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Post by dem bones on May 4, 2010 10:15:50 GMT
Russell Braddon - The Inseparables (NEL, February 1970: originally Michael Joseph, 1968) Blurb: What was it really like to have suffered in a Concentration camp such as Dachau?
Is it possible for today's generation to comprehend the brutality and degradation inflicted upon the prisoners there?
In this extraordinary and frightening novel world-famous author Russell Braddon poses just this question. He suggests that by using LSD the horrifying atmosphere of a place like Dachau can, in fact, be recreated with shattering results."Extraordinary and frightening" is about right. Although, from his afterword, it seems Braddon's primary intention was to warn against the potential dangers of dabbling in LSD, on at least one level, The Inseparables qualifies as a ghost story and a particularly horrible one at that. Christmas Day, 1968. Erich Strauss, a nineteen year old medical student, arrives at the snowbound and desolate Dachau Concentration Camp. Erich is a walking personality crisis through no fault of his own. He suspects his father, a former SS Officer, is a war criminal and harbours dreadful thoughts about his mother who emerged unscathed from "the Hitler years" to set up a thriving store, reputedly on the back of a carton of American cigarettes. Erich has wanted for nothing since birth but who paid the price for his cosy existence? It's not just his parents Erich inwardly detests but their entire generation. How could the people of Munich have turned a blind eye to the atrocities being perpetrated a 15 minute train journey away? So in his desperation, Erich hit upon an admittedly unlikely solution. He genuinely believes that, if he drops three hundred micrograms of LSD before he tours the death camp, he will somehow finally learn the "truth". Erich arranges for the taxi driver to return for him at 4.30 when he plans to shoot up Chlorpromazine to bring him off his trip. His first stop is the museum where the photographs so upset him he has to leave or be sick. Outside in the snow he meets Erna Helsdorf, a beautiful young German in a striking, copper coloured dress, who in turn introduces him to her three friends, Franz Rosebach, Karl Burgdorf and Dr. Max Kaufman. Initially friendly, they turn on Erich when he begins to loudly proclaim his peace and love/ anti-older generation ideals and it dawns on them he is not, after all, one of their kind. `He was staring hard at Erna. 'Where have I seen you before?' `I told you.' `In the museum I was alone,' he shouted, his voice echoing round the concrete walls. `You were in the company of hundreds,' she contradicted quietly. 'Of people in photographs,' he qualified. 'Of people who died here in Dachau.' `Yes.' `Well?' Once again the girl and the two older men deferred to Karl: and this time Karl had no difficulty answering. `Well,' he explained simply, 'we are four of those who died in Dachau.'The four mismatched friends - "the Inseparables" - are troubled at Erich's ability to see them (and, with his chemically enhanced perception, the yellows, greens and reds of blood and putrefaction beneath the snow), meaning he can only be a spectre like themselves. As he didn't die in Dachau, then he has no business here and will have to be eliminated via the electrified fence. Only when he comes clean about the drug he's taken do they begin to understand why he's able to perceive them, although he has an almighty task explaining what acid is and why anyone would want to take it voluntarily. `Why did you take it?' 'For kicks!' Peevishly, as if the question was ridiculous. The German newspapers were full of stories about psychedelic clubs, way out students, stroboscopic lighting, joss sticks, hash, pot, being turned on, dropped out, groovey, hippies, ravers, and acid – the whole paraphernalia of the cult that allegedly had swung in London, flourished in California and now was rearing its horrid sexy head even in West Berlin – and this doctor, of all people was pretending to know nothing about it.So, Erich wants to know the truth? Ok, they'll give him the truth in all its mind-annihilating horror .... i'm sure James will be able to fill us in on Russell Braddon, whose most famous work, The Naked Island was inspired by his incarceration in a Japanese POW camp, and he has some previous on Vault for The Year Of The Angry Rabbit (aka Night of the Lepus, Heinemann, 1964: Pan, 1967) and Committal Chamber (Pan, 1968).
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