PoS Book Club
Exploring the worst and weirdest books the world has to offer. Who appointed these guys critics? No one.
PoS Book Club
S2E2: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
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Slumber party! The boys cuddle up with John Boyne's shallow, exploitative Holocaust fable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
Intro
SPEAKER_04I actually think the character Bruno starts to make total sense if you just start reading him in the voice of Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03Welcome in. To all the members president worldwide, I hereby call this meeting of the Piece of Shit Book Club to Order. I am your dutiful chairperson, Rainier White. And joining me for today's meeting are Jane Lynch. Hello, Jane. Hello, Rainier. Chip Wilson. Hello, Chip. Morning, sir. And our resident Nazi expert, Dr. Bo Dashington, PhD. Welcome in, Doctor. Thanks.
SPEAKER_04Just a curiosity, who who is out there from the board was inviting you, Mr. Radier Weiss, to be our the lead of our discussion on the Holocaust.
SPEAKER_03I don't want to name any names given the sensitivity of today's uh topic. In fact, for today's feature book, we are attempting something of a podcasting high wire act. Uh we're attempting to create a light, breezy, mildly humorous episode about probably one of the world's worst events of the 20th century, the Holocaust. Specifically, we're looking at a piece of young adult literature about a little boy whose dad runs Auschwitz and who, uh, spoiler alert, ends up getting accidentally gassed by the Nazis in said camp through a series of increasingly improbable events. Yes, that's right. It's the acclaimed novel by John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And I'm a little bit uneasy about this episode today. I think the risk here is that we either end up being overly cautious about the subject matter and deliver a meeting for our members that is completely dry and dull, or one or more of us gets way too loose and we all up end up unemployable after today.
SPEAKER_04So are you worried you're gonna say what you're thinking?
SPEAKER_00Because I don't have that worry. Yeah, I'm not too concerned. You kind of you kind of jumped the gun with the plot summary. I had a good bit and I was gonna start talking about the book as if it was uh life a pie.
SPEAKER_03But uh do you want you want me to excise that and give a different intro? Okay. Well, I do want to make this very clear though. I didn't select this book. Uh I'm just hired to host these meetings, to chair these meetings. I don't produce the show, and I don't endorse the views of any of the other voices on the Peace of Shit Book Club podcast.
SPEAKER_00Like how you always put these disclaimers, and then you tend to say the most problematic things over the course of the episode.
SPEAKER_03My hope is that with four different white guys on the mic, we all kind of just blend in together for the uh the members listening at home.
SPEAKER_04So I'm gonna be adamantly making sure that does not happen.
SPEAKER_03Well, look, before we get into uh this potential minefield um this week, we first have,
The Book Report
SPEAKER_03of course, the book report. People ask me all the time, which business books am I reading? And the one I'm finishing that I've been working on for a long time is Keith Richards' autobiography. The book report is our regular grab bag segment. Um, news, views, happenings, feedback on all things books. Before I open it up to the book boys and the uh the membership assembled here, I'd like to reach into the mailbag and share some email that we received at posbook club at gmail.com. Okay. Uh, and please, uh, active members, feel free to write us at that address again, posbookclub at gmail.com. You're highly encouraged to send in your thoughts to us. So this anonymous writer writes Am I the first person ever to send you an email? And the answer, of course, is no. Uh, they make some key points. Uh, number one, change your theme tune.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_03It that's that's absurd. I'm I at the risk of alienating our membership. I mean, that's one of the stupidest things that I've heard since we started this project. And we've heard a lot of stupid things.
SPEAKER_00I won't stand for anyone besmirching the good work of George Lamb, Canto Pop's superstar.
SPEAKER_04That's the most outrageous thing Rainier Weiss has heard lately, and he's been reading a lot of pro-Nazi propaganda.
SPEAKER_03Okay, key point number two: bring back Robert's rules, which is perhaps the most sensible thing that I've heard since starting this podcast. And I'm gonna insist I am exercising executive privilege as the chairperson today. We're bringing back Robert's rules for this meeting. So, point of order uh number three, give us more details on poop fora. Regular listeners will know that poop fora is the uh euphoria that you get from dropping a big deuce. It was something that we covered a few episodes ago. Don't really have more details, and I think maybe this writer is overcomplicating it. It's really just people who enjoy having a big poo. And then number four, which is hear here, it gets a hear-hear from me. Try and get Jane to read a fucking book. And I don't know, Jane. I I had shared this email with you before today's meeting. I definitely second this writer, try and get Jane to read a fucking book. Like, let's let's all kind of try to pull our weight around here.
SPEAKER_02Just um stay in your own lane there, anonymous listener. All right. Okay. All right, all right. You better be able to do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, stay in your own lane, anonymous listener, whose name I think we all know. I think we know who this is. Segment suggestion. Chip mentioned that he's been reading baby kids books. Let's give a shout out to the young parents that read hours and hours of boring ass kids' books, often are the same one 10 to 15 times per week. How about a segment with a review of Chip's favorite shitty kids books? What say you, Chip?
SPEAKER_00It sounds fun. Um, I've actually really enjoyed most of them. I I wouldn't call them shitty. I feel like they're kind of uh you you repeat them so much that it becomes almost like a mantra. So I I I quite like most children's books. Actually, speaking of which, we're covering one today, I think. Uh a really shitty children's book. Something of a children's book, yes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Okay, well, great email. Um, as we said, like really, really stupid key point number one, but the rest of it was, I think, reasonable. I'm now going to open it up to the floor and uh invite the assembled executive membership to share any items that they may have for the book report.
SPEAKER_00I have a couple things. One I wanted to mention. Uh yeah, the chair recognizes Chip Wilson. Coach from Survivor uh is producing a book of haikus and he's allowing submissions right now. So I just wanted to uh throw that out there in case there's any big fans of Coach from Survivor who happen to be on the panel on the podcast and might want to submit a haiku. That's that's one. I hate that.
SPEAKER_03This is different from Coach, the 90s sitcom star.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, quite a bit. Yeah. Coach, what's his name? Wade something? I forgot. Benjamin Wade. Benjamin Wade. Yeah, yeah. Coach. Uh so I just want to throw that out there. Another one, I picked up a little book myself, The Green Book by uh Gaddafi. Oh, yeah. That's supposed to be a page turner. Yeah, so I I've been I've been going through this. Um, you know, we got the solution to the problem of democracy, solution to the economic problem, and the social basis of third universal theory. So this is uh sort of what would you call it? Kind of a mix of post-colonial nationalist literature and trying to pan-Arabism do a Yeah, pan-Arabism trying to do a third way during the Cold War between the uh the socialist uh capitalist nations.
SPEAKER_04There's a great part in that book. I don't know if you've gotten to it yet. I know we're throwing out a lot of spoilers today. I'm gonna have to throw out one too. There's a part where the book where he talks about his plan for women, and he's and he mentions that you have to take take women into account in planning. Because of course, as we all know, women get pr pregnant and they carry a child for around 10 or 11 months. And it was what he says? Yeah, it blew my mind, firstly, because of just how wrong he could be, but also secondly, that nobody corrected him.
