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Reinhart #2
Reinhart in love: A novel
Carlo Reinhart returns home from service in occupied Germany and finds the postwar U.S. a different housing developments, gadget technology, a physical and spiritual malaise that boom times evoke. Good-hearted and intelligent, sympathetic but cynical, Reinhart is a participant who nevertheless remains a spectator. This gives the story its piquancy. Imagine going full throttle for success, simultaneously riding the brakes in apprehension. "Picture Fiedling's Tom Jones in a 20th century landscape and you'll have some idea of REINHART IN LOVE." (The New York Times)
438 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1962
11 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Berger
243 books140 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.
Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.
Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.
Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2017
Where did I learn about this author? From an obituary when he died at 89 in 2014. He is one of those under-sung, under-read, literary authors. It was a cinch I would go for that label!
I read his first novel, Crazy in Berlin, 1958, and found it challenging. It was the first literary novel I had read set at the beginning of the Cold War, in which Carlos Reinhart, an American serviceman, is completing his enlistment in Berlin as a medic. I decided it had been worth reading, so I continued with this account of his first year back in the United States as a civilian.
He has troubles fitting in. He lives at home in Ohio with parents who are some truly strange but very American characters. He falls in love with the secretary at the office of a real estate mogul where he took at job and eventually they marry.
True to the character I got to know in the first book, he stumbles into the oddest adventures, all the while trying to figure out how to be an employed man, a husband, and a fellow who has the idea that he is an honest person.
The story includes hot subjects like racism, corruption in local politics and business, and lots of sex. Berger writes rather long, convoluted but grammatically correct sentences filled with literary allusions. Reading him requires work and concentration. Once again I was rewarded by his subtle satire, his humor, and his fine-tuned awareness of life in America.
Since that perception of middle class life is part of what I am looking for when I read these books from the 1960s, it worked fine for me. However, unless that is something you are looking for in your reading, I can't give this novel a high recommendation to all readers.
I read his first novel, Crazy in Berlin, 1958, and found it challenging. It was the first literary novel I had read set at the beginning of the Cold War, in which Carlos Reinhart, an American serviceman, is completing his enlistment in Berlin as a medic. I decided it had been worth reading, so I continued with this account of his first year back in the United States as a civilian.
He has troubles fitting in. He lives at home in Ohio with parents who are some truly strange but very American characters. He falls in love with the secretary at the office of a real estate mogul where he took at job and eventually they marry.
True to the character I got to know in the first book, he stumbles into the oddest adventures, all the while trying to figure out how to be an employed man, a husband, and a fellow who has the idea that he is an honest person.
The story includes hot subjects like racism, corruption in local politics and business, and lots of sex. Berger writes rather long, convoluted but grammatically correct sentences filled with literary allusions. Reading him requires work and concentration. Once again I was rewarded by his subtle satire, his humor, and his fine-tuned awareness of life in America.
Since that perception of middle class life is part of what I am looking for when I read these books from the 1960s, it worked fine for me. However, unless that is something you are looking for in your reading, I can't give this novel a high recommendation to all readers.
September 28, 2019
Reinhart is back in the US from WWII, and the America he returns to lacks morality and honesty. Americans were asked to aid the war effort by economizing - cars, houses, meat were in short supply, and here, at this juncture, is where Reinhart merges back into his community. Jobs and housing are in short supply; the country is teetering on a recession. Reinhart's friends and family do not seem to value education; everyone seems to be focused on making money. American consumer culture, government, business - Reinhart finds that all are corrupt. He is constantly thinking about the clothes he wears, the car he drives, the house he lives in. These things exert their control over him; in an effort to get and keep them, he sacrifices honesty. He seems helpless to resist, despite being on a search for a legitimate life, and his foil in the novel is Claude Humbold, who he hated as a child but who becomes like a father figure. As Reinhart expands into his life and community, Claude seems to recede. Bizarrely Reinhart and Claude seem to merge into one - Reinhart wears suits from the same shop, drives Claude's car, sits in Claude's office, lives in Claude's house. Humbold seems to represent success in this new America, so Reinhart's move into Claude's life seems to indicate that Reinhart has achieved something, although through no virtue or character of his own.
This duality is a thread throughout the novel. Truth vs illusion. Love vs hate. Gen vs Carl. Reinhart vs Humbold. Black vs white. Man vs woman.
Things happen to Reinhart; he does not initiate the major actions of the novel but fills a void left by someone else. He seems to be largely along for the ride; at the beginning of the novel he sits near the phone, waiting for a beautiful woman or head hunter to call. "Rein" translates to straight and honest, uncorrupted - Reinhart is a straight man w/ love in his heart facing an America that will chew him to shreds. In his bizarre spontaneous (often drunken) speaking engagements, he preaches the golden rule: "Above all, do no harm and always uphold the dignity of human life." He explains that we are in a world, a community that we didn't choose, a dreary mistake, but we might as well try to love: "perhaps we should try loving even that dreariness and then it wouldn't be so bad, or at least we can see that...life is interesting." He is a lover, not a fighter, as one other natural response to a dreary environment is to fight against it. And this is a society that values the fighter, so Reinhart feels throughout the novel a deep inadequacy and despair and alienation. Despite this inadequacy, however, he loves life, he finds ways to embrace the twists of fate that take him from one hilarious scene to the next. He charms the reader.
I give this book three rather than four stars because of the unease I felt at how Berger handled the women in the novel. Why is this never written about in literary journals? Maybe I'm missing something; maybe Reinhart's thoughts are just his, a building of his character, but he is our protagonist. His women have power but they are largely calculating.
(Reinhart's father may in fact be the most ethical character of the bunch.)
This duality is a thread throughout the novel. Truth vs illusion. Love vs hate. Gen vs Carl. Reinhart vs Humbold. Black vs white. Man vs woman.
Things happen to Reinhart; he does not initiate the major actions of the novel but fills a void left by someone else. He seems to be largely along for the ride; at the beginning of the novel he sits near the phone, waiting for a beautiful woman or head hunter to call. "Rein" translates to straight and honest, uncorrupted - Reinhart is a straight man w/ love in his heart facing an America that will chew him to shreds. In his bizarre spontaneous (often drunken) speaking engagements, he preaches the golden rule: "Above all, do no harm and always uphold the dignity of human life." He explains that we are in a world, a community that we didn't choose, a dreary mistake, but we might as well try to love: "perhaps we should try loving even that dreariness and then it wouldn't be so bad, or at least we can see that...life is interesting." He is a lover, not a fighter, as one other natural response to a dreary environment is to fight against it. And this is a society that values the fighter, so Reinhart feels throughout the novel a deep inadequacy and despair and alienation. Despite this inadequacy, however, he loves life, he finds ways to embrace the twists of fate that take him from one hilarious scene to the next. He charms the reader.
I give this book three rather than four stars because of the unease I felt at how Berger handled the women in the novel. Why is this never written about in literary journals? Maybe I'm missing something; maybe Reinhart's thoughts are just his, a building of his character, but he is our protagonist. His women have power but they are largely calculating.
(Reinhart's father may in fact be the most ethical character of the bunch.)
March 24, 2024
Funny story about a man who returns to his Mid-West home town after WW2. The humour often relies on farcical situations and the use of bathos. I think I would read more of Thomas Berger. Little Big Man would be next on my list.
May 5, 2012
Really broad comic satire with some amazing wordplay, strange characters, unique occurrences and plot twists. Marred only by its undeniable racism (though racists are one of Berger's targets, the continuous use of epithets and sterotypical features doesn't come off as well as it might have fifty years ago).
March 19, 2018
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Next: Little Big Man
Next: Little Big Man
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews