W. A. B. Warszawa 2004 130 x 221 166 pages hardcover ISBN 83-7414-047-X Translation rights: W. A. B.
Janusz Rudnicki
My Wehrmacht
Excerpt
My Wehrmacht is Janusz Rudnicki’s fifth prose work to date. Only his first book, a collection of short stories, can be defined by genre, as the rest elude categorisation. Rudnicki has devised his own, unusually original form of prose narrative. It most resembles a sort of modern annals, or written variations, a miscellany that includes literary invention, the language of personal record, quotations and paraphrases, comments and impressions. My Wehrmacht was also created from the scraps and images of everyday life, of which the latter (the images) should be taken literally. The book opens with two comprehensive commentaries on two monographs that made a strong impression on Rudnicki. One of them is Brecht’s Women (2002), and the other is The Nazis’ Women (1998). Rudnicki interprets and comments on both these books in an unusually crafty way. In the texts that follow, which this time are very short, he turns to the everyday world around him. The strength of this writing lies in his incredible perceptiveness and extraordinary humour – here literally every trifling detail, the most banal incidents (in the street, in a shop, or in a lift) can spark off an elaborate anecdote, because Rudnicki’s sneering attitude has a deeper, to some extent philosophical meaning. As we read his prose we laugh through our tears and come into contact with areas of our life and world that are absurd, illusory, ambiguous, or characterised by an oddness that we don’t generally notice.
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