SPEAKER_03No editors were like, uh no. I mean, you're gonna raise your hand in that meeting. There's yeah, point of order, Mr. Gaddafi.
SPEAKER_00No, there's a lot of good sections though. You've got the nation, you know, women, minorities, then sport, horsemanship, and the stage. So that there's all kinds of stuff covered here. So I'm looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_03I gotta hand it to you, Chip. Uh, usually you talk about enjoyable books that you've read in this segment, which goes against the whole idea of the book report. We're supposed to be sharing kind of shitty books on the Pizza Ship Book Club podcast. So kudos to you for sharing a uh an actual shitty book when it's meant to be shared. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00And thank you for continuing to complain even when I don't do that.
SPEAKER_03No, no, I'm just uh I'm giving you accolades. Just accept it. Uh anything else that you want to share with us today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a book I've been reading that I quite like. What is it? There is no anti-mimetics division. It's kind of fun. It was a gift from Jane's uh partner. Oh, you tell her. Yeah, it's kind of cool. So I'm I'm having fun going through that one. What's there?
SPEAKER_03I don't I don't even understand the title. I those are words of the code.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so it's yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so you're curious. Uh it's like a sci-fi. There is a website that was kind of like a crowdsourced kind of wiki that people would write. Um imagine like an Area 51 thing where you can submit like, oh, in this room there's this kind of anomaly uh captured. And so it's it's clearly based off that. And it's it's sort of this story about some some kind of alien thing that was captured that if you interact with it, you you'll have no memory of it. If you try to write about it, you'll kind of it'll be gibberish, that sort of thing. I'm I'm only part part way through, but I I noticed that right away because there's a site that site uh I've I've kind of I've looked at it before over the years, but I guess this is a a novel that's kind of based off one of the stories from it.
SPEAKER_03Right on. Thank you for that chip. Um Jane, anything you're bringing to the table today? Not this week.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_03Come on. All you have to do is just Google books on Google News and look for some sort of news item that maybe you want to share with us. Maybe nothing I can share. Uh all right.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I'll I will share something. Uh, there was a little book that I found that I posted in the chat: Moon People by Dale M. Courtney. Each book is only like 70 or 80 pages or something like that. But it is, it looks fantastically bad. Unfortunately, I could not start it, but uh I recommend people check it out. Terrific.
SPEAKER_04Uh, Dr. Dashington? Oh, I've been checking out this book called The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne. It's this book about this boy who just hangs out with Nazis all the time.
SPEAKER_03But don't worry, the Nazis aren't that bad. So it's uh Maybe save that for the feature segment. Any anything else you want to share with us? Just shaking your head. It's an audio medium. Okay. I got some things I want to share. So those of you who know me know I really love Kimmel sung's biographies. And there's a new Kim Il-sung biography that came out a few weeks ago called Korean Messiah. Kim Il sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea's personality call by this guy, Jonathan Chung. He's the uh Wall Street Journal. Um, the Wall Street Journal, um, what do you call those fellas? Bureau chief for China. Um, yeah, those reporter guys for the lying media. And the last few Kim Il sung biographies I read, you're like, ah, it's starting to get a little bit repetitive. This is great because what it does is it it sort of looks at how he built his personality cult from um Presbyterian evangelicals and the idea that Pyongyang was called the Jerusalem of the East, and it was highly uh Christianized by these evangelicals that started showing up about the 1870s in Korea. But the first the first 500, see the first five hours, because I'm listening to an audiobook and it's a 24-hour audiobook, and the first five and a half hours, don't even mention the Kim family. It's all just about the growth of Christianity within Korea, which I I found interesting. I mean, you go to Korea, there's a hundred million churches everywhere, and you're like, why are there so many fucking Christians here? And this uh gives you a good idea of how that happened. A fascinating book. Okay, some other new releases that we're keeping an eye on. View from the East Wing, a memoir by Dr. Jill Biden. This is uh number one bestseller in uh the Amazon Women in Politics category. I'm reading from the back cover. A novelist once wrote, There are stories one must tell in years when one must tell them. Jill Biden's time to discuss her four years in the White House is now. Jill Biden became first lady at a complicated moment in U.S. history at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the shadows of the January 6th insurrection. These were the circumstances under which she set up office in the East Wing where she hit the ground running. Uh available June 2nd, so you're gonna have to wait, all you uh Biden heads out there. Uh 29 bucks in hardcover.
SPEAKER_02I think that should be renamed to the view from the ballroom. Isn't the East Wing destroyed now? Isn't it gone?
SPEAKER_00Who cares?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I I can't imagine who is pining for this book. I have number one bestseller in women in politics. I mean Careful.
SPEAKER_04I can see you lining up the jokes.
SPEAKER_00You know what we should cover is the the Sarah Huckabee one when it comes out. Because yeah, we'll cover that. That's that's been announced and it's it's coming out, I notice like through two or three weeks after the midterms. So I wonder if there's like two versions of that book that they're waiting to drop, depending on how things are. Interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Another book that we're keeping an eye on the After School Kindness Crew, Pooch on the Loose by Goldie Hahn and a lady named Lynn Oliver. Um, number one new release in children's values books. And that refers to children having value, not value-priced children's books. Reading from the back cover, uh, from beloved Academy Award-winning Hollywood star Goldie Hahn, a New York Times best-selling author. Lynn Oliver comes in an inspiring series about friendship, community, and the power of kindness, encouraging readers to take breaks and deep breaths as they read along. Uh, quite honestly, I thought Goldie Hahn was dead. I didn't realize that she was still going. Um, whoa, whoa. I think I had her confused with uh Jane Fonda, perhaps.
SPEAKER_04Oh, or um what was uh Lonnie Anderson? Is she still alive? That's who I was getting her confused with.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, Lonnie Anderson sadly has passed away. Yeah. Poor one out for old Lonnie. But um, yeah, Goldie Hahn, alive one and 80 years old, looks fantastic for an octagenarian if you look at recent pictures of her.
SPEAKER_00We love Goldie here.
SPEAKER_04Can I just say for the for the purpose of the listeners, we are a group of like older white guys. We're not that old. We're not old enough to be, we don't have Lonnie Anderson posters on our wall.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, speak for yourself.
SPEAKER_03Uh, the last book that we're keeping an eye on is How to Be a Christian in Seven Days. Asterisks may take fifty years of sin and serious fuck-ups to get started by Russell Brand. Yeah. Doesn't seem to be charting on Amazon, which is probably something to celebrate. From the back cover, How to Be a Christian in seven days is a story of how Russell Brand found Christ and you can too. With his customary, almost shocking frankness, Brand describes his apostasy from quote, demonic Hollywood and radical conversion to Christianity against a backdrop of false allegations, his son's heart surgery, and truly jaw-dropping spiritual warfare. Coming out May 12th, 3075, on hardcover from Tucker Carlson Books. So you know it's a good book. Almost certain that we'll profile this on a future meeting, in a future meeting, um, because I'm really excited about this release.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the I read his book Revolution, um, which is about I don't even remember what it's about. It was so awful about like how to spiritually, you know, revolution for society. And it was the worst book I've ever read that wasn't for the piece of shit. Easily. It was awful.
