Norman Mailer - The Castle in the Forest

Norman Mailer calls novel writing an attack on reality, an attempt to penetrate the tough exterior shell of existence to gain the secret kernels of truth inside. He has also said that the twentieth-century artist who had the most influence on his work was not a writer at all but Pablo Picasso. For Picasso understood that reality is not a static object to be grasped and smashed, like a rock; it is rather a creature who keeps changing shape. “And if I, Picasso, have been trying to delineate this creature by means of a particular aesthetic style and have come only so far, then I am going to look for another style altogether…” Mailer imagines Picasso declaring this. Mailer says of himself:

In line with Picasso, what I find most interesting in writing at this point is to keep making a new attack on the nature of reality. It’s as if reality has some subtle desire to protect itself. If we keep pushing forward in the same direction, reality is able to handle us or evade us and may even do it in the way organisms become resistant to various antibiotics and pesticides.

Now, near the end of a sixty-year writing career that has produced more than three dozen books, as well as plays, screenplays, poems, and The Village Voice, which he co-founded in 1955, Mailer has made his boldest attack yet in a novel that retells the story of Adolf Hitler’s childhood.

The Castle in the Forest opens in Germany in 1938. Heinrich Himmler has ordered his Schutzstaffel to investigate the genealogy of the Fuhrer to see if there is any truth to the rumor that Adolf Hitler is part Jewish. Himmler is also hoping to determine if Hitler is an “incestuary,” a term meaning “a child of incest” which Himmler coined himself because he didn’t like the negative connotations of the more common “blood-scandal” and “blood-drama.” The investigation is led by an intelligence officer named Dieter and The Castle in the Forest is initially framed as an account of Dieter’s inquiry.

But we soon discover that Dieter is actually a demon called D.T. who was once assigned to watch over Adolf Hitler. (In the 1930s, D.T. relinquished control of his client to Satan - or “the Maestro” - and played a supporting role by possessing the intelligence officer.) D.T. is uniquely positioned to narrate Hitler’s story: “I am ready to write about his early life with a confidence no conventional biographer could begin to feel. [This book] is more than a memoir and certainly has to be more curious as a biography since it is as privileged as a novel. I do possess the freedom to enter many a mind.”

The Castle in the Forest details Hitler’s first sixteen years, from his birth in Branau in Upper Austria to his departure from school. These are years of remarkable transformation. “Adi” at age one is described as an angel. He is the apple of his mother’s eye. Adolf at sixteen, however, has become cruel. One of our last images is of him masturbating to the idea that he may have murdered his father and younger brother.

What happened? D.T. says that to understand Adolf Hitler we must understand his family. And to this end it is only in the last 100 pages that Adi emerges as the focus of the novel. D.T. spends most of his time with the parents. “I would admonish the reader not to forget that the boy who later became Adolph Hitler emerged from a childhood with this father and mother. So it has to be obvious that we would do well to take measure of Klara and Alois’ strengths as well as, needless to say, their significant weaknesses.”

Klara is pious and sorrowful woman, having lost several children in infancy. She has a reputation for keeping an immaculate house. She is also a devoted mother, who dotes on Adolf and breast feeds him late into childhood. (This novel has been accurately described elsewhere as a psychoanalytic version of The Screwtape Letters.)

D.T. describes Alois as an “average man,” but “his dependable strength and habits, his productive contributions, his built-in cruelties” are useful to the Maestro. Through a strong will and hard work Alois advances from a repair shop where he fixes the boots of the aristocracy, to a high customs agent and prosperous and respected member of his community. He is also a compulsive womanizer and has a mean temper. Alois beats Adolf regularly and “drenches him with wretchedness.”

D.T. regularly intervenes in the life of his client. By etching dreams into Hitler’s subconscious, by means of powerful suggestions, and occasionally through demonic possession, D.T. can encourage in Adi the fears, strengths, and tendencies that will be of use to the Maestro in the future. D.T. writes:

If it is discomforting to the reader that I usually present myself as a calm observer, capable of balanced narrative, and yet am also able to abet the most squalid acts without a moments of regret, let it not come as a surprise. Devils require two natures. In part, we are civilized. What may be less apparent on most occasions is that our ultimate aim is to destroy civilization as a first step to obviating God, and such an enterprise must be able to call on one’s readiness to do what it takes…

While the purview of The Castle in the Forest includes powers and principalities, it is also firmly rooted in the flesh. Sexual perversion abounds. Hitler, it turns out, is a product of “blood-scandal.” (He will later have his own incestuous affair with his niece.) Also, a neighbor of the Hitler family, called Der alte zauberer, “The Old Sorceror”, is a pederast who touches Adolf and commits lewd sexual acts with Adolf’s half-brother.

Der Alte and Adi are “kin by odor.” All vassals of the Maestro reek of sulfur and no amount of washing will get it out. Adi is one such vassal. Der Alte is another. Der Alte is incontinent and reeks with the smell of his own urine. Adi is a bedwetter who has to summon a “will of iron” to keep from soiling himself when he gets excited.

Talk of the flesh should not be dismissed as flippant or inconsequential. Granted, such talk might be the unique perspective of the infernal narrator who believes that “the proper study of marriage resides in the guts and smear of it all - the comradely knowledge of all the forbidden tastes, smells, and bodily nooks…On caca, is marriage based.” It may also be one of the keys to understanding Hitler, for whom blood was magic but sex was dirty.

One of the most remarkable things about this book is that Mailer, who developed a scandalous reputation years ago for, among other things, stabbing one of his wives with a pen knife, is provocative without being merely antagonistic. Mailer uses Hitler’s childhood to explore the ultimate manifestations of Good and Evil and the tenuous substructures of civilization. The book is also about how a few seemingly inconsequential events in the life of the seemingly insignificant son of a customs agent, turned out to be the first few steps down a very dark path, and how, maybe, in the end, nothing is inconsequential and no one is insignificant.

True understanding is probably impossible. It is easier to detest Hitler and then dismiss him as a monster (while not, of course, dismissing his legacy). And here we see Mailer’s attack on reality: he compels the reader to sympathize with and even root for young Adi. He reminds us that Adolf Hitler was a person before he was a horror. It is impossible to read this story and not hope against hope that someone will show Adolf some act of extraordinary kindness and turn him around. But the weight of six million souls remind us that he doesn’t turn around. The Castle in the Forest is the beginning of the story, but the ending hangs over the text like a great and terrible burden.

The Castle in the Forest is available from Powells City of Books.