The Drinker Book

Of course I have not always been a drunkard, the main character, Erwin Sommer, says to begin this tale. Me neither, says I.

This is the tale of a respectable man who takes to drink late in life and then follows a quick spiral downward into insanity. It does not stray far from the outline of the author's own life: drink, marital trouble, more drink, the loss of self-esteem, even more drink, attempted spousal-cide, arrest, incarceration, insane asylum.

As with his other novels, Fallada wrote this in a spurt, about two weeks. It is well-told and, I imagine, wonderfully translated.

The back of the book teases though that Fallada wrote this "in an encrypted notebook". The short author bio at the end of the book continues this, saying the book was written "in code" and is "a brilliant, subversive novel."

So I looked, you know, for the allegory. And if you strain, you could read this as allegory, maybe about the Nazis. You can read any book as an allegory of the Nazis, even books written hundreds of years before the Nazis.

But, the same publishers that suggested that also included a substantial Afterword, whose author convincingly says the book was "not in code as has sometimes been suggested, but in fine criss-crossed lines to economize paper." Sloppiness like that could drive a reader to drink.

I ultimately did not read this as allegory, but rather as the story of the unraveling of a mind. A personal account. The alcohol here is beside the point. Erwin Sommer started his descent before the first drink. His fault, not someone else, not something else. Me neither. And that is story enough.