SPEAKER_03On Chip's suggestion, I've started reading my bookie wookie, his I think it was his first release that came out about my bookie wook, excuse me, about 25 years ago. Um and it's uh it's not great and it hasn't aged well either, uh, because he's you know, he he's bragging about well, we'll get into it, but he's had recently been awarded Shagger of the Year. The book opens with him checking into a a sex edition addiction clinic. And uh, well, we'll get into the rest of it when we cover how to become a Christian in seven days. Okay, so concludes the book report segment.
Feature Review: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
SPEAKER_03I now yield the floor to my colleague for our future segment to take us through John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Chip Wilson. Uh over to you.
SPEAKER_00I'm really excited to talk about this boy. This boy named Bruno.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00As you as you you covered briefly before, the in a nutshell, the plot, you know, you have the boy Bruno and his family that moved to take over Auschwitz. Uh he kind of bums around there for the book and eventually gets accidentally gassed in the gas chambers. A little bit more extended discussion of the plot. Uh, I think we can do really quickly and then and then kind of get into criticism uh or discussion of different components. But Bruno and his family take over Auschwitz. Uh or their his father is like a high-ranking Nazi official. They move from their nice big house in Berlin to a slightly smaller house there. Uh Bruno has a view of the yards uh of the concentration camps from his window. And he's looking out the window, going, What the heck? What are all these people doing in these silly pajamas? He's nine years old, by the way. He is Bruno is nine years old, yes. Uh he has an older sister who's 13 years old named Gretel. Uh his mother's there with him as well, uh, as alongside a couple other people, like uh a maid they have, some servants. Over the course of the book, about halfway through, when he's out for a walk around the camps, he meets a young Jewish boy named Shmuel through the fence. Uh, and he ends up going and chatting with that boy uh once every couple days, this sort of thing, over the course of his stay there. And that kind of goes for about a year or so. And then eventually, uh later on, he decides to dress up in uh concentration camp garb that Schmuel acquires for him, and he sneaks over to help Schmuel out with looking for his father who had disappeared, and the two are rounded up at the end of the book and put in a chamber and gassed. So that's more or less it. Most of the book is about Bruno adjusting to his new environment, uh, living at Auschwitz, and then he meets Schmuel about halfway through. You know, they talk about their different experiences in a pretty shallow way. There's a little bit of you know, tension within the family. But what really comes through in this book, and uh it can kind of move into this a little bit now, is that Bruno is incredibly ignorant of what's going on around him, beyond what you would ever expect for a nine-year-old, especially a nine-year-old that is the son of a high-ranking SS officer. Yes. Um, he is so like it's not just that he's a nine-year-old. The author has talked about this before, you know, when when questioned about it, he's been pretty adamant that, like, no, this is about the innocence of a child, and we only know what's going on with the benefit of the hindsight of history. Um, so he he was pretty confident that he was portraying like an average boy. Um, but Bruno, he's almost like Sasha Baron Cohen's Bruno, um, in terms of how like ignorant he is as to what's going on around him. The story is told from Bruno's perspective. Uh, he meets Hitler himself and he refers to him as the Fury rather than the Fuhrer. He doesn't know the name of Auschwitz, he calls it Outwith the whole time. At one point, when he's doing the his Hail Hitler salute, he says, Hail Hitler, which he presumed was another way of just saying, well, goodbye for now. Have a pleasant afternoon. Um, Bruno doesn't know what Jews are. Never heard of a Jewish person. Never heard of a Jew. He doesn't know what Poland is. Uh at various points in the book when there are slurs used by different characters against Jews, those were always kind of, you know, it's it's written this way where they said something and Bruno didn't understand what it meant, it meant, even though he'd heard it before. So he doesn't know, doesn't recognize slurs used against Jews.
SPEAKER_02Maybe the author just thought that the public education system in Nazi Germany was just terrible and just wanted to have that as a backdrop.
SPEAKER_00I I think it's the case that this guy didn't do like an ounce of research. Um because uh any boy at that age would have been exposed. Like, you know, uh propaganda and the Nazi ideology was was deeply ingrained in the public education system from like kindergarten. Uh any kid growing up would have been exposed to all kinds of cartoons. Like fables that were repurposed to tell like anti-Semitic narratives, this kind of thing, um, or praise Hitler. So the idea that this boy like doesn't even know who Hitler is. It's absurd.
SPEAKER_02Isn't it like wasn't there like a recruitment for the Nazi youth? I imagine that was probably a pretty big public campaign.
SPEAKER_00He would have been in some kind of like pre-Nazi youth.
SPEAKER_02Too young for yeah, Nazi youth, but still. Yeah, but you'd want to you'd want to promote it as they age, right? You wouldn't want to just like put you what wouldn't want to say at some point when they're like 16 years old, be like, oh, by the way, we all hate Nazis or we all hate Jews and you should join Hitler's youth. Like you probably want to build up a little bit.
SPEAKER_04Careful, slips the tongue like that. You're going the same way as Bruno, buddies. Yeah, it's also like when Chip, when you mentioned that like he didn't, the author didn't do an ounce of research. I mean, I think that's also just demonstrated by the confusion of the words. Like Fuhrer to fury is like that, only works in English. That doesn't work for German because the German word for fury is not fury. And out with in German would be Auschmitt, which doesn't actually sound that much like Auschwitz. Like maybe a four-year-old might say it the same way a four-year-old might say peschetti instead of spaghetti, but not a nine-year-old.
SPEAKER_03It's also not plausible because he's written as a fairly precocious, curious, intelligent, uh, emotionally mature character. He's not some ignoramus who has no interest in the world around him. He's constantly seeking out uh new experiences. He likes exploring is sort of one of his favorite hobbies. So the idea that he has no knowledge of all the things you listed is just it's completely improbable.
SPEAKER_00On that specifically, there's a point where he's talking to uh the the boy Schmuel and he doesn't know what Poland is and he's like trying to understand where it is, this sort of thing. Schmuel says, Denmark is quite far away from both Poland and Germany. And then Bruno frowned. He'd heard of all these places, but he'd always found it hard to get them straight in his head. Well, yes, he said. But it's all relative, isn't it? Distance, I mean. I'm like, what kind of nine-year-old talks like that? Right. Well, you know, it's all relative.
