Things start to go wrong almost immediately. The Italian twin brothers who have been hired to escort Vogler to the border seem to have priorities besides the task at hand—wild romances, perhaps even criminal jobs on the side—and Vogler quickly loses control of the assignment. The twins set off on a dangerous detour and Vogler realizes he will be lucky to escape this venture with his life, let alone his job. With nothing left to lose, the young German gives himself up to the Italian adventure, to the surprising love and inevitable losses along the way.
The Detour is a bittersweet novel about artistic obsession, misplaced idealism, detours, and second chances, set along the beautiful back-roads of northern Italy on the eve of war.
Things start to go wrong almost immediately. The Italian twin brothers who have been hired to escort Vogler to the border seem to have priorities besides the task at hand—wild romances, perhaps even criminal jobs on the side—and Vogler quickly loses control of the assignment. The twins set off on a dangerous detour and Vogler realizes he will be lucky to escape this venture with his life, let alone his job. With nothing left to lose, the young German gives himself up to the Italian adventure, to the surprising love and inevitable losses along the way.
The Detour is a bittersweet novel about artistic obsession, misplaced idealism, detours, and second chances, set along the beautiful back-roads of northern Italy on the eve of war.
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Things start to go wrong almost immediately. The Italian twin brothers who have been hired to escort Vogler to the border seem to have priorities besides the task at hand—wild romances, perhaps even criminal jobs on the side—and Vogler quickly loses control of the assignment. The twins set off on a dangerous detour and Vogler realizes he will be lucky to escape this venture with his life, let alone his job. With nothing left to lose, the young German gives himself up to the Italian adventure, to the surprising love and inevitable losses along the way.
The Detour is a bittersweet novel about artistic obsession, misplaced idealism, detours, and second chances, set along the beautiful back-roads of northern Italy on the eve of war.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781616950507 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Soho Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 02/14/2012 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 849,348 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A light evening rain had started to fall, but it brought no freshness, only the wafting odor of brewhouse mash settling like a brown shroud over the wet cobblestones. There was no question of the month — July — or the date — the eighth. I know this because I'd been counting the days since I'd last seen Gerhard, counting them with a mounting unease. On that damp and suffocating night, I took the longest possible route to my mentor's house, through Shirker's Alley, where I passed a man who had clearly gone out of his way to avoid the required salute at the SS-guarded Feldherrnhalle monument. And yet as we drew near, we each looked away at unnatural angles, and I told myself I had been stupid and would never take this route again.
For two weeks, Gerhard hadn't appeared at work or answered any of the letters I'd sent to his home. In the absence of formal explanations, no colleague dared make a comment, not even Leonie, one of our department's three secretaries, who — though fond of me — had avoided my every glance for several days, even going so far as to type without a sheet of paper in the roller the last time I'd passed her desk.
Standing now outside Gerhard's darkened door, rapping without expectation, I tried to pretend that he was out at a beer hall, even knowing that wasn't his sort of place. I was turning to go when a tuft of dirty-blonde, sleep-mussed hair appeared in the opening gap. The hired girl looked so anxious and eager that I immediately regretted having come.
"He hasn't paid me in a fortnight. I can't stay if he isn't returning."
"Returning from where?"
"Bitte, come in."
I stepped back. "Did he pack a suitcase?"
"I started to pack one for him, but he told me not to bother." She said this defensively, as if I might question her competence and fidelity, when that was the furthest thing from my mind. "And they agreed when he said it."
"They?"
"Two of them." She looked down at her bare, cold-reddened toes curling over the threshold. The building's heat had been turned down or off. There was no smell of cooking or any food at all coming from the hallway, only the dank, mineral smell of the tomb.
"Perhaps they weren't taking him far?"
This jogged a memory. "Not far — a town twenty or so kilometers from here, they were telling him. He recognized the name." She pronounced the two syllables, which seemed to mean little to her but plenty to me and to any other Munich resident who read the newspapers. Dachau. Just a quaint village, but one that had found a profitable new industry: imprisoning behind growing walls the unmentionable domestic elements — everyday criminals and political enemies, initially — that our government had determined must be contained. Gerhard was not a criminal, nor even politically active, I would have argued at the time, not understanding then what I finally know now: that everything is political — even a simple lack of discretion, or an opinion about art or aesthetics. Especially that.
The rain had started to fall harder, plastering my hair to my forehead, while I held my hat in my hands like someone delivering bad news rather than receiving it.
