Bernhard Schlink's 'The Reader'

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink was in the news some years ago. It has also been made into a film.

Schlink portrays Hanna, with whom Michael falls in love at a young age. He later discovered she was a guard at Auschwitz.

It is a powerful description of an illiterate woman, who probably ends up at Auschwitz in an attempt to hide her illiteracy. And then her trial is another 'escape'.

It is a great read.

Michael decides to discuss his dilemma with his father, who is a philosophy professor and has written books on Kant and Hegel.

He says about his father, "For a long time I believed there must be a wealth of undiscovered treasure behind that uncommunicative manner, but later I wondered if there was anything behind it at all."

That surely is a powerful sentiment. How often are people 'built up' to be wise and important but really have nothing to say or offer? They hide behind all sorts of clever tricks and empty formulae. A curtain veils the fact that they may really believe in nothing, or stand for nothing. What happens when that applies to priests? Can priesthood be an almost perfect incubation space for such pomp and emptiness.

The very idea of clerical dress gives so much form to that sham and veneer. Surely it must allow for the perfect curtain. It can give an 'authority' that is simply not there and maybe make the person 'untouchable'.

Michael immediately adds about his father: " Perhaps he had been full of emotions as a boy and a young man, and by giving them no outlet had allowed them over the years to wither and die".