SPEAKER_04When when they talk about the bit about, you might have already mentioned this, Jip, but she but the kid, Bruno, doesn't know what his father does, right? He doesn't know his father's job. His father is a commandant in the SS and marches around in uniform and has lots of soldiers that always listen to him, but somehow the kid just doesn't know. But at the same time, he lists like he knows what his other friend's uh dads do. Like that friend that's dad is a waiter because he seemed working in a restaurant, and that that friend's dad is a greengrocer. Um, and it's like this kid knows what a greengrocer is, but he doesn't know what an army man is. It's like he's got this, he's got the he's got this insane mental block, but only for things specifically related to the Holocaust. For everything else, he's fine, but he just has to stay completely ignorant about the Holocaust or the plot of the book doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00It's it's it's it's so strange. And like you said, also with the language, like the fact that he wouldn't understand what the word Fuhrer is otherwise, which I think it's just a uh standard word meaning like leader, right? So it's it's more like if you somehow rather than a boy and his family moving from Berlin to Auschwitz to to run the place, it's more like a boy was moved from I don't know, England.
SPEAKER_03Did you listen to the book on tape?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_03The audiobook? So I I I consume this in audiobook form, and it's read by this guy with this super posh English accent. Oh gosh. Yeah, and so it it's really funny because as as you said, he talks like who talks like Bruno? What kid talks like Bruno does? He talks like sort of a really sort of, you know, he has this affectation, he's he uses all of this sort of elevated vocabulary, and then listening to the audiobook, it's coming from this like super posh English uh narrator, and you're just like, oh yeah, this guy is like it kind of makes sense. He's coming from the moon.
SPEAKER_04This might be jumping ahead of it, but I actually think the character Bruno starts to make total sense if you just start reading him in the voice of Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04Like there's there's a section where he's going back and forth with Schmuel. Like Schmuel is the kid living in the concentration cramp, and he's talking to him, and he just can't, and and Schmuel is basically describing how he was, you know, rounded up by the SS and thrown in the camp. Bruno just doesn't get it. Like he just can't connect. And it's like like Schmuel is speaking, like, the train was horrible. There's too many of us, there was no air to breathe. That's because you were too crowded. You should have taken a less crowded train. We weren't allowed to. There were no doors. The doors are at the end, just past the buffet.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04It was so cold and they made us walk. Why didn't you order a car? It's like, and when we arrived, my mother was taken away and I never saw her again. My cat's breath smells like cat food. It's like that's that's the only way the character almost seems like it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00I would have made Chief Wiggum head of the SS too, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Well, it all makes sense now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's it's it's like you said um you messaged when we were reading it, um, Rainer, that it's like one of the most irritating books we've read.
SPEAKER_03It's not it's not the worst book that we've read, but yeah, it's it's it's the most irritating and obnoxious book that we've read for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's so strange. And then not only are there all these things that he's very ignorant about, uh the the other characters in the book like keep correcting him too, on like out, for example, Auschwitz calling it out with. Like his older sister's like, stop calling it that. So he doesn't learn anything through the book really either. Um, like he continues to remain ignorant about what's going on at the camps, any kind of abuse or anything. Even to the point where at one point early on, they have uh like a servant from from the camp that's coming in and cooking for them, this older man who used to be a doctor. Uh, and at one point he he helps out uh Bruno with with uh with the small injury he has. Uh and then this this guy is deteriorating as he's as he's serving the family dinner and things like this over the course of the book. Uh this this older guy spills some wine on a on an officer that's having dinner with them at their house one time, and the officer proceeds to it's implied beat him to death in front of Bruno. This happens, right? Bruno witnesses this and it's like, oh, it's quite terrible. Later on, that same officer, Bruno's friend Schmuel, gets in in trouble in front of that officer and shows up later all bruised and beaten. And then Brun, when Bruno sees this, he's like, What happened? Did you fall off your bike? And it's like, how could this boy, how could he not put two and two together? When he's interacting with his friend over the course of his of the book, Schmuel, he like doesn't understand why his friend's hands are so skinny or why he continues to be you know skinnier and skinnier, this kind of thing. And it's like, what kind of child wouldn't understand starvation?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. He's jealous of Schmuel because so the the reason that he seeks out Schmuel or he finds him is because he's apparently the only boy amongst the the Nazi leadership running Auschwitz that are that's living in the area. So he has no friends, and so he seeks out Schmuel, finds him, and he's like, You're so lucky, you got all your buddies over there, and you guys all are hanging out each with each other. And when he you're all you're all concentrated in the same place. When he when he when he swaps out his clothes and sneaks into the camp uh to help Schmuel find his father, he's like, I thought there would be cafes and I thought there'd be people sitting on rocking chairs on front porches and hanging out. And it's like and it and it's I mean, we've sort of danced around it, but it's it's one of the reasons the book has gotten so much criticism because it really whitewashes the um the participation or the knowledge of German civilians in the Holocaust and suggests that, well, it was kind of a a top-down thing that was imposed on the population by Nazi leadership, and people really didn't have any kind of knowledge of it, people weren't advocating for it, people weren't um sympathetic to the the radical uh racial views that were part of this campaign of extermination.
SPEAKER_04I was gonna mention the movie. Um, but because Rainer, you you touched on something that made me think of that. The the movie, I don't know if you fellas watched it. I watched it last night. No, it's it's pretty bland. It's not much to mention about it. But the filmmakers realized this point and how dumb it was that the kid has no idea what's going on around it. So they actually add a kind of an intelligent and historically accurate plot point, which was that there actually was this documentary, like a propaganda Nazi film called The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City. And it's about this this camp, the Theresian Stadt, where they actually put a film crew in and then filmed all the people locked in the camp dancing and singing and eating loaves of bread, and there's a cafe and stuff like that. So then when Bruno says he actually goes in the camp, he's like, Why isn't it like in the propaganda film we were shown? Which is almost a like a smart thing to do. Um, and the other thing that the smart thing the movie does is it's not shed in Auschwitz, but instead at this tiny little concentration camp that only has two buildings. So you can almost believe that maybe the like it's just a fence around it, it's not a gigantic death factory. So you can almost almost think that it uh makes a little bit more sense instead of like the insanity of the book that this kid is wandering up to the gates of Auschwitz and like no one notices, and he's like, What's going on here?
SPEAKER_03I guess there's a cafe in there, you know. Well, also because the real Auschwitz had hundreds of Nazi families living there, it was they tried to market it to Nazis as kind of an eastern outpost for colonization. So they were encouraging Nazi families to move there and and colonize this area of Poland. So the idea that he would have been the only boy uh amongst uh you know the leadership in Auschwitz, just it does it's not factually correct, it's not historically accurate.