"But what does it matter, near or far?" the hired girl added, put off by my alarmed expression, standing straighter with her arms wrapped around her thin chest. "Either way he'd be wanting a change of clothes in all that time. And his medicine — his bag of pills — he can't go more than a few days without them, but they didn't let him take anything at all. Here, please. You're getting soaked."
But she wasn't offering me true shelter. She had nothing to give, only much to take away, just as I had much to take away from her, by explaining the things she might not wish to understand. We were all alone in this, and all of us waiting.
When I wouldn't cross the threshold, she withdrew briefly and returned with a book in her hands — a reference guide that I recognized from Gerhard's desk, the second volume of di Luca's Sculpture of Ancient Greece and Rome, inscribed to me personally. It was an unusual parting gift from a man who'd had insufficient time to take care of more basic details. But he'd been a wonderful mentor for this reason precisely: he never forgot his priorities. Art and beauty, beauty and art. No matter what was happening; no matter what would happen.
The first time we'd met was at a small, evening art reception with several dozen mid-level bureaucrats and military officials in attendance. I'd been hired just that week, and I was so nervous entering the floodlit gallery that even the soles of my feet were sweating. A banner on the wall over my head proclaimed: "Art is a noble and fanatical mission." I squinted at that odd choice of words— fanatical? — but thank goodness I was alone and anxious and not the type to make an impromptu wisecrack. If I'd recognized who had authored that statement, which would appear again at future art exhibitions, I wouldn't have risked any expression at all.
I'd just started heading for the main exhibit when an old man took me by the elbow, pinching it with a shaking, ring-covered hand as he whispered: "Like it, love it, like it, and as for the final painting, an undecided tilt of the head will suffice."
Wrenching my arm free, I turned to study his drink-flushed face. His jowls sagged above a pale blue cravat, the same shade as his eyes; his pale forehead gleamed, only slightly less shiny than his gaudy cuff links. I resented his pompous manner, but a moment later, when my new boss and the head of Sonderprojekt, Herr Mueller, invited me to survey the first wall of the gallery and tell him precisely what I thought, I recited like an obedient schoolboy what the opinionated elbow-pincher had said. From the pleased look on Mueller's face, I could tell I'd just passed my first test with flying colors.
The next morning, meeting him again in the Sonderprojekt basement offices, I thanked the old man and learned his name.
"We wouldn't want a disagreement of taste casting a pall over your first days here," Gerhard said, his pale blue irises twitching as they did in the hours before he calmed them with his first midday tonic.
"But what about the truth?"
"The truth is something we savor — usually in private. If you are lucky, Herr Vogler, you'll have many private pleasures in your life which shall make up for some public inconveniences, such as saying things you don't necessarily believe, and purchasing the world's most valuable art for fools who neither deserve nor appreciate it."
He wasn't the most popular man in our office. But how unpopular, I did not fully appreciate until that starless, inclement night in July, standing outside the domestic threshold he had not crossed in a fortnight with his poor servant girl eyeing me so desperately.
"He told me some people from his office might come by," she said. "But no one has come. Except for you, finally."
"I'm sorry," I said belatedly. "Vogler. Ernst Vogler."
That introduction seemed to give her no joy. It proved only how small her employer's world had become. He'd mentioned me perhaps more than the others, and here at long last I stood: an unimpressive figure, young, a little thin, no hint of power or privilege in my manner or dress, one elbow pressed against my rib cage, trying to avoid scratching that mostly-forgotten spot that itched in times of stress. I'm sure she had hoped for more.
"He said that if you came, I should give you this."
When I hesitated, she asked in a tremulous voice, "Don't you want it? At least he's given you something. He didn't give me anything — not even what he owed."
"Yes, of course." I fumbled for some Reichsmarks in my pocket and handed them to her before taking the book and sliding it under my jacket, out of the rain.
* * *
Our Sonderprojekt department, where I had been part of the art curatorial staff for just under two years, was located in the basement at 45 Brienner Strasse. Yes — that address; that's how important art was in those days, to the people at the very top. The Third Reich's very first architectural project was not a diplomatic building or some other temple of power but the House of German Art, a new museum completed in 1937. Sonderprojekt looked beyond that museum and beyond Germany to a larger vision, both artistically and geographically speaking. To what precisely, I did not yet know or need to know. My job was only to catalog the world's obtainable art objects and to add more items to the master acquisition list — a list based not on finite resources or some scholarly criteria but only on taste, and symbolic significance, and that least definable thing: desire. Whose desire? Usually our leader's, of course. But each of us also had objects we personally admired and longed to see or have a hand in collecting, for reasons as difficult to explain as the deepest merits of fine art itself.
