At the end of World War II, eight-year-old Joel Agee (son of writer
James by an early marriage) went from Mexico - with his mother
Alma; his stepfather Bodo Uhse, a German Communist novelist; and
his brother Stefan - to live in the new East Germany. In this lucid
but curiously listless memoir, he recounts what it was like - and
what it was like, basically, was boring. Adolescence seems to have
come to Joel with a nasty prematurity. Reading Bodo's high-shelf
erotica, experiencing the iron chastity of East European nude
beaches, writing bad poetry, feeling inept with his classmates,
Joel quickly found himself on Alienation Island. In no time, school
turned into a problem, an arena of stunning under-achievement;
hooky-playing and hood-y friends led to disciplining - almost to
expulsion from the Free German Youth, as dire an excommunication as
existed. Around him at home he had no particular security either.
Bodo seemed emasculated by the new order, and turned from an artist
into a dull cultural functionary, nervously eyeing the proper line
to toe; Alma was unhappy (Bodo philandered); Stefan had developed
asthma. The humorlessness of East German life is what comes across
most strongly; or, enervatingly. Nor does it help the book's pace
that Joel's reaction was a different kind of humorlessness - a
malcontented (and, very pertinently, virginal)
"man-without-qualities" stance. The adult Agee - though acute on
the nubby feel of actual memories (and the look of postures, as
importantly real to a youngster as any actual happening) - just
sort of moseys the reader along, keeping intensity at bay so long
that it slides and fades into the background altogether. You keep
waiting for this particularized bit of autobiography to soar - and
it never does. (Kirkus Reviews)
Joel Agee, the son of James Agee, was raised for twelve years in
East Germany, where his stepfather, the novelist Bodo Uhse, was a
member of the privileged communist intelligentsia. This is the
story of how young Joel failed to become a good communist, becoming
instead a fine writer.
"A wonderfully evocative memoir. . . . Agee evoked for me the
atmosphere of postwar Berlin more vividly than the actual
experience of it--and I was there." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,
"New York Times"
"One of those rare personal memoirs that brings to life a whole
country and an epoch." --Christopher Isherwood
"Twelve Years consists of a series of finely honed anecdotes
written in a precise, supple prose rich with sensual detail."
--David Ghitelman, "Newsday"
"By turns poetic and picturesque, Agee energetically catalogues his
expatriate passage to manhood with a pinpoint eye and a healthy
American distaste for pretension. . . . Huckleberry Finn would have
. . . welcomed [him] as a soulmate on the raft." --J. D. Reed,
"Time"
"A triumph. . . . Unfettered by petty analysis or quick
explanations, a story that is timeless and ageless and vital."
--Robert Michael Green, "Baltimore Sun"
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