SPEAKER_00I also think it's like factually incorrect, just the fence. Uh the fence is just this like tiny fence that they easily lift up and Bruno can just climb under it. And it's like I don't think I think it might things might have been a little bit more fortified and maybe electrified uh at the real Auschwitz. But that kind of speaks to I I imagine like when you're trying to translate this into a movie, you'd actually have to think some of these things through. And you'd be like, wait, this doesn't make any fucking sense. And that really just is what stood out when you're reading it. You're like, why why would the character why would a character act this way? Why would a character not not know this? Like I said, it's like to a cartoonish degree. And I think, you know, if you if you read interviews of the author, he always says that he wrote it as a fable. Um and there's an issue with that, I think, that you can't really write a fable that's like so grounded in reality. Like if you want to write a fable about the Holocaust, where it's, I don't know, you know, there's some different kinds of birds. The robins are having issues and the crows are talking to Robins, who knows, whatever, right? But you can't have just Hitler literally appear in that kind of story and and one of the birds not know, like, who's this guy?
SPEAKER_03Well, people know who the commander of Auschwitz was, you know, Rudolf Haas. He's it's a he's a well-documented figure in history. He had a family. Now, I I would imagine that the author had drawn his inspiration for this book from the real events because the the man who ran Auschwitz had a family that lived basically right up against the wall of Auschwitz near the gate. You know, so there are there are a number of similarities there, but only in very broad strokes. You know, when you look at any of the details, it it all breaks down. I mean, the the boy in the striped pajamas just gets just about everything it could wrong.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So I I think it really fails structurally on that point of not fully being some kind of fable, like if you if you were just critiquing it for as a work. And and the other thing is that he focuses, he taught always talks about how it's uh a story about friendship above all else. But the friendship is so shallow between the two boys, they hardly talk about anything that's really bothering them. Bruno barely listens to Schmuel, um, like right up until the end when they're you know gassed together. So that's that's really odd. And I think that that um also stems from the same kind of basically issue where he uh couldn't decide what kind of book he wanted to write.
SPEAKER_02Uh you brought up earlier that uh because just to this point, that uh Schmuel was beaten by the guard. Um and then he asked him, Oh, did you fall off a bike? So when he said like this kind of friendship, what what did Schmuel say? Did he just say, No, I got beat the shit out of by this by that guy? He says nothing.
SPEAKER_04He he says because he really says nothing. He says, I don't want to talk about it because the center because the book it like the entire book is structured on Bruno not finding out what's going on because otherwise he wouldn't go blindly charging into the into the gas chamber at the end. Like I think like Rainer mentioned before, he was discussing the inspiration of the author and and Rudolf House and all that type of stuff. I don't think he had any of that. He thought of an ending, and then everything else is constructed in order to ensure that the characters get to that end. That includes total ignorance on every subject, which is why this book is like it suffers from that like sitcom trope where everything would be solved if any of the main characters just had a single, one single conversation about what was going on around them, which they just don't do. Like, why doesn't Schmuel ever just say, Oh, they kicked the shit out of me and I'm starving and I'm hungry? Or we talked earlier about how the kid keeps saying fury instead of furor, but people don't they tell him he's wrong, but they don't actually correct him. Like there's there's a part where his father is correcting him and he's he he says the fury, the father says that wrong. Bruno says, Who's the fury? The father says, You're pronouncing it wrong. And Bruno keeps trying the fury, the fury, and the father's like, No, it's not that. It's it's oh well, never mind. And it's like, no, not never mind, just fucking tell him. Just tell him and end this stupid thing that keeps going on. But the characters do not have those conversations because otherwise, if they did, the kid wouldn't go charging into the gas chamber at the end. And then the and then the ending that the author's clearly dreamed up just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00You said sitcom, but it's actually almost kind of like a cheap horror movie where they're trying to set up a death and they have a certain set piece.
SPEAKER_03The ultimate don't go down there kind of audience screaming at the screams like, don't go into the camp, Bruno. Nothing good's gonna come out of that. I thought you meant like don't go there. Like, well, that too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so it ends up working strangely as a fable because the lesson is is almost more like it's almost more like a lesson that if you're running a concentration camp, like you know, don't let your boy sneak in.
SPEAKER_04That that's the more dumbass kids.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of accidentally.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's not a it's not a you know, bad lesson to learn.
SPEAKER_00And what's funny about it is like where the book almost works, and I I'm 100% sure this is completely unintentional, is that it is the boy is in complete denial. Like the entire book is in denial about how knowledgeable all individuals were about what was going on. Totally sanitizes it. Yeah, so it almost ends up being unintentionally this this expression of like Holocaust denialism or or complicity from individuals in in whatever the government's doing, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03You had mentioned before Jane this zone of interest bookslash film.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I only so I watched the film uh on a flight when it uh soon after it came out. Yeah, it's it's more historically accurate, I would I would assume, um, because I haven't read the book, but uh but yeah, it's pretty much just about the similar kind of thing where it's a family living right next to Auschwitz and in the what was historically called the zone of interest of the the kind of area where all the families lived uh together, kind of in a little community. It's really interesting because it's just their lives, and then it's one of those things where you really have to like watch the background the whole time, where like the at what's actually happening in the scene is kind of irrelevant.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's never shown. There's no brutality shown. They never show the inside of the camp. How they communicate the horrors that are going on just adjacent to this kind of bucolic country house where the family lives is through the sound of the movie. So the whole movie is just kind of these like it's almost sort of a cinema verite. You have these long shots of just kind of domestic banality. You know, they're hanging out in the garden, they're in the kitchen having a bite to eat. But throughout the entire movie, you can hear trains coming in and out, shots going off, uh it's kind of industrial clanking, screams.
SPEAKER_02You can hear the smokestacks in the back.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. All of this like soundtrack of horror that's just constant throughout the entire movie that's kind of just at a low, kind of throbbing hum underneath all of these scenes of domesticity. So it's it's really haunting and very effective. And it's not just any family, right?
SPEAKER_04It's it's Rudolf has the commandant of Auschwitz and the inspiration for the characters in this book. And it's it's it's it's it's such a I'm really glad you mentioned it, Jane, because it's such an interesting comparison between the two, where yeah, as you said, you don't see the Holocaust, but it's there, whether it's the the character being forced to do the gardening while wearing the uniform, abusing the staff, you realize how undeniable the Holocaust is, and how anyone saying they didn't know what was going on, what what preposterous, horrible lies those were. Um, but it's the opposite of this book in terms of how it how it handles those subjects with nuance. It's at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum in terms of quality.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and just just to c just to contrast that quickly, uh here's here's just an excerpt from Boy with a Striped Pajamas. What do you mean their own kind? Bruno asks. Gretel sighed and shook her head. With the other Jews, Bruno. Didn't you know that? That's why they have to be kept together. They can't mix with us. Jews, said Bruno, testing the word out. He quite liked the way it sounded. Jews, he repeated. All the people over on that side of the fence are Jews. Yes, that's right, said Gretel. Are we Jews? asked Bruno. Gretel opened her mouth wide as if she'd been slapped in the face. No, Bruno, she said. We're certainly we we most certainly are not. And he doesn't even know what they are.