The day after visiting Gerhard's house, I spent as much time as possible in the dark stacks and near the corner filing cabinets, pulling out and replacing one unread catalog card after another, trying to look busy while I puzzled over Gerhard's predicament — which, in his absence, had become my predicament as well. Section B of the master art acquisition list I was researching featured only sculptures; another researcher was assigned to paintings; a third to the special problem of avoiding counterfeits. Anyone watching me closely, as I fumbled in the wrong drawers, might have guessed that I was upset. But that was no crime, to be upset.
Neither was it a crime to laugh, and Gerhard had laughed — especially whenever an unimpressive item made its way into our hands: a statuette of a ballerina no more finely crafted or interesting than a child's music-box figurine, or a muscular male nude with a caveman's brow, or some other example of questionable art, hastily collected. He was supposed to have expertise in these matters. He was also supposed to find a way to share that expertise without humiliating others whose taste was not as refined as his own, especially others of high rank. But that kind of prudence had never been his strength.
Back at my gunmetal-gray desk, I was surprised to see Leonie waiting with a worn and bulging paper bag in her hands — a peace offering, perhaps, to make up for her recent avoidance of me. When I sat down, she pushed it across the desk blotter.
"Is it a sandwich?"
She laughed nervously. "No, silly. Candles — twelve of them. For you."
"I nearly forgot," I said, taking the bag gratefully. "I suppose they're sold out everywhere."
The natural blush on her cheeks showed, even from behind the stain of applied rouge. "I thought ahead and bought extras a month ago."
That night marked the start of the second annual German Day of Art, celebrating new displays of all-German art that turned away from modernism and harked back to the greater clarity and tradition of the past: images of peasants and working folk, landscapes, cows and horses (but only very strong ones), and the ideal and healthy human form. The art of the post-degenerate era. This focus was the cornerstone of our entire national cultural policy. It meant so much to our leader that he had funded many artistic activities from the profits of his Mein Kampf sales. His "struggle" had become the direct sponsor of art in Germany — the two things inextricably intertwined.
On this weekend-long "day of art" there was an exhibition of German works for sale, overseen by the Führer himself, who not only had rejected at the last minute eighty already-approved works but would go on to purchase over two hundred works that did please him. These purchases were separate from the more ambitious and distinctly more international Sonderprojekt collection that we basement experts were cataloging and beginning to acquire. The Führer's insatiable appetite for art objects was the reason we called him (always discreetly, for though it was not an insult, it still suggested an inappropriate familiarity) Der Kunstsammler — "The Collector." If we were not aware in 1938, we would soon become aware that Der Kunstsammler had the power to collect just about anything — or anyone — of interest to him. And the power to dispose of the same. How could it have been otherwise? But that isn't the voice of the twenty-four-year-old still learning his place in a new office, in a new profession. That is only middle-aged hindsight, which can be just as dishonest as the blinkered presentism of youth.
During the opening procession of the German Day of Art activities, all residents were required to display three candles in every one of our apartment windows. If anyone was expected to remember and comply, we members of Sonderprojekt were. There were dozens of ways to reveal your incompetence or disloyalty, and new ways were being invented all the time.
"Thank you, Leonie," I said, opening the bag of candles, realizing even as I said it that she had not only anticipated my faltering memory, but had remembered how many windows my lonely apartment had, despite having peered through them only a few times. She might have assumed, over the awkward winter months following our final date, that she had shown me too much, given too much away for free as the saying goes, and that's why I'd lost interest. But in truth, she hadn't shown enough. I didn't need a girlfriend who would change clothes only in the water closet and make love only in the dark, who would pretend not to notice the alarming changes in our departmental staffing just as she pretended not to notice the pink scar on my rib cage.
Still, one doesn't like to appear ungrateful.
"Leonie," I started to say, but she could see the question coming and looked down quickly so that I could see only the impenetrably thick spikes of her painted lashes. "At least look at me, Leonie. Please?"
But she would not. Someday, I would no longer be in that basement office, but she would be there still, typing without a sheet of paper in the roller, cradling the heavy phone to her soft cheek even after the lines had been cut — not because she lacked competence or intelligence, but because she knew walking away was no answer either. Perhaps she was smarter than all of us.
