Cold Crematorium (2023) by József Debreczeni

 Audiobook Review

Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz (2023)

by József Debreczeni

   This Holocaust memoir written by a Hungarian-Jewish author about his time in Auschwitz wasn't translated into English until 2023.  Since then it's garnered interest and acclaim, and when I heard about it late last year I immediately put the Audiobook onto my Libby Audiobook Library App.  The Hungarian Jews were one of the last groups from Central Europe to be deported en masse to the Nazi death camps courtesy of their recalicitant pro-Nazi government.  By the time the deportations got going, it was close to the end of the war which meant a couple things.  First, Hungarian Jews stood a better chance of surviving their ordeal because it started it much later than it did for German or Polish Jews.  Second, the later the war progressed, the more important it became for the Germans to extract free labor from the camp inmates, which led to a rough set of checks and balances and impetus other than wholesale extermination.  

  One fact that emerges time and time again from Holocaust lit is the dynamic where a trainload of folks shows up at a concentration camp and there is an immediate cull, some are sent directly to the gas chambers and others are sent to the work camps.  This is, for example, what happened to Sophie in the book Sophie's Choice: she is allowed to keep one of her two children during the initial cull.   Thus, the amount of gassing is directly related to the frequent arrival of new trainloads of undesirables.   In the absence of new arrivals the concentration camp experience was closer to your garden-variety 20th century totalitarian work camp: terrible conditions but also a desire at some level for the inmates to work productively at something. 

   This then, is a book about working at a concentration camp, and it is memorable because Debreczeni has a background in journalism and an eye for detail.  I'll never think about underwear the same ever again.

Heathen Valley (1962) by Romulus Linney

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Heathen Valley (1962)

by Romulus Linney

Valle Crucis, North Carolina

North Carolina: 17/20

    Heathen Valley is a strange (certainly by the standards of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America) pick, a novel based on a true story about the Protestant mission in the North Carolina Appalachians,  founded by an Episcopalian bishop who went on to be the highest ranked protestant to convert to Roman Catholicism.  Heathen Valley is based on a true story.  The Bishop in question is Levi Silliman Ives.  Literary fiction about religion is so rare that the novelty value is often enough to keep me interested, such was the case here, as the eponymous Heathen Valley itself, which is presented as a part of America without organized religion of any kind.  So much of the United States was founded directly by religious participants that an America without religion almost seems impossible.  

  However, as Heathen Valley depicts, parts of the Appalachians were founded without sanction from secular or religious authorities, leaving its residents without an organized religious presence.

Porgy (1925) by Dubose Heyward

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Porgy (1925)

by Dubose Heyward

Charleston, South Carolina

South Carolina: 15/16

    Here is another novel written about African-Americans by a white dude- using the "Gullah" dialect. (which to contemporary ears sounds like the way racists think black people talk in the South but which is actually a distinct dialect with deep African roots). Heyward turned this book into Porgy and Bess, an opera which had worldwide success but I'm assuming was racist as shit which is why no one talks about it anymore.  It was hard to get over the racist tropes in Porgy and I would def ask editor Susan Straight about this pick for sure.

Blacktop Wasteland (2020) by S. A. Crosby

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Blacktop Wasteland (2020)

by S.A. Crosby

153 Main St, Mathews, Virginia

Virginia: 16/17

   I have been trying to finish Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Crosby's excellent crime-caper book, since it was published in 2020, but it hits so close to my professional life that I couldn't bear it.  Even within the constraints of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, Blacktop Wasteland was a struggle.  I checked it out twice as an Audiobook and once as an Ebook before I finally finished a hardback copy from the public library. It was only a struggle because the characters are so richly drawn, particularly the protagonist, that it was impossible for me not to empathize with them to the point where reading/listening to the book was painful.