SPEAKER_03He says She doesn't even know what they are, though, which is even more surprising.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, yeah. So she says, so he's like, So what are we? And she goes, Gretel had to stop and think about it. We are, she repeated, but wasn't quite sure what the answer to this question really was. Well, we're not Jews, she said finally. I know we're not, said Bruno in frustration. I'm asking you, if we're not Jews, what are we instead? We're the opposite, said Gretel. So like at no point, she's 13 as well. At no point were they ever educated that they're Germans. Yeah, like they don't even know that they're German or Aryan. It's bizarre.
SPEAKER_03Christian, yeah, anything. Yeah, it's bananas. The um go going back to the uh so the the zone of interest film that that really contrasts boy in the striped pajamas. There's these really interesting articles that I read. I guess this isn't directly related to the film, but there is this writer named Thomas Harding, and he interviewed this woman named Bridget Haas, who was uh Rudolf Haas' daughter for a couple of articles, one in the Washington Post, another in The Guardian. And she had lived, being the daughter of Rudolf Haas, she had lived in this house adjacent to the gates of Auschwitz, and she describes a uh a lovely kind of idyllic childhood. I'm I'm quoting from the article here. I remember we had fun, she said. We had a little swimming pool in the backyard. My mother had a beautiful garden house with flowers. She loved flowers. I love flowers too. They also had two pets, two tortoises called Jumbo and Dilla, and two big Dalmatians. Um, Bridget says she knew the people who worked in the villain garden were prisoners in the camp. Quote, they were always very happy. They called my mother the Angel of Auschwitz. Uh, seeing my surprise, Bridget said, quote, my mom was just a nice person, period. So what was her father like? I asked, quote, he was wonderful, absolutely wonderful person. I couldn't have wished for a better father. Wow. Yeah. Yes, you could have.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03It's crazy. I mean, it's, you know, the banality of evil has become a very cliched concept, but it's it's really evident in reading these articles and in seeing the uh um the zone of interest book and or excuse me, I didn't read the book, but the zone of interest film.
SPEAKER_04One way that that kind of like the thought that that sparks into me um is just like putting that into the context who the Nazis were, including like the the worst of the worst, guys like Hest, Stryker, Heydrich, Eichmann, all those like the guys really designing the Holocaust. And like they did monstrous things, but they weren't physically monsters, like they weren't comic book monsters with devil horns and things like that, which is to me much scarier, is that they actually were normal people with families, with children. And it's not strange that a daughter who was treated kindly by her father remembers him fondly, even if that father went out and did monstrous, bizarre horror. Horrible, awful things to other people. Um, that is to me something that this book could have done, right? It could have, and and the movie does that as well, the zone of interest. It says, look, they're horrible, horrible people, but on a day-to-day basis, they are people. And that's interesting, that dichotomy of of humanity, of being banal, of being everyday, boring, whatever, but also monstrous. But this book doesn't they're they're not they're not normal everyday people because they're far too stupid and ignorant of their surroundings to be normal people.
SPEAKER_00And what's weird is that it's it's written for like a young reader audience, like children, right? So if you read this with decent prior knowledge and context for the Holocaust, you can get through it a little bit easier because there's all these things that are like winked at or are kind of slightly nodded towards, but aren't made explicit in it.
SPEAKER_03But for like a young reader who had none of that, it would be you wouldn't even be able to You wouldn't want it being your introduction to the Holocaust if you're you know a 10-year-old boy, uh kind of just getting into World War II history.
SPEAKER_00Which apparently it widely is used in as an early introduction to the Holocaust. And I don't know how much also the author is you know culpable for that sort of thing, because like I mean, he's not necessarily he's not designing education systems, he's not a teacher choosing which books are are you know used to study something in a in a school. But but it is strange so widely used.
SPEAKER_03More kids are apparently reading it by one metric than and Frank um in in schools these days. It's sort of overtaken and Frank diary as as the Holocaust book.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's one study that keeps getting cited from somebody at the uh UCL University in London that was like almost 40% of kid teachers in the UK were using it to teach the Holocaust, which is it's scary. It's such a misrepresentative, is that a word, view of the Holocaust that, you know, and we haven't even mentioned the fact that most of the supporting characters are against Nazis in the Holocaust. The mother is, the grandmother is. So if you take into account the number of people in the book who are actually Nazis and pro-Holocaust, there's only really two. And then everyone else either has no idea what's going on or is openly and actively against it, which is obviously a misrepresentation of what went on in Nazi Germany, where there was more than a few people who were, you know, pro-regime.
SPEAKER_00Is even a strange scene where the boy meets Eva Braun and she's like really beautiful and she's very nice, she's extremely nice, and she kind of like implies, like, hey, like, there's some nice guys here. You know, I'm like, why is there this little celebration of Eva Braun randomly?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Hitler's Hitler apparently has no manners, and the uh Bruno is unimpressed with Hitler because he sits down at the head of the table without asking permission. He jumps into the car without waiting for his his uh paramore, but Ava Braun is interested in the kids, giving them compliments, being nice, and it's like, yeah, why are you laundering Ava Braun's reputation?
SPEAKER_00That one just stood out to me as completely unnecessary.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like, but that that that whole thing where it's it's just becomes and embedded in education systems in various places, this kind of speaks to broader issues uh rather than just the author doing a bad job of writing a book.
SPEAKER_03Like the whole world's going to shit? Is that is that what you mean here?
SPEAKER_00Well, no, there's just a lot of decisions along along the way from whoever's planning curriculums and and things like that. Um, which which is just it's just a little bit sad, I think.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's an interesting question. Like, can can the author be held to to account for the things the book is used for or how it fits into the things? Like there was a book the other year, American Dirt, Janine Cummins, which was basically it was written by a white American lady about my about Central American migrants, and it was nominated for all sorts of awards, but then became a controversy because it was like, oh, you can't, you know, she's stealing their voice, and you know, it shouldn't be a white lady, American lady writing this type of book, or there should be books by migrants. And it's like, well, it's not technically, yeah, that's sure that's true. It's also not entirely her fault that that's you know the the the broader trend in the conversation. And but still, I don't know, with this guy, is it his fault that his book's being used to teach? I mean, he's he's they're teaching it and he's going, he's laughing all the way to the bank with all the pressure. Yeah, he's just making money for sure. He's doing great. For sure. It's it's okay. I personally would hold them to account for it for writing for not thinking like you want to tackle something like the Holocaust, you should be thinking through this stuff, which is pretty basic. Like, am I doing a fair representation of the German public? No. Am I doing a fair representation of the people who suffered in the concentrations camps? No. And if if if you got no on both those questions, you should be rethinking your book before cashing your checks.
SPEAKER_02I don't think that's on the author, though. I think that's on the people recommending and reading this book. People can write whatever they want. If they're gonna make bank on it, then I say that's fine, as most of the books we've well, you guys have read in this uh podcast.
SPEAKER_03What's funny is this writer John Boyne has become completely ostracized from the literary world and everywhere except for France, but for entirely unrelated reasons. I would love to hear about this.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04I also want to talk more about we haven't talked about Schmuel yet, as really as a character. And um, I mean, in fairness, the book doesn't talk about him as a character either. But I I think it would be interesting to to dive into that too. But uh however you had things planned, Jim.