"It's a lucky day," she said quickly. "I think Herr Mueller is planning to call you into his office."
"Lucky? I doubt it." I tried one last time, my voice lower yet. "Leonie, I know you have a good heart. I know you liked Gerhard well enough ..." She whispered, "I know he was opinionated."
"But isn't that our job here? How can one curate art without having opinions?"
When she didn't answer, I pleaded, "You see the correspondence that comes through. You must have an idea ..." But she was still looking down, studying her shoes. "Never mind. When I see Herr Mueller, I'll ask him."
Mueller was in an effusive mood on that Friday afternoon with a weekend of festivities ahead, including at least one event where he would spend time with topmost officials of the Reich, including Der Kunstsammler himself. (The rest of our small staff avoided such anxiety-producing "opportunities" whenever possible, coming and going by our own entrance, often forgotten in our subterranean lair.) Mueller asked me to sit but couldn't contain his own nervous energy and proceeded to pace in the windowless room. There was small talk about my family, cut short when I reminded him that my own parents had passed away — my father just the previous winter. The awkwardness didn't seem to bother him.
I was preparing to ask my question — to make a principled stand by asking the question — when Mueller sat down and slapped a file onto the desk and opened it, showing me the photograph clipped to the inside corner of the folder. "You know this statue, of course?"
I paused, tongue sticky against the ridged roof of my mouth, admiring the recognizable figure of Myron's ancient Athenian Discus Thrower: an image of the perfect male specimen, captured in a sporting posture of dynamic tension. "Yes, of course."
Mueller turned the file around, looked at the photo again. "He wants it. And he will have it, no matter the considerable expense."
I didn't say anything at first — not because I was too junior a staff member, or too inexperienced in this particular area to comment. On the contrary, I knew this statue well, better than anyone in the department. Gerhard's taste had favored the Italian Renaissance, especially Bernini. My taste, my self-education, my training, my fixations favored this: controlled, classical, iconic excellence.
I fell into a momentary trance, staring at the photo and imagining all that the photo itself could not capture. I loved this object as one always loves the most perfect example of an artistic period, the most realized projection of a cultural virtue. But "love" does not explain the feeling entirely. For what I felt most about the Discus Thrower was a driving curiosity: a certainty, guided or misguided, that beholding this ancient statue in person, at close range, would answer an obsessive question and a personal need that had led me into the study of classical art in the first place.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Detour"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Andromeda Romano-Lax.
Excerpted by permission of Soho Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Cover,
Other Books by This Author,
Title Page,
Copyright,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Prologue: 1948 Piedmont, Northern Italy,
Part I: July 1938 Munich, Germany,
Part II,
Part III,
Author's Note,
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide for THE DETOUR
READER'S GUIDE QUESTIONS: Art, beauty, travel, duty, propaganda, the "perfect" body, and love....
1. Ernst Vogler takes solace in the image of the Discus Thrower. Is there an object or image in which you've taken solace? Are there times when reverence for an object or image has misled a person or people?
2. "For beauty, you cannot prepare," claims Enzo. Ernst Vogler, by contrast, thinks that beauty (and specifically, art) requires intellectual preparation. Who is right, or are they each right in different situations?
3. Is there a particular work of art in any form (including music, architecture, or film) that has captivated you, and why? What does it say about you personally that this particular work so enthralls you?
4. What makes Vogler a poor candidate for this mission, and what, in his mind or objectively, makes him an ideal candidate?
5. Vogler's mentor, Gerhard, feels that his young protégée needs a trip to Italy. Why is this so? Do you agree? What are your thoughts on the power—or limitations—of a short-term experience to change us? Have you ever taken a trip that radically changed your outlook on life?
6. Is Vogler overreacting when he is anxious about his own personal mark of "difference"? Why or why not?
7. Various German artists—including a preeminent conductor and a world-famous filmmaker—were essentially forgiven for working in high positions or in close collaboration with the Third Reich. What is your opinion on the choices they made and the post-war attitudes toward artists like them?
8. To what extent do we hold people accountable today for working in or for unethical companies, organizations, or governments? To what extent are they innocent? To what extent are they culpable?
9. Various governments have tried to gain or keep control of artistic and archaeological objects and artifacts over the centuries, and have used these symbols in propaganda efforts. Can you think of examples, and why do these objects matter so much?
