The kindly ones
by Jonathan Littell · first published 2009
7mentions
4recommended by
5HN commenters
2015–2024first – last mentioned
80% recommend20% neutral
"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened." So begins the chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. During the period from June 19
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…but a guy who shoots up an elementary school will not come out normal on the Rorschach. In reference to crime vs. normalcy, with nazi's Germany as backdrop, there is the very good Jonathan Littell, "The Kindly Ones."
on “Rorschach Tests at the Nuremberg Trials” ↗…almost always write a better first draft longhand -- probably because writing by hand is so much slower, you'll end up with a much more concise sentence. From another perspective, I recently finished "The Kindly Ones" by Jonathan Littell. 900+ pages of Kafka-style wall of text -- but I often just couldn't put the book down. So stream of consciousness still seems to work from a reader's perspective, too; maybe computers…
on “Cormac McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32” ↗"Mein Kampf is worth at least a skim, because it demonstrates that Hitler was a human being." Excellent phrasing. I think you would love "The Kindly Ones" by Jonathan Littell [1]. What an incredible book -- oh, and, being released in 2009, it also fits my interpretation of "Lindy". 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kindly_Ones_(Littell_novel...
on “The Lindy Effect” ↗The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. It’s an incredibly well researched historical fiction that explores bureaucracy and the darkness of human nature, particularly how intelligent, capable, ordinary, and deeply flawed…
on “Ask HN: What book bit, stung and shook you deeply?” ↗I suggest you read “The Kindly Ones” by Littell. Or, for a smaller investment of time, “Just Revenge" by Dershowitz. Putin is not even on the same axis as Hitler in terms of evil. I can only take your words to mean that you have no idea…
I’d call that statement either grossly uninformed or a disrespect to the victims of fascism, say, under Stalin or Hitler. I can recommend a reading of “The Kindly Ones” to get a sense of what that word means.
…you like - why would anyone want that? Do you believe this is a good thing? And BTW, if you find that article disturbing, I would really like to know what would you think about things like reading The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell... or visiting Auschwitz?
on “A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life” ↗