Oh What a Night

I hold an unpopular opinion that I’ve never felt comfortable sharing: I don’t like Night, the Nobel Prize winning memoir by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. I hesitate to express this fact, however, since in many circles this admission might as well be accompanied by wearing a Nazi uniform. Though I have respect and admiration for Wiesel’s strength and perseverance, I find Night to be a sub-par piece of literature.

For a novel about something as intense and dramatic as the Holocaust, Night sure is boring. Wiesel eliminates any sense of suspense and excitement and states all events matter-of-factly. There is no character development; given the tragic events, I always feel sympathy for Wiesel, but I never get to know him as a person. Wiesel’s prose is thorough to a fault, seemingly including every detail he remembers with no sense of discretion. His use of symbolism is painfully obvious. Worst of all, the sentence construction exhibits mediocre writing at best, which is probably at least partially the result of translation issues, but it’s difficult to plow through all the same.

I’m intimately familiar with the novel since I taught it last year. Despite my distaste for the book, I treated it like a masterpiece in the presence of my students; because they don’t like reading anything, imagine the results if I copped to having a less than favorable opinion of a novel. On a positive note, Night is a successful text to teach to tenth graders. Firstly, the book is both sad and true, the perfect combination to appeal to a demographic obsessed with drama. Secondly, the public education system is in such a sad state that before this novel, most of the students are not even familiar with the Holocaust. Consequently, the story is understandably shocking, especially when it’s someone’s first exposure to such a travesty. Thirdly, aside from a small portion of the vocabulary (“Yiddish is like Jewish slang” is one of my favorite lessons), the book is so remarkably simple to comprehend that it works well with budding young minds.

Just one day after the Obama email incident ended at my school, a coworker from the English department sent an email titled “My Husband Sent This To Me – Interesting!” (Note: she was recently married and has sent out a couple of other emails recently not-so-casually mentioning her husband):

Elie Wiesel Mortified After Rereading Night
BOSTON—Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said in an interview Monday that he recently revisited his debut work, Night, nearly 50 years after its publication and was "absolutely horrified" at the amateurish quality of the memoir.

"It was painful to read," Wiesel said of the story of his journey from his childhood home to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. "I know every great author says they hate their first book, but frankly, I'm embarrassed this ever made it into print. The sentence structure is artless, the plot is repetitive at best—and the constant mentioning of how I felt abandoned by God? What was the point of all that?"

Wiesel said that, although Night is not his only work that deals with his personal experience of the Holocaust, it is by far his "most humiliating."

"I got so wrapped up in what I was writing, I couldn't separate myself from the subject matter," said Wiesel, adding that the eight-page account of the train ride from Gleiwitz to Buchenwald could have been trimmed down considerably to focus on the essential events. "I just assumed everything about my life was so fascinating, people would want to read about it. I was so naïve."

Wiesel went on to criticize Night for lacking the subtlety of his later writings, claiming the use of foreshadowing was predictable and the description of the harrowing gas chamber selection process felt "clichéd…like bad daytime TV melodrama."
"I simply seized on this 'dehumanizing people through starvation and fear' angle and beat it into the ground," said Wiesel, who has learned over the years to "show, not tell" in his writing. "Rereading it now is absolute hell."

The author also spoke harshly of Night's publisher, Arthur Wang, who encouraged Wiesel to write the book nearly 10 years after he was liberated from the concentration camps. He said Wang kept pressuring him to publish the story, while ignoring the inherent horror in Wiesel's prose.

"[Wang] didn't even have the decency to tell me my writing was completely self- absorbed," Wiesel said. "He should have stopped this book before it got out of hand. Somebody, anybody should have intervened before it was too late."
Night was a recent Oprah's Book Club selection, selling more than a million copies in only a few months. It returned to the No. 1 spot on The New York Times best-seller list, introducing a whole new generation of readers to what Wiesel calls "shoddily written, college workshop garbage."

Despite initially agreeing to the Oprah deal, Wiesel has told reporters he now regrets not revising the manuscript before its new publication.

"I would have at least liked to put in an interesting dream sequence, and extend this part here where my dying father calls out my name with his final breath," said Wiesel, holding a heavily annotated paperback copy of the memoir. "I can't believe another million people are going to read this atrocity. We're just repeating the same terrible mistakes of the past."
Added Wiesel, "God, I wish I were dead."

Although he told interviewers his embarrassment over the memoir will continue to haunt him "during every waking hour," Wiesel hopes that those who have already read his book will "just forget the whole thing ever happened."

The first paragraph surprised me, though I could hardly disagree. By the time I read the second paragraph, however, the article didn’t sit well with me. With each passing sentence, as much as I wanted to believe that Wiesel recognized his work to be lackluster, too, I came to be positive this article had to be satire, particularly when the book was being made to seem nearly as atrocious as… well, the Holocaust. Although I agree with the points made in this article, it's probably not that bad. Probably. I Googled the title and, sure enough, I found out the article originated on the king of satirical news, The Onion.

I contemplated the situation and wondered whether I should mention that the article is meant in jest. Within moments, a second email came from a teacher expressing shock that Wiesel would speak so poorly of such a great novel. Great. Teaching satire is supposed to be a state standard, so I’d like to hope my fellow English teachers would recognize satire when they see it, but clearly…

Ultimately, afraid that a class would be taught this article as fact, I sent out a simple message to the English department: “I just thought I’d point out that this article is satirical.” Then I linked to the article on The Onion.

It is customary at my school to end your emails with a signature, which gives your name, position, phone extension, and often an inspirational quote. Since I work where I do, typically people have quotes that are a Bible verse or something like “Humble Servant of God.” Elsewhere, this would be inappropriate in the workplace, but when the administrative team does it, it almost seems like people feel peer pressured to out Jesus one another in the sign-out to their emails.

I should have left well enough alone, but I couldn’t resist adding an element of mockery to my informative email, so I added a signature to my email for the first time, utilizing my favorite, most over-the-top quote from the article:

Kevin [Last Name]
English Teacher, Room [####]
Ext. [####]
“God, I wish I were dead.” – Elie Wiesel

It’s satire on top of satire, get it? Plus, it pretty accurately sums up how I feel at work most days. Though a couple of my teacher friends found my email amusing, evidently the original email’s sender does not – she now refuses to speak to me and told a mutual friend that I am an “asshole.” Certainly, I could have been more tactful, but did she even read the article? If I’ve embarrassed her, it’s only because she first embarrassed herself.