10. Hitler was a failed artist. Churchill was a successful one. Mussolini played violin every day. Is art as important in the lives of today's leaders or opinion-makers? If not, has something else taken its place?
11. There are multiple father figures in the novel. Discuss their relevance and their positive or negative impacts on Vogler. Do you think this has particular relevance to Germany at this time in history?
12. If Vogler's trip to Italy is meant to shake him from his blinkered approach to life, or his ethical paralysis, does it? What people or events are most significant in changing his attitudes or behaviors?
13. Both the ancient Greeks and the Third Reich held the "perfect" body in great esteem. What are your thoughts on this?
14. How are Ernst and Rosina similar, and how are they different? What are their chances for happiness, and do they—does anyone—"deserve" it? What life do you envision for them, beyond the final chapters of this book?
Interviews
Q&A with Andromeda Romano-Lax and two bonus essays
INTERVIEW WITH THE DETOUR AUTHOR ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX
The Nazis spent all of World War II plundering art. Why set this story so early, before their art acquisition project had gained momentum, and before the war?
During the war, the Third Reich stole over a million artistic works from both public and private hands. Many of those works were repatriated after the war. Others remain missing to this day. But before the Nazis' schemes were fully understood by a horrified world, and before Hitler stole and looted art, he bought it. One of the most significant early acquisitions was an ancient Roman statue, copied from an earlier Greek statue, called The Discus Thrower, purchased from an Italian owner in 1938, against the objections of many, and no doubt with some help from Mussolini. Robert Edsel, in Rescuing Da Vinci, calls this purchase "theft by any other name." The narrator of The Detour, Ernst Vogler, calls it "one of the earliest symbols of our questionable intentions."
It's easy now to recognize the rapaciousness of the Third Reich, as reflected both in its "Final Solution" and its unparalleled looting of European art. More interesting to me, as a novelist, was trying to imagine how these issues would have seemed before the war, especially to someone living at the geographical heart of Nazism. I wanted to imagine the difficulties faced by an average German who doesn't know what's coming, who can't seem to extricate himself from the activities and influence of the Third Reich, who may feel that his own livelihood—even his own life—are at stake. Given a simple job—catalog art, and visit another country to retrieve it—should he have any qualms? By framing the story before the war, it places us in the position of imagining difficult choices made without the benefit of retrospective, historically-informed wisdom. In our own lives, we are more like Ernst. We don't know what's coming, and we are influenced most by own our experiences, our own hopes and fears.
Ernst knows a lot about classical art. But he is self-taught, and only narrowly. He doesn't know much about the history of more recent art, or anything about modern abstract art—which in Germany was declared as "degenerate." What is the significance of this naivete?
Ernst admits that 1938 is not the time to be a Renaissance man. It is the time for "the deep, clean, and relatively painless cut of narrow knowledge." (Not the only cut in the novel, by the way.) His ignorance spares him. In his mind, it's a valid excuse—he doesn't choose to speak up against some of the Nazi's views about abstract "degenerate" art, for example, because in most cases he doesn't even know the arguments. But it's still an excuse. Of course, after working in art curation for two years, he could have learned more and developed some opinions. He certainly has enough taste (he realizes the Nazi collectors favor some real contemporary dreck, in addition to the masterpieces) to start forming some questions or to think about defending the artists the Nazis were ostracizing, if he wanted to look up from his basement office and catalog cards. But Ernst is reflective enough to realize his narrowness, and able to recognize it as both a form of self-defense and a source of weakness. A price will be paid.
The Detour is also a road trip. Prior to writing fiction, you were a travel writer (and you're still a frequent traveler). Any connection?
Absolutely. For some people, travel usually means vacation. For others, it is a chance for potentially life-transforming encounters. I enjoy both kinds of travel, but it's the latter kind that means the most to me. I dated my husband, Brian, for four months before we went on a two-month sea kayak expedition in the Sea of Cortez, and we married less than a year later. In response to anxious and questioning atmosphere following 9/11, I traveled to Puerto Rico in search of a meaningful, heroic story to tell. That story, about an anti-fascist cellist (originally inspired by the life of Pablo Casals), ended up inspiring my first novel, The Spanish Bow. In 2006, my husband, two children and I took an amazing trip to the Middle East that helped us see current events in a very different way. When I'm unsettled and longing for answers, I travel, and usually, when I'm traveling, serendipitous incidents and encounters change what I know and feel. Drawing from personal experiences, I've sent many of my characters on road and train trips, to see what will happen to them when they're at their most vulnerable and exposed to the unfamiliar.
