Time, Trains, and Satan

I finished Time's Arrow yesterday. Although I got more acclimated to the reverse chronology (I didn't feel like I had to replay conversations I was having in real life backwards anymore), I have to say that the way the book handles the Holocaust, the climax of the book, met my expectations. Odilo is right about one thing--reversing the flow of history is the only way to make sense of the Shoah. Saying that what the Nazis were doing was "creating life" by pulling a new race out of the ovens places in stark relief the true horror an magnitude of the atrocity in a way that regular narrative could not. By saying Auschwitz was one place of true goodness, we see through the irony the vast distance to the opposite interpretation. Telling the story in reverse is not the same as denying the Holocaust--as the president of Iran has recently done--which derives from anti-Semitism--Odilo says after all that he loves the Jews and heals them--but reveals the ways in which human beings justify their actions morally. In fact, we see in the wake of reverse time how much violence and hatred (even anti-Semitism) still exists in the world, even when we think of ourselves as moral do-gooders. The novel is as much about the how as about the what of good and evil.


Anyway, one thing that bothered me about that section of the book was the way the narrator and Odilo become one. Why did Amis do this? I think it was a cop-out. He didn't want to have to account for the narrator's realization that Odilo was still in denial. Perhaps this question is what Amis is asking us to consider. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Watched Trainspotting. It's still as disturbing as it was 10 years ago. Now that's timeless literature...

Started Satanic Verses (again). I think I'm now getting into the characters and the story. I think it will go faster and faster. Bu why did I pick a 560 page book??