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Michael
Mejia's Forgetfulness draws connections between the rise of fascism
in Vienna and the orchestral compositions of Anton Webern, a fellow-traveler
of Arnold Schonburg. In some way, it's de rigeur that we see Webern's
challenging modernist compositions as a tonic against the rise of fascism
(the opposite is unthinkable, isn't it?), though the book isn't exactly
clear about how this might work. A cursory listen to Webern's music makes
it sound to this reader/ listener like it fits the period, the soundtrack
to a particularly cerebral and futuristic horror movie, all jumped-up
strings and abrupt tonal disruptions. This same cut-up technique recurs
in Mejia's curiously passionless prose—the first section is made
up of alternating scenes of life in Vienna (and later, Berlin), and the
second represents typographically three simultaneous monologues as three
horizontal columns.
Near as I can tell, the near perfect silence
of Mejia's sentences is meant to mirror what he hears in Webern's music,
and to demonstrate his sympathy, intellectual and aesthetic, with Webern.
Fascists, it seems, are always boiling over with animal passion and a
love for Wagner, and I guess if we are dividing political paradigms playground
style, anti-fascist intellect and cool reason are stroked by Modernist
classical music and sentences like this: "Some of the saints had
been defaced or stolen, some scarred by flames, but a few remained, their
identities still ascertainable by the objects in their hands or the wounds
of their martyrdom" (61). The first section of the novel especially
is rife with sentences of this type, always competently coordinated, but
without the spark of human experience. The aridity of the sentences, and
Mejia's implied argument about the proper way to avoid fascism, made me
hunger for the Three Penny Opera, which treated roughly similar
times and themes, but did it in a way that feels more fleshy, and more
engaging even if it makes the listener yearn just a little for order.
The argument of the book's second
half I find even more puzzling. Mejia implies that if we took Webern and
his music seriously, we could never elect Kurt Waldheim to the West German
Presidency because of his ties to the National Socialist party as a young
man. But Mejia can't mean to say something as simple as "those who
forget (musical) history are doomed to repeat (political) it," can
he? And anyhow, it's a strange way to talk about Webern, as if he were
some buried historical touchstone, given that he meant to make the music
of the future. And Mejia's approach to music is unashamedly humanist;
if we let the music quicken our souls, Mejia says, we would see that we
are moving in the wrong direction. But this novel and the music that so
fascinates Mejia leave the soul behind to embrace something much more
insubstantial.
Whatever its politics, Mejia's second
section is better at finding the rhythms of people's daily lives, and
there are many revealing moments here as the three voices contemplate
their lives. The stories never really come together or satisfy as narrative
arcs, but it's fitting that they end abruptly, like Webern's music; when
the theme has been established, there is no need for elaboration, and
we all, it is assumed, know how the election turns out.
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