We discover that Ernst has a physical defect—a very small one. What role does this play in his professional life, and what evidence is there that such a small defect might concern a German man of his time?
Ernst's defect is common and minor. But to him, it suggests some internal inferiority lurking within his genetic makeup, at a time when eugenics are a national obsession. In the 1930s and early 1940s, hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Germans judged to be physically or mentally inferior were put to death, for conditions as common as epilepsy. In addition, hundreds of thousands were forcibly sterilized. It's disturbing to note that during this same period, compulsory sterilization campaigns were also taking place in many countries around the world, including the United States.
You are descended from German and Italian ancestors, and you've married into a Jewish family that includes relatives who barely escaped the Holocaust—as well as some who didn't. What side of this story, if any, do you relate to most personally?
All of them, which is one reason I wanted to write it. In writing the novel, I thought most of all about my maternal grandfather, John Cress, German-American (and a mix of other ethnicities too, of course), a high school gymnastics and springboard diving coach well-known in the Chicagoland area. A gymnastics invitational is named after him. But he was also a student of history, a military man, and a former vaudevillian who performed gymnastic tricks of agility, strength, and grace. My mother and aunt were raised performing athletic stunts and visiting the German-American "Turner Halls"—community centers with a strong fitness component that really launched the idea of physical education in America. My grandfather—"Papa Coach," as everyone knew him—instilled all of us with that classic German concept, "Sound mind, sound body." He did everything he could to promote our participation in sports. This is the positive side of the German (and Ancient Greek) obsession with the ideal, physical human form. The corruption of that idea is the Nazi obsession with genetics, a false idea about the perfection of the Aryan race. Not long before his death, my grandfather was hospitalized after a cycling accident in which he was training on the icy track of an outdoor velodrome, getting ready for sprinting races. When the doctor found out how he'd fallen and broken his hip—at that age—he was astounded. When I look at the Discus Thrower statue, I see Mediterranean features that in some way resemble my own, a balanced muscular physique that resembled my grandfather's, and an idea, in an extreme and corrupted form, which came close to wiping out my husband's family. Every good idea, taken too far, can become grotesque.
In your first novel, The Spanish Bow, a cellist refuses to collaborate with the Fascist Spanish government—refuses even to perform publicly, once they come to power, and in so doing, sacrifices his own happiness as a musician and, it can be argued, fails to save a loved one. In this novel, an art lover works for an equally despotic government, and dutifully carries out his mission—or tries to—and yet still loses people close to him. Are the novels conveying opposite answers to the same question, about whether artists and art lovers can be expected to take a stand against dictators?
The novels are intended to raise related questions, while challenging the idea that there is a single, correct answer. In difficult political times (and aren't we always living through some sort of difficulty?), we may have to choose between sacrifice and personal happiness. What both novels agree upon is that everything we do—even our practice of and appreciation of art—has an impact. Art, music, film, all of it influences us, and historically, art, music and film have often been used to propagandist ends. To be aware of its power over us is to appreciate all the more the wonder of these man-made creations.
This story begins in the darkness of Munich, and travels through sunnier Italy, becoming—in the end—a love story. Did you intend to write an optimistic love story?
That was a surprise, and it may have grown out of both the novel's setting (Italy, which I do find romantic) but also the time in which the novel was written: the height of the recession. When I wrote my first novel, The Spanish Bow, America was in a patriotic fever pitch, and shallow ideas about heroism were getting lots of press. That prompted me to write a story that started out light and innocent but moved toward the darkness, with a more skeptical tone. In 2009, when I was writing The Detour, things were unshakably gloomy, and I, for one, wanted to move toward the light, toward the possibility that people can become more self-aware and break free and find some measure of happiness. In other words, I'm a contrarian. And also, I do tend to write a book first and foremost to discover and tell myself a story. If others respond to it, too, all the better.
Names also seem to matter a lot in your books. The narrator of your first novel was named Feliu, a name that almost means happy (Feliz). This narrator is named Ernst.
