the Ukraine to Hitler's bunker -- I found it riveting.

December 2009 2009

Whatever degree of artifice Littell has brought to the plot of The Kindly Ones -- at least that part of the plot devoted to chronicling the extermination program as it leads Aue from the Ukraine to Hitler's bunker -- I found it riveting.

Translated Texts 2010

To this extent, a character like Aue is humanized, but this only makes his and his fellow officer's actions more appalling, since they arise from recognizable human beings rather than caricatures.

Translated Texts 2010

David Gates asserts in his New York Times Book Review assessment that "Aue is simply too much of a freak, and his supposed childhood trauma too specialized and contrived, for us to take him seriously," while Michiko Kakutani adds that "Aue is clearly a deranged creature, and his madness turns his story into a voyeuristic spectacle."

Translated Texts 2010

Perhaps Aue is manipulating the historical record in order to give himself a role in all of these events, but again it doesn't really matter.

Translated Texts 2010

But surely no one expects readers to be converted to Nazism or sadomasochism through Aue's account of himself, either, so one must conclude that Franklin's and Bukiet's dislike of an "unremitting immersion in Aue's worldview" has been converted into a general critical requirement that bad people as depicted in fiction must be "counteracted" by a "philosophical or artistic" effort to meliorate their evil.

Translated Texts 2010

I just don't perceive any effort on Littell's effort to affirm Aue as a "human brother," as opposed to simply a "human being," and it does not make him into something other than a human being to imply, metaphorically, that Aue is a man pursued by his own sort of "furies."

December 2009 2009