If I have since found that almost nothing of our music and drawing lessons has remained with me, I have no wish to blame the teachers for this: it is sad and a pity, and I am still suffering from that “wasted time.” Perhaps it was because the “social status” of those teachers as non-academics among academics—that deplorable German resentment—made them and us uncertain. I can’t help it: almost nothing has remained.
In December I started sending off applications for an apprenticeship in a bookstore: handwritten, with a photo, of course, and a notarized copy of my pre-graduation report, which my sister Gertrud obtained for me. All that cost money and, moreover, destroyed one illusion: obviously I would at the very least be automatically absorbed into the Nazi Labor Front. I dreamed of some quiet bookstore, not too big, with an owner who at least wasn’t a Nazi. It was not so easy to find an apprenticeship: there was no economic miracle in that particular field. But finally I did find a shop, quiet, not too big, and not even remotely Nazi: on the contrary, neither the boss nor any of the staff was of that stripe, and I made a good friend there!
When it came, the final exam was not much more than a formality; it started at eight in the morning, and by one or two o’clock everything was over, for all of us. We were taken in alphabetical order, so my turn came first; I was given a passage from Cicero, was told all the words I didn’t know, and passed. Regulations required that I also be examined in biology (everyone was examined in biology), so I reeled off the Mendelian laws, drew the appropriate red, white, and pink circles on the blackboard. I was through by eight thirty. At lunchtime we met for a glass of beer in a tavern: it was all over. I didn’t even bother to attend the graduation ceremony: my brother Alfred, who went there for a class reunion, accepted the certificate on my behalf and brought it home.
Sometimes I still wonder whether the manufacturers of school supplies noticed a boom in pink chalk: in how many thousands of schools—and not only during final exams—was Mendelian pink drawn on the blackboard by how many hundreds of thousands of students?
The Essential
HEINRICH BÖLL
“His work reaches the highest level of creative originality and stylistic perfection.” —The Daily Telegraph
THE CLOWN
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by Scott Esposito
978-1-935554-17-2 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN
“Moving … highly charged … filled with gentleness, high comic spirits, and human sympathy.” —Christian Science Monitor
BILLIARDS AT HALF-PAST NINE
Translated by Patrick Bowles / Afterword by Jessa Crispin
978-1-935554-18-9 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN
“The claim that Böll is the true successor to Thomas Mann can be defended by his novel Billiards at Half-Past Nine.”
—The Scotsman
IRISH JOURNAL
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Hugo Hamilton
978-1-935554-19-6 | $14.95 / $16.95 CAN
“Irish Journal has a beguiling … charm that perfectly suits the landscape and temperament of its subject.”
—Bill Bryson, The New York Times Book Review
THE SAFETY NET
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Salman Rushdie
978-1-935554-31-8 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN
“The strongest response to modern terrorism by a serious novelist; an artful, gripping novel.” —Kirkus Reviews
THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by William T. Vollmann
978-1-935554-32-5 | $14.95 / $16.95 CAN
“Böll has feelingly symbolized a guilty Germany doing penance for its sins through suffering and death.” —Time
GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY
Translated by Leila Vennewitz
978-1-935554-33-2 | $18.95 / $21.50 CAN
“His most grandly conceived [novel] … the magnum opus which so far crowns his work.”
—The Nobel Prize Committee
WHAT’S TO BECOME OF THE BOY? OR, SOMETHING TO DO WITH BOOKS
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Anne Applebaum
978-1-61219-001-3 | $14.95 / $16.95 CAN
“The depth of Böll’s vision into the human soul can be breathtaking.” —The Washington Post
COLLECTED STORIES
Translated by Leila Vennewitz and Breon Mitchell
978-1-61219-002-0 | $29.95 / $34.00 CAN
“This is a most impressive collection, confirming Böll’s standing as one of the best writers of our time. It would form an admirable introduction to his work for those who don’t yet know it. It is the work of affirmation, for it proclaims the values of humanity and the unquenchable vitality of the spirit.” —The Scotsman
What's to Become of the Boy?: Or, Something to Do With Books Page 7