Yes, Ernst, which sounds an awful lot like earnest. Which he is—often to a fault. As the narrator himself also reveals, it also means "willing to fight to the death," which he is not. Ernst is like most of us: he really just wants to live. In 1938, that meant keeping a low profile, trying not to anger his superiors, or be targeted by army bullies, or raise any alarms. But by trying so hard to live, he doesn't live at all. And he knows—as he witnesses the disappearance of his mentor, and even as he experiences the joyless affection of another self-servingly cautious co-worker, a Munich secretary—that this way of living isn't living. What he experiences in Italy is something altogether different. Through his road adventure with Cosimo and Enzo, but most of all by meeting their sister Rosina, he experiences spontaneity, friendship, pleasure, and a little terror, too. As well as new views, bluer skies, food and family and hospitality and (am I giving away too much?) some unbridled sensuality. Flesh, instead of marble. It breaks him out of his paralysis. It awakens something real in him—something that will end up sustaining him long after the Italian trip, which is a good thing, given that the clouds of war are on the horizon.
As for his last name, Vogler: Originally, I did not pick it for any intentional meaning (it means simply "fowler" or "bird catcher" in German). But reflecting on it now, it does sound like "vulgar," a word that now means indecent, but used to have no negative connation. It once meant simply "common." And Ernst is a common man: not fully heroic. It is perhaps too much to expect perfect heroism of most people who happened to be entering adulthood just as the Nazis came to power. What is amazing is that some people did manage to have integrity and skepticism about the Nazi project. Ernst's mentor, Gerhard, whom we meet only briefly, is one of those men.
As for Enzo (short for Lorenzo) and Cosimo: these are common Italian names, which happen to correspond to famous members of the Medici political dynasty, a Renaissance family known for their patronage of art.
And your name?
Ah yes. Writing The Detour—a novel about a Roman copy of a Greek statue purchased by a tyrant who is intent both on destroying the Jews and acquiring all of the Europe's finest art (among many despicable plans), I realized I would never come up with a novel that better matches my own name and my own heritage, both by birth and marriage—as well as my own thematic and philosophical concerns. "Andromeda" is from Greek mythology, "Romano" means from Rome, "Lax" is Jewish—and all those cultures and heritages are bound up with the central issues of the story. It's a strange convergence, and it helped me to feel that I was telling a story I was meant to tell—whether it was ever published or read. I wrote it to explore my own passions and questions, to follow the road from Rome, and to see where that road led.
Essay #1: Before Hitler Stole Art, He Longed for the Discus Thrower
In addition to his plans to conquer Europe and exterminate the Jewish people, Hitler was obsessed with the idea of acquiring artistic masterpieces. These were not just beautiful objects he wished to own, but symbols at the heart of an ideology about racial purity, cultural cleansing, and Germany's determination to justify its schemes by linking its identity with that of glorious earlier civilizations. During the war, the Third Reich stole over a million artistic works from both public and private hands. Many of those works were repatriated after the war. Others remain missing to this day.
But before the Nazis' schemes were fully understood by a horrified world, and before Hitler stole and looted art, he bought it. One of the most significant early acquisitions was an ancient Roman statue, copied from an earlier Greek statue, called The Discus Thrower. Hitler purchased the statue from an Italian owner in 1938, against the objections of many, and no doubt with some help from Mussolini, with whom Hitler was then becoming friendly. Because strings had to be pulled (the purchase may have violated Italian law), author Robert Edsel, in Rescuing Da Vinci, calls the Discus Thrower purchase "theft by any other name."
It is easy now to recognize the rapaciousness of the Third Reich, as reflected both in its "Final Solution" and its unparalleled looting of European art. More interesting to me, as a novelist, was trying to imagine how these issues would have seemed before the war, especially to someone living at the geographical heart of Nazism. I wanted to imagine the difficulties faced by an average German who doesn't know what's coming, who can't seem to extricate himself from the activities and influence of the Third Reich, who may feel that his own livelihood—even his own life—are at stake. Given a simple job—catalog art, and visit another country to retrieve it—should he have any qualms? Politics aside, what would a trip abroad to a vibrant and sensuous place mean for a naïve young man who has lived a cautious and even timid life?
In The Detour, set in 1938 Italy and Munich, apolitical art lover Ernst Vogler is sent on that trip. From the start, much goes wrong, and the adventure ends up challenging Ernst's views not only about art, but also about duty and love. The story begins with a classical statue—an iconic image of bodily perfection, sculpted from stone. But it ends with something altogether messier: the question of how we break free from stone-like paralysis and get on with the sometimes painful, sometimes joyful experience of living.
