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Title: Martin and Hannah: A Novel by Catherine Clement, Julia Shirek Smith ISBN: 1-57392-906-9 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: Unintentionally Hilarious
Comment: What did Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger ever do to end up as the subjects of a poorly written example of the Roughly-He-Grabbed-Me school of typing?

That thought kept coming to mind as I slogged my way through this turgid tome - 304 pages that only seem like 800.

Based, according to the author, on a passage from Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's excellent biography of Arendt, the book covers Arendt's last meeting with Heidegger in 1975 and her reconciliation with Heidegger's wife Elfriede. Any resemblance with Young-Bruehl ends there as Clement remakes the Arendt-Heidegger love affair into something out of a soft-core romantic paperback. It still wouldn't be so bad if the writing didn't seem like a parody of a romantic paperback. Consider these passages:

"For it was obvious: Hannah loved Martin, as only Jewesses know how to love, with an ardor and determination . . . there were really no words to describe it."

Evidently.

"Hannah had a flash of fantasy: He was going to die right here, right now, and she would shout in Elfriede's face how Martin had enjoyed Hannah's body. Hannah shuddering under Martin's hand. Martin atop Hannah, his penetration, his pleasure. And hers, such as no other man had given her."

Wow. The thought of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger making love is hard enough to even want to imagine. In the hands of a practitioner like Clement, however, it manages to reach the Olympic heights of sheer nausea.

If all that weren't enough, add a goodly amount of pop discussions of Heidegger's philosophy and you have a piece of writing awful enough to give Ed Wood, Jr. a real run for his money.

I have an idea of how the publisher can make money on the paperback edition: On the cover, have Fabio, as Martin Heidegger, ripping the bodice of a well-endowed comely dark haired Hannah Arendt, with the tag line, "Their love was anything but Platonic." Failing that, there's always the movie version. If it's to be true to the book, Jim Carrey should play Heