The Film Explainer

Though this work does not read as smoothly as Hoffman's previous novels (Spectacle of the Tower, Before the Rainy Season), it shows, without sentiment or accusation, how one man loses his soul in Nazi Germany. Hofmann merges novelized biography and submerged history in the character of his grandfather, an elderly Saxony cinephile caught between the twilight of Germany's silent film golden age and the Nazi regime. With dozens of movie plots committed to memory (and dominating his conversation), Karl, the ne'er-do-well grandfather, survives, financially and spiritually, as a ""film explainer""-a combination of barker, storyteller and piano accompanist-for a cinema in an economically depressed provincial town. His muddled artistic aspirations and dismal home life are palliated only by Leni Riefenstahl in Alpine dramas, Emil Jannings in The Last Laugh, Dr. Mabuse's plans for world domination and Greta Garbo in Joyless Street. When The Jazz Singer, the first talkie, announces the end of ""film explaining,"" Karl looks for another outlet for his bombast and fantasizing, sinisterly finding it in the buffoonish local Nazi party. Recounted from the perspective of his younger, adoring self, Hofmann's background theme of his grandfather's retreat into semi-fantasy during Germany's darkest hours is a tantalizing one, as readers know that, just outside the cinema, Hitler lies in wait. But despite some tellingly contrasted ironies, Hofmann's flat, somber narrative never fully comes into focus, since the author chooses to sidestep the issue of the degree to which Karl is responsible for his complicity with the Nazis .(June)