Essay #2: An Italian Family Road Trip
In my second novel, The Detour, young German art-lover Ernst Vogler is unsatisfied with knowing his favorite classical statue, The Discus Thrower, only through photographs. Only by seeing this ancient work of art in person will he come to know more about the statue's value and what it has to say to him about physical beauty and the ultimate meaning of art.
Like any person inclined to travel, I, too, love to see works of art, historic buildings, and landscapes in person. No amount of library research can compete with an afternoon walking through the streets of Rome—that chaotic city of ancient ruins and fountains and plazas buzzing with people, cars, and scooters. Or an evening in Tuscany or the Piedmont, walking past vineyards, grocery shopping for cheeses, fruit, and wine.
Every book I've written has required travel of some kind, and I've always brought along my husband and children: to Puerto Rico, France, and Spain for my first novel, and to Italy and Germany for my second. During our Italy trip, my son was 15, and my daughter was 11. My son is an art aficionado who always travels with a sketchbook, so he couldn't get enough of museums, usually lingering in each gallery long after my feet were begging for a break. My daughter, on the other hand, suffers from premature museum exhaustion. For her, a better experience than any museum was being set free at dawn in a Roman farmer's market, with a handful of coins and an assignment to bargain for strawberries using the few words of Italian she'd learned. Some souvenir shopping, a gelato at the Piazza Navona, and a visit to the Trevi Fountain is more her style.
At our next step, in Tuscany, all of us loved staying for a week just outside Florence in a compound of medieval, stone-walled apartments still owned by the Machiavelli family. (We brought two copies of The Prince along—the regular version, and a graphic novel treatment that also covered Renaissance politics and philosophy.) Later, we headed northwest to the Piedmont, a place suggested by my husband, who had starting reading about that region's wine and trufflies, and found us an out-of-the-way bed and breakfast in a quiet valley. If not for his early interest, the last third of my novel might have taken place in another out-of-the-way region, like Umbria or Lombardy.
If I were sharing advice with other travelers, especially traveling families, I'd suggest:
1. Rent apartments, cottages, or villas; there are endless options online. We've done this in many foreign countries and haven't stumbled into a bad deal yet. For a short while, you feel like a local. Having more hangout space than a hotel room allows makes for easier afternoons and evenings with children (or any small group) and less pressure to pack the day with formal sightseeing. You can cook your own food, which in Italy, is great fun, because it gives your day some structure. Walk to the local market, sample food and practice your Italian, walk home and cook. The simplest homemade pizza and pasta is astounding, using authentic Italian cheese, meat or seafood, tomatoes, and basil.
2. Seek out some of the lesser-known museums. The Uffizi in Florence is famous for good reason, and Rome's National Museum has lots to see. But our favorite museum was the smaller Museo e Galleria Borghese in Rome. Housed in a sumptuous 17th century villa surrounded by an urban park, the collection includes statues by Bernini, paintings by Caravaggio, ancient mosaics and more. Reservations are required, and visitors are allowed two hours to see the collection, but this planning requirement—a little intimidating at first—reduces crowds and makes the visit more worthwhile, especially for kids who are tired of feeling trampled.
3. Take a cooking class. We found ours in an affordable bed-and-breakfast in the Piedmont. Our host couple spent a long evening with us, allowing all four of us to help make two kinds of homemade pasta, one of them filled with squash, and a cheesy mushroom risotto that took hours (and which I've never managed to duplicate perfectly at home). At the dinner itself, also attended by other B&B guests, we tasted about seven wines and liqueurs, most of them made by the lodge owner. This class and included meal cost no more than forgettable restaurant meals in Rome and Tuscany.
4. Prepare. With our kids, we watched several historical documentaries about the ancient Romans (Caesars and gladiators aplenty), and about artists like Caravaggio, Bernini, and Michelangelo. Those stories made our later walks through Rome and Florence come alive.
5. Indulge your touristy side, too. Our original trip plan was Rome, Tuscany, and Piedmont. Our 11-year-old daughter really wanted to see Venice. (I'd seen it years before, and remembered it as beautiful but a little kitschy.) Luckily, we let her talk us into it. We stayed just outside Venice to reduce the cost, and took public transportation into the city of canals. Seen through my daughter's eyes, it was completely magical. Most of our time was spent riding around on the vaporettos (water taxis), including at night, when the canals are all lit up. We didn't hit any major attractions—we just wandered, people-watched, and did a little sketching, painting, and journaling on the side. To this day, my daughter reminds us of what an amazing two days it was.