SPEAKER_00No, I was that was like kind of the final thing I wanted to talk about was was Schmool as a character. Um I I touched on a bit with regards to their friendship, but like Schmuel is there's uh basically nothing to him uh as as a character. And that's one of the more criminal things about the book. Um if you're telling a story about like whether it's a if it's if if it's a story of friendship that the that the author says it is, you know, you would I d the both these characters should be theoretically pretty f well fleshed out. There should be some agency. Um and Schmuel is he only and and you actually kind of got got to the I think what is the critical issue that causes this, but Schmuel can't be a fully fleshed-out character because it would break Bruno's innocence, which is like the primary focus of the book. And because it's all leading towards the death of Bruno at the end. So Schmuel ends up just like sharing very little about himself when he when he does speak, he's he'll so often just like stop talking for no reason in particular. And yeah, that's like that's one thing where you're just reading, you're like, wow, like this is he's more of like a device uh than uh than an actual character in the book.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, he's an object, not a subject. Um and and if he's also pretty stupid as well, right? Like he's not quite as dumb as Bruno, but as Chip, you already mentioned, like, he doesn't understand the connection between not eating and getting skinny. He doesn't know what the star of David is and and or why him and everyone else at the concentration camp are are being forced to wear it. He you know when Jewish prisoner doesn't know what the star of David is? Yeah. That's that's a little far-fetched. There's a part in the book where he like draws it out, and in the book it's really blunt because it's just literally just a star of David. And then Bruno goes, Oh, that's it, what a beautiful symbol. Here's another one that I like as well. And he draws a swastika. Yeah. But yeah, even when it towards the end of the book where they've they're inside the camp, Bruno snuck uh snuck inside under the reason that Schmuel's papa has gone missing, and and so Bruno's gonna come in and help him find his papa. Uh but when the Nazis, the SS start rounding them up, Schmuel's not even that worried. He's like, Oh yeah, sometimes uh we get rounded up for marches, and Bruno's like, What's happened on the marches? And Schmuel goes, I don't know, the people never come back. It's like, and you're not scared? Like, first of all, you haven't worked out what's going on, but you're not scared. And it all comes back to that point that Chip made. The author says this book is about friendship. They're really shitty friends to each other, they're both responsible for the other's death directly.
SPEAKER_00Like few books have I read where it's all of this stuff is just so so clear, like the lack of character depth, like the issues with the character's innocence, the lack of believability. Like it just hits you right away, and then it's never resolved in any in any fashion.
SPEAKER_03Um like everything is just so improbable. Like he we've outlined some of it, but he wouldn't be the only boy in the area. So he wouldn't have any reason to seek out friendship with some guy on the other side of the fence. Now, if you look at history, apparently all young boys were just murdered upon arriving in the camp. So there wouldn't be young boys just hanging out in the camps. You wouldn't be able to just hang out by the fence being unmonitored. As you've said, you couldn't just touch so it he just sort of pulls up the fence and and crawls underneath it. There's no way that that would exist in the camp. And there's no way that they like as as murderous and devious as the Nazis were, they wouldn't just blow a horn and then uh hurt a bunch of people into the gas chambers to be murdered. They're meticulous with records. They'd be checking for tattoos, numbers, registration. They're gonna notice, and and it's clear in the book that Bruno is overweight. A kid who's like kind of chunky uh is gonna stand out. He's not, you know, the the idea that he's just gonna get shoveled into the gas chamber and murdered accidentally is just like it's so far-fetched. So it's just like a series of escalating events that uh completely strain any kind of credulity.
SPEAKER_04And and to what end if this book is a fable? Yeah, fables fictionalize things and there's parts that are unbelievable. But if but a well-written fable like Animal Farm works really well because yeah, the animals don't actually speak to each other in real life. We all know that, and it's preposterous and unrealistic. But it's to it's to make broader statements about the ideas of revolution and social order and change and how elites co-opt movements, right? And it does it extremely well, which is why that book is considered one of the best books ever written, even though it's on the face of it quite a simple story. But so what's to what end in this book? What it makes up all this ludicrously implausible events, yeah. But in order to what? To teach us something about the Holocaust? No, because it doesn't do that. In order this to teach us something about the value of in-depth friendship, no, because the book doesn't do that. So it's all done in order to whitewash this kid's ignorance and go, well, he was a victim too. This poor little Nazi boy who just wanted a friend.
SPEAKER_03It's awful. It's such a grotesque ending. I mean, it's like there there's something that that feels really uh exploitative about the the ending. Um I wanted to watch the film just to see, yeah. I wanted to watch the film just to see how they portray it in cinema. Um, but yeah, I forgot.
SPEAKER_00It's like using the using like a gas chambers as like uh set piece. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean he wrote it apparently over like three days. I believe I did it. And uh he says he wrote rewrote it ten times. I don't even know if that's rewriting something very much. Um I I wonder if there was some other version of it where it's much more of an actual fable, and and you like couldn't he couldn't reconcile reconcile some of the things because he clearly wanted to position it in the real world at Auschwitz and things. Um but in the end, this is what we got. Sucks dick.
SPEAKER_04It sucks dick. Speaking of sucking dick, should we talk about the author? Now that's a segue.
SPEAKER_03I mean he sucks dick as a like metaphorically, because he sucks, as opposed to that fact that he literally enjoys he literally is a gay man, so yeah, there's that too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what what else to say about it? So he has a pretty he has a pretty bad track record of um doing shitty research for his novels. There's one here that Jane will like. Uh he wrote one, he wrote a book about someone traveling through time. It's a historical fiction where he visits all these different periods. Bill and Ted's an excellent adventure. Something like that. And uh there's a recipe at one point for making dye in the book that's used by some tribe somewhere in that's supposed to be in our real world. And the recipe was discovered by people to be a recipe from Legends of Zelda Breath of the Wild. So clearly something he just googled and just put it in.
SPEAKER_02I remember reading about that. I didn't I didn't remember or realized it was this author. That's funny.
SPEAKER_00This guy tends to kind of step in it uh fairly often, I think.
SPEAKER_03He's also so he was he's mostly well known for being a turf, though. Like that's where all of the scandal around this guy comes from. He was um I can't remember the name of him in front of me, but he was nominated for an LGBTQ plus book award, and then went out and said, Yeah, I I support uh the Harry Potter lady's stance. You know, I'm against uh I'm against trans people taking positions or opportunities that are for biological women. And the prize was like, oh fucking hell, like what do we do now? So they just it there was a big backlash, uh a letter writing campaign. A lot of the other nominees said, you know, I'm not gonna appear on stage with this guy. Um, so they just canceled the entire prize for that year. Uh subsequently there was a university in London, excuse me, in Ireland, uh, where he was set to receive some sort of prestigious prize as well. And they also rescinded it. They're like, oh, we don't need this headache, like we don't we don't want to deal with this. So apparently he's still getting awards in France, but uh in um most of the Western world. Why is he still Jerry Lewis and who's the Roman Polanski and all those types? Like they're not they're not uptight about that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00I like how like turfs are just lonely authors that live in like castles.
