Pantheon Books, 2008
"Homecoming" conjures up images of comfort food at church dinners on the ground, a place where one returns to see old friends and family and enjoy the best of cooking. It means a place which has to take you back after your travels, a place for the prodigal to return. Homecoming is the thought which remains in your heart wherever you travel.
Homecoming, as seen through the autobiographical eyes of Bernhard Schlink, is much more complicated. It is a search for identity, a ferreting out of one's roots, a judgment about what might be true or not. As in his masterful The Reader, this story has its genesis in the Germany of World War II. That it was a time of great turmoil, loss of life, and loss of personal records is an understatement. So it was and is with the life of the protagonist, Peter Debauer, who slowly learns that the stories his mother has told him about his father begin to diverge more and more from reality. In a recent interview, Schlink noted he was "interested in the question of what coming home means today - intertwined with the eternal question of what love is and how, when we love, we give up home and find home."
"Homecoming" conjures up images of comfort food at church dinners on the ground, a place where one returns to see old friends and family and enjoy the best of cooking. It means a place which has to take you back after your travels, a place for the prodigal to return. Homecoming is the thought which remains in your heart wherever you travel.
Homecoming, as seen through the autobiographical eyes of Bernhard Schlink, is much more complicated. It is a search for identity, a ferreting out of one's roots, a judgment about what might be true or not. As in his masterful The Reader, this story has its genesis in the Germany of World War II. That it was a time of great turmoil, loss of life, and loss of personal records is an understatement. So it was and is with the life of the protagonist, Peter Debauer, who slowly learns that the stories his mother has told him about his father begin to diverge more and more from reality. In a recent interview, Schlink noted he was "interested in the question of what coming home means today - intertwined with the eternal question of what love is and how, when we love, we give up home and find home."
This growing disconnect leads Peter on an odyssey through Germany and Europe to the United States in an effort to find his way "home" again. Home in this case means two things. First, he is searching for the author of a novel who "felt compelled to tell a soldier's tale, a tale of homecoming." He is also trying to learn his true name and that of his father who may still be alive. His mother has stubbornly clung to one story, which slowly crumbles as does her façade of uncompromising love for her son. Juxtaposed against this journey into the past is his relationship with a woman who promises him a future regardless of his origins. And, from time to time, Peter even assumes false identities in order to facilitate his voyage of discovery.
The parallels with The Odyssey are many. Peter is on a voyage that carries him as the wind (discovery of a new fact) blows him now closer then further away from the goal he seeks. In the novel, discovered by the young Peter at his putative grandparents' home, the protagonist actually takes a journey down a river on a raft of logs, then through a desert, and into the mountains. Along the way he meets a woman in a choir (Sirens), a giant woman (Laestrygonians), and a cosmetician (Circe). Each, as was the case with Odysseus, delays his journey, yet helps him grow in understanding of who he is. Peter tells us that the author of the novel "felt compelled to tell a soldier's tale, a tale of homecoming." Homecoming is a novel that will move you and enhance your understanding of our universal search for identity and sense of place.
The parallels with The Odyssey are many. Peter is on a voyage that carries him as the wind (discovery of a new fact) blows him now closer then further away from the goal he seeks. In the novel, discovered by the young Peter at his putative grandparents' home, the protagonist actually takes a journey down a river on a raft of logs, then through a desert, and into the mountains. Along the way he meets a woman in a choir (Sirens), a giant woman (Laestrygonians), and a cosmetician (Circe). Each, as was the case with Odysseus, delays his journey, yet helps him grow in understanding of who he is. Peter tells us that the author of the novel "felt compelled to tell a soldier's tale, a tale of homecoming." Homecoming is a novel that will move you and enhance your understanding of our universal search for identity and sense of place.
The protagonist of the novel within Homecoming is named Jürgen. Perhaps this is a nod to the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. In Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (page 135) Habermas defines the concept of communicative action, a circular process in which the actor is two things in one: an initiator, who masters situations through actions for which he is accountable, and a product of the transitions surrounding him, of groups whose cohesion is based on solidarity to which he belongs, and of processes of socialization in which he is reared. This concept clearly defines the elements of Peter Debauer's character.
Homecoming unfolds like a Russian nested doll. The outer layer (Elvis) is peeled away to reveal Michael Jackson, then Madonna, and on to Jagger at the core. One never knows what will come next until it is revealed. Homecoming lifts its veils away in such a manner that foreshadowing seldom allows us to make assumptions about what is coming next. The very inconclusiveness of the novel is a clear strength because life does not always give us clear cut answers. "His characters, like their creator, wrestle every day with who they are, how heavily the past weighs on them and their troubled relationships, and whether they can ever escape its shadow." (Newsweek, International Edition, November 12, 2001, page 66)
Homecoming unfolds like a Russian nested doll. The outer layer (Elvis) is peeled away to reveal Michael Jackson, then Madonna, and on to Jagger at the core. One never knows what will come next until it is revealed. Homecoming lifts its veils away in such a manner that foreshadowing seldom allows us to make assumptions about what is coming next. The very inconclusiveness of the novel is a clear strength because life does not always give us clear cut answers. "His characters, like their creator, wrestle every day with who they are, how heavily the past weighs on them and their troubled relationships, and whether they can ever escape its shadow." (Newsweek, International Edition, November 12, 2001, page 66)
Even a slight knowledge of Schlink's life reveals the many autobiographical details in both The Reader and Homecoming. Born in'44, he grew up in a post-war Germany which was trying to redefine itself, often as more European than specifically German. Like Debauer, he moved to the United States and went to an Esalen-like institute south of San Francisco, then to a massage school. Back in Germany, he took a job as a legal editor and is a professor for public law and the philosophy of law at Humbolt University in Berlin. His stories are familiar to all Germans of his age. Homecoming was translated by Michael Henry Heim.
