851 George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine- Adam Johnson

851 George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine- Adam Johnson

This is the powerful story of Hans Backer, the warden of a Stasi Prison in occupied East Germany. The prison was closed in 1990 when the wall came down and his life changed forever, as did the entire culture. It’s been eighteen years since reunification but Hans hasn’t changed a bit. He lived his life and his career with military precision and he thrived in communist East Germany. But the world has changed around him and like it or not he is about to be challenged from the past.

“I do not need to recall the past…I am certain of what it was.”

Although he has lived nearby the whole time, he hasn’t been inside the prison since he finished destroying all the inmate records. He is unaware that the prison is now a museum to the atrocities of the Stasi cruelty and the torture that happened inside its walls. His old office has even been memorialized. 

One day as he walks past, he overhears a tour guide talk about a famous writer interrogated and imprisoned under his charge. He confronts the guide with vehement rebuttals and apologist rhetoric. Not understanding the technology of the day, he doesn’t realize that he has been recorded via a cellphone. He will become a viral video by the next day.

The curator seeing his willingness to talk and shed light on the dark past (even though Hans doesn’t himself see it as a dark past) he invites Hans to give a tour of the prison and freely tell his side of history. The more he talks the worse he comes across and more entrenched he becomes in his own beliefs.

This is a simple man, who chooses to see the world in black and white. He refuses to acknowledge the evils of the past nor his significant role in it. He liked his work and now that his work is seen by the world as tyrannical, he falls back on the crutch of only being a cog in a larger machine. He repeats common refrains like:

“I only ran the prison…I was an administrator.”

This same stubbornness caused him to lose his wife and daughter. They have become ashamed of him as more and more truths about the past come to light. Imagine learning that the wonderful gift your father gave you as a child was stolen from a girl inmate at your father’s torture prison. His wife has taken to alcoholism and that is a sigh of weakness to Hans—not something to be supported or helped. He doesn’t understand how his daughter or his wife cant separate his career with his life:

“But it wasn’t us…I’m talking about family. You’re talking about work.”

This rigidity over what he sees as right and wrong, legal or illegal, even past and present is probably what made him a good prison warden to begin with—at least in communist East Berlin. Some things just can’t be forgiven, but when the perpetrators themselves refuse to admit culpability—phew, that must illicit rage beyond words.

This story is fantastic. Johnson deals with delicate topics by just diving in full force. I’m reminded of two others stories that in vastly different ways tells stories of survivors of prison torture from both sides. The first one is Stephen King's Apt Pupil. This deals with a former Nazi camp torturer living a life as someone else who decades later is confronted with his true identity. He faces his own indulgences from his evil past. That was, in a very King fashioned, over the top and sensational, although dealt with real evil. 

The second is Nathan Englander’s Free Fruit for Young Widows that confronts evil from the other side. How human reaction to confronting absolute evil changes not only the actions of peaceful people but their complete understanding of the world. All three stories stress the importance of history and education of the past. 

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#822 Interesting Facts- Adam Johnson

#822 Interesting Facts- Adam Johnson

This is a cathartic look at a woman dealing with her own death and the loss of her to her family. The husband is clearly written as an autobiographical look at Adam Johnson himself. He’s a San Francisco writer that won the Pulitzer Prize for writing a novel taking place in North Korea (The Orphan Master’s Son). I don’t know whether he actually had a wife die of cancer, and since this is a short story, it doesn’t matter if the reader knows. But if he did, and he wrote this story from the perspective of his dying wife…that’s incredibly brave.

The story begins with the wife and husband managing three kids while she goes through cancer treatment. She wonders about her own death and how fast it would take for him to move on with his life. We see her jealousy and sadness. Halfway through the story, you start to wonder if she is alive at all. I don’t remember if there is a point where we are told that she had died, or if it is left vague. I don’t want to go back and see. The way I read it, things slowly coming into focus was a powerful thing.

Notable Passage: “If I want them to stop treating me like a ghost, I should stop acting like one.”

10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#794 Hurricanes Anonymous- Adam Johnson

#794 Hurricanes Anonymous- Adam Johnson

Three weeks after Katrina Rocked New Orleans, Hurricane Rita hit. Many of the people that fled to places like Lake Charles, were now hit twice. Nonc is driving a UPS van and delivering to a few of the rescue and recovery crews. The area is a disaster.

“Outside the campers are bright purple laundry bins, molded plastic porch chairs and the deep black of weber grills, which is what happens when Wal-Mart is your first responder.”

In tow at all times is Geronimo, his son from a two-month relationship with Marnie. Geronimo has unceremoniously been handed off and Marnie is nowhere to be found. Nonc tries to track her down, raise his son, stay in Alcohol recovery, manage a new relationship, survive the post-hurricane chaos and deal with his estranged dying father. There is a lot on his plate. His head seems to be in the right place and with a little luck and a couple of right moves, he might just make it. Luck, however, is not something that has been on his side.

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#766 Nirvana- Adam Johnson

#766 Nirvana- Adam Johnson

Wow, after 765 stories, it has become more and more difficult to find truly unique plots. This one was surprising. This is the first story in the National Book Award winning collection Fortune Smiles. Having recently read his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Orphan Master’s Son, I was excited to get into this book.

Charlotte suffers from Guillaine-Barre syndrome, a degenerative nerve disease that causes paralysis, sometimes temporary and sometimes progressive. It is getting to the point of no return for her.

“This is the ninth month, a month that is at the edge of the medical literature. It’s a place where the doctors no longer feel qualified to tell us whether Charlotte’s nerves will begin regenerating or she will be stuck like this forever.”

Her husband is a programmer and sits with her night and day while she struggles with her condition. She makes him promise to help her commit suicide if things get too bad. His thoughts of death are focused on the recently assassinated president. To help him deal with his wife and the suffering a nation goes through after an assassination he has created an interactive hologram of the president that he uses to seek answers. 

This hologram has made him a target of every tech companies attentions. The need to protect and capitalize are on everyone’s minds. The need to prolong life is on his. The theme of artificial comfort is everywhere. Be it the joints his wife consumes, the fake conversations he has with the “president” or the security of commercial patents, we all want a little reassurance for the future.

Nirvana is the only music his wife listens to, perhaps to find the courage to kill heself or find a reason not too.

Notable Passage: “Can you tell a story that doesn’t begin?”

Rating: 9-10-9-9 Total= 37