Eric Vuillard, a 49-year old filmmaker and the author of eight novels, is the recipient of the 2017 Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious French literary award. His book, The Order of the Day (L’Ordre du Jour), is called a novel by some critics and an “historical narrative” by others. He calls it “a story.” Its genre may be debatable but its effect registered uniformly among the prize committee. This slim text, a tersely knowing recounting of Hitler’s annexation of Austria in February 1933, deeply disturbed everyone.
New histories of familiar events are usually based on newly uncovered documents or sources, but Vuillard is almost exclusively interested in telling gestures and critical encounters, many gleaned from peering at photographs. He portrays the interactions between the arrogant and the fatuous, the intimidators and the timorous. In this tale, there are two main events. The first, a secret meeting, occurred in February 1933 at the residence of the President of the Reichstag, Hermann Goering. Elections were coming on March 5, and the Nazi party aimed to raise three million Reichsmarks from the 24 influential attendees. According to records, these men, representing the power of German industry and finance, together pledged two million marks. Vuillard calls the men an “austere and stultifying patriarchy,” craven and gullible enough to accept the Nazis’ promise of a receptive, stable government to last for generations.
When Vuillard writes, “Corruption is an irreducible line item in the budget of large corporations,” he is pointing to today’s globally dominating companies. He continues, “As such, these twenty-four men are not called Schnitzler, or Witzleben, or Schmitt, or Finck, or Rosterg, or Heubel, as their identity papers would have us believe. They are called BASF, Bayer, Agfa, Opel, IG Farben, Siemens, Allianz, Telefunken.”
Vuillard then moves on to the British, in particular Lord Halifax (Edward F. L. Wood), Lord President of the Council, who is beckoned to a meeting with Goering. Halifax: “the truculent, operatic figure, the notorious anti-Semite with his chestload of decorations.” The tone is unabashedly sardonic: “Wasn’t it the very honorable first Viscount Halifax who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, firmly opposed any special aid to Ireland throughout his term of office? The potato famine left a million dead …” Halifax can see through Goering’s bluster and back-slapping heartiness as they go hunting together. But he signals to Goering that Britain could accept Hitler’s plans for Lebensraum as long as all parties mind their manners. “These were not the foibles of a doddering old man, but the result of social blindness and arrogance,” writes Vuillard, and then quotes Halifax’s letter to Stanley Baldwin: “Nationalism and Racialism is a powerful force but I can’t feel that it’s either unnatural or immoral!”
The Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by the Nazis, is the book’s second major event. Again, Vuillard is focused on the actions of unexceptional men and the farce of protocol. First, there is a meeting at Hitler’s lair in Bavaria during which Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg receives an ultimatum to empower Austria’s Nazi Party, pardon jailed Nazis, and appoint Nazis to prominent posts. Returning to Vienna, Schuschnigg implores President Miklas to appoint Arthur Seyss-Inquart, “a moderate Nazi,” as interior minister. Vuillard makes the scene even creepier by describing Miklas, Schuschnigg and Seyss-Inquart discussing Anton Bruckner’s “life of modesty and piety.” Seyss-Inquart got his appointment and soon served as Chancellor of Austria for two days when Miklas resigned.
“But as we’ve seen, none of this has the density of nightmares or the grandiosity of terror,” says Vuillard, “only the viscous clamminess of schemes and deception. No violent highs; no horrible, inhuman words: nothing more than blunt threats, and crude, repetitious propaganda.” How strange, for instance, that Neville Chamberlain, forever pegged as the great appeaser, rented his Eaton Square house to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador. Vuillard takes us through the courses and inane conversation about tennis in Ribbentrop’s dining room, the Chamberlains attending unenthusiastically. Disaster looms.
Vuillard’s writing never begins to approach the panache and brainy discursiveness of the 2016 Prix Goncourt winner, Mathias Enard’s Compass. But like the 2017 recipient, Leila Slimani’s Lullaby, its urgency and topicality persuaded the judges. The Goncourt is awarded for “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year,” and Vuillard’s dismaying miniaturism left the judges to imagine the worst of their own moment. “Nationalism and Racism.” French national elections took place in April and May of 2017: Macron won the first round with just 24 percent of the vote, and half of all French voters cast ballots for far-right or –left candidates. Vuillard’s Goncourt was announced five months after Macron’s victory in the second round.
In case anyone misses his unmistakable point, Vuillard closes by warning, “We never fall twice into the same abyss. But we always fall the same way, in a mixture of ridicule and dread.”
[Published by Other Press on September 25, 2018. 132 pages, $21.95 hardcover]