All Lit Up: The Inevitable Futility of Recreating a True Story

I liked this description. 
'Recently shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction, this book is a unexpected and clever pastiche of genres. Steinmetz has done a remarkable thing by piecing together bit of diverse information in such a way underscores the inevitable futility of recreating a true story.'

Hamburger Theatersammlung. Theatre archives, Hamburg. 

"The S-Bahn leaves me at Dammptor. I exit the busy terminal in the direction of the university, following the crush of students. Outside, I verify the campus address. Von-Melle-Park 3. At last I’ll meet this Dr Giesing, someone for whom Michael is a subject of objective study. The director of the archives, she holds the key to material that might unlock Michael’s story. A corner piece of the floor puzzle. Well, I don’t actually believe it – it isn’t likely – but then I’ve come this far and under which pretext if not because I hold out hope. Why put on a method writer’s lumbering show if you can’t suspend disbelief for a measly hour?" - from This Great Escape.

Seamlessly Elegant

Over at Canadian Literature, a Quarterly of Criticism and Review, Lisa Grekul reviews Eva's Threepenny Theatre alongside Ray Smith's Century. The years and years I spent obsessing (not writing) over structure are not lost:

While he develops a rich “cast of characters,” including his grandfather, his father, Eva’s sisters, and Eva’s last partner, Steinmetz is no detached recorder or alienated observer. And yet, the “singular” (to revisit Foran’s language) achievement of Eva’s Threepenny Theatre is that Steinmetz makes no apology for the seamlessly elegant ways in which he plays the “playwright.” Guided by Brecht’s notion that “[a]rt is not a mirror to reflect reality but a hammer with which to shape it,” Steinmetz makes his hammer apparent without bludgeoning readers with it. We don’t need to be told that he can never know the full truth—and yet, we somehow sense that he has come stunningly close.

The Brothers Kramm

A soldier takes aim on the Eastern Front, and somehow the bullet strikes home again and gain, for generations to come. The Brothers Kramm is a new story which you can find in the 'False Papers: Biography and Real Life' issue of Queen's Quarterly (Winter 2009). The Brothers Kramm, both soldiers, who served in the Third Reich, are Eva's brother's brothers-in-law (sorry, you'll need to do the math in your head). Here's a quote from near the end of my story:

"It occurs to me that what pushes people to lie and falsify is precisely the pressure to tell the truth. This is something I understood implicitly when I insisted all there was to know about my great uncle Hrolf was contained in his glass eye. It was impossible to know with certainty what the solution to his character was. And forcing the discovery of facts, pushing too hard, would deaden the chance for illumination."

Life is what happens when you read, Fiction is what happens when you write

Alex Good of Good Reports.net calls Eva's Threepenny Theatre 'a highly original reflection on memoir'.

One of the hallmarks of what's come to be known as literary postmodernism is the shift of attention away from texts as something made and onto the conditions of their making, emphasizing process over product. In some ways it's akin to the playwright Bertolt Brecht's goal of alienation, deliberately making the audience aware that what they are watching is something constructed by taking them behind the scenes or in some other way outside of their comfort zone. The goal? "To represent the familiar as unfamiliar." The method? "Estrangement, disharmony, detachment."

Which is one way of introducing Eva's Threepenny Theatre, a "fiction about memoir" wherein Andrew Steinmetz reflects upon the life of his great-aunt Eva and (though he fails to get equal billing in the title) grandfather Hermann Hans. Exactly how much of the story is fiction and how much memoir is impossible to say. Steinmetz inserts himself as a character into the narrative - sitting at a table with Eva and recording her voice on a tape recorder, digging into his own memory vault to bring the family chronicle up to date - but even here he doesn't tip his hand. Indeed as the book progresses it becomes harder to figure out who is supposed to be talking, as though the narrative's proscenium arch - Steinmetz's or "Steinmetz's" own point of view - had quietly dissolved.

Full review here.

Underground Bookclub Review

Micheal Bryson describes Eva's Threepenny Theatre as a mixture of fiction and memoir - as a "novel" - that 'explores the intersection of history, family, identify and artistic creation.' He is the first reviewer to see a link between Eva's montage of narrators and points of view, and Brecht's collective and collaborative working method. He also says this about its narrative cul-de-arc:

It is conventional, in this Oprah-heightened reading environment, for memoirs to be powered by redemptive themes. James Frey's A Million Little Pieces may be the best known example. A criminal and drug addict, Frey turned his life around and wrote about it, but like Farley Mowat he didn't like the facts interfere with a good story. Or a good commercial theme, more to the point.

Eva's Three Penny Theatre doesn't explore redemption. It is a better book because it avoids this Christian, post-Freudian cliche. Television talk shows may "make good TV" by providing simple solutions ("conflicts wrapped up with a bow in 24 minutes or less!"), but literature serves itself best when it avoids this commercial imperative.

What I do know, is that Steinmetz's exploration of his family's history, and the way he has chosen to frame those stories, reveals a depth of humanity that would have failed to come through if he'd sought the simple theme: all's well that ends well.

Bryson's full blog post can be found here.

Threepenny Eva (1928)

'Eva and I meet on the high plateau where authorship is shared, where vision is everything and reality nothing. There is nothing to see, neither character arcs nor conflict and resolution -- not even a Joseph Stalin or an Adolf Hitler. The process or method entails mostly waiting, absenteeism from the present tense.'

The Danforth Review Interview

The tireless Michael Bryson of The Danforth Review interviews Steinmetz about Brecht and that fiction non-fiction thing. Together they generate some genre consciousness... full interview here.

Literary Review of Canada

From the LRC, December 2008 issue:

Patrick Dennis had his Auntie Mame, Graham Greene travelled with his Aunt Augusta, and now Andrew Steinmetz joins the ranks of eloquent nephews with his brilliant portrayal of his memorable Aunt Eva. As with Mame and Augusta, Eva breaks the mold and the rules, but in her case, there are darker, richer shadows in a life that begins as a Lutheran in pre-war Breslau and shifts unexpectedly to a Nuremberg-defined Jew escaping to Canada. Before Hitler rewrote her religious status, she defied convention by joining the theatre and performing with the first cast of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Her theatrical skills were life savers, enabling her not only to flee Germany but to get herself and her dog airlifted to safety.

About the literary genetic code of Eva's Threepenny Theatre, Robin Roger of the LRC writes:

Steinmetz calls this work about his Aunt Eva a fiction about memoir, meaning that key aspects of the book are not invented, least of all the character of Eva Steinmetz, but a significant portion is. Although it is disconcerting that they are blended together without distinction, the result is a compelling, evocative work .... Eva is so fascinating a character that it is hard to know why her nephew felt the need to add fancy to fact.