SPEAKER_04Just kidding, riling.
SPEAKER_00Um, but yeah, that that um that whole thing, the the the backlash over his comments and stuff. He attributes all the criticism that Boy in the Striped Pajamas receives to that. He says it's all part of like the woke mob coming after me. So now they're pretending my clearly perfect book about the Holocaust is also bad, uh, which is uh silly.
SPEAKER_04Excuse me, excuse me. It's not about the Holocaust, it's a fable about friendship. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_03The friends they made along the way.
SPEAKER_02To be fair though, like when it came out, it was obviously super, super popular and people loved it. Um and then it's and then it slowly became when I guess historians or people that actually knew about it started reading it. Um, I think it became less and less so um so I can see that kind of being a dramatic shift in people's reception, like in his response to like how people like you loved it before, what's different now, kind of thing. And it's like, oh, it's only because you hate me or something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but but the turn I think was that basically the Auschwitz Museum specifically called the book out. I said this thing is a piece of shit.
SPEAKER_03There was some sort of like online Twitter feud between the author and the Auschwitz Memorial Museum's Twitter account. I I haven't looked it up, but I mean, just that's such a funny concept.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They've called him out several times and just said, like, anyone who's interested in learning about the Holocaust, do not read this book. And I think that's where there was a big public turn. I mean, that would make sense. Like yeah, they're considered a bit of a th an authority on the issue.
SPEAKER_03All right. Anything else we wanted to cover when it comes to this book, or should we move on to our final segment?
SPEAKER_00Uh not a whole lot, you know. Short book. Yeah. One that we eventually had to cover, you know. Uh so I appreciate chatting about with you guys.
SPEAKER_03Chip, you handle this with a plum. It was a tough task, and you were the man who was up to the job. Uh so hats off to you. I'll now pass the mic to the esteemed Dr. Bo Dashn PhD to take us through the Mind Conf game, uh, where we'll we'll see. Does retired. Sorry. I mean, if you're gonna bring it out of retirement for any book, this is the book.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, so season season one, the end of episode game, was was the classic much-loved bit. Um, Is It Worse Than Hitler, where we would compare the rating of the book on Goodreads to the rating of Mein Kampf. But we talked about retiring that because it was getting bad taste. No.
SPEAKER_02It's in bad taste now. Because everything was um better than it. Everything was rated so everything's rated so high on Goodreads.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's not that it's not what you might think, which is that Mein Kampf is rated really low. It's not. Um, it's got a pretty average rating, but it's that every other piece of shit we rated was surprisingly high. So, I mean, we can play if you want. Who wants to take a guess? Is the boy in the striped pajamas better or worse than Hitler?
SPEAKER_03It would be such delicious irony, but I don't think that I don't think it's gonna be lower. Yeah, Chip.
SPEAKER_00No, it's definitely higher. Can we rename it to um Is It Worse Than the Fury? Is it worse than the fury? Yeah, if we want to continue this. Yeah, I think it'll be it'll be better than Hitler. Still a lot of people like the book, and as we've learned on Goodreads, uh they all score pretty well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So should we say with the game then? Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, send this one to the chambers. Uh, this one's done. Um I thought we'd make it through this episode without some off-color remarks, but apparently not. Yes, the boy in the sweat pajamas is rated 4.16, which is almost a full point above MindConf. Oh, come on. I mean, if that's clear it probably should be. Don't sound too disappointed there. What I think is the problem is I think we need a better metric. We need a better something that's a bit more middle of the road than Mind Kampf is. Um, because all of these books are, as I as I've already said, they're all rated surprisingly high. In in the case, what about Gaddafi's green book that Chip Wilson's reading? Better or worse than Gaddafi?
SPEAKER_00I don't want to spoil it for myself, just in case we cover it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I think we need a different site. Maybe that's a good idea. You know what? I'll I'll do some research.
SPEAKER_03A more white power leaning book review site that has a higher rating for Mind Comp. Is that what you're suggesting?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I was going the opposite direction. What a site which actually has bad reviews for bad books and not just giving everything a four-star could do that. That's our site.
SPEAKER_00Speaking of which, we have uploaded all the old reviews that we did from like 2012 to the early 2020s.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, just fixing them up right now. And it's uh it it blows my mind. I didn't realize, so there are over 80 old reviews from the old website. This is this is on our website, POSBookclub.com. If you're on the homepage, uh scroll down to the bottom and click, I think it says more reviews or something like that, and you'll see the entire archive of, as I said, over 80 reviews of shitty books that have been done over the years by the Pizza Ship Book Club Executive Committee represented here, but also uh many former contributors um over the years. So it's disgraced former members. Disgraced former members, yeah. It's it's quite a pile of shit.
SPEAKER_02I highly recommend our viewers check out 1000 Famous Horses, fact and fictional throughout the ages, not race horses and not show jumping horses, uh, reviewed by Dr. Bo Dashkinton, which is a fantastic review and book.
SPEAKER_04That was the easily the most fun book uh that I've read for the Piece of Shit Book Club. That wasn't I don't even consider it a piece of shit. It's it's it's a list of one literally just a list of 1,000 horses, but it is, man, it's a wild ride. Pun very much intended.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of fun stuff there. We have old, like there's some North Korean propaganda. Um, what I've found actually is as we're looking for books to discuss on the podcast now, there's a ton of you know, notoriously bad books that we've already covered in the past. So it makes it kind of tough for to for us to find something sometimes. Because you look up, I'm like, you know, you look at the Celestine prophecy, let's say, and it's like, no, we already covered that. You know, 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_03Is there a coherent theme for season two? Like, what is what's the thesis of this season?
SPEAKER_00No. No, did we have one for season two? Just as things come.
SPEAKER_03We didn't have season one, it was just like, let's figure out how to do a podcast, uh, and let's maybe get some some decent audio gear and you know, some microphones and shit like that. Season two, I thought maybe there'd be an overarching concept that we're aiming for, but uh, I guess not.
SPEAKER_04We take it as it comes, like the same interaction book.
SPEAKER_03All right, well, thanks again to Chip Wilson for leading us through this fascinating discussion today. I really enjoyed it. Jane Lynch, thank you for your contributions. Dr. Bo Dashington, thank you. All members at home listening, thank you so much for showing up every meeting. I encourage you to like, comment, subscribe, drop us a message, head over to POSbookclub.com. You can visit our subreddit, our piece of shit book club. We are on YouTube, kind of. We will be soon at POS Book Club. And send us an email. We love to get your emails at POSBook club at gmail.com. Until next time. Stay sexy. I love each and every one of you. See you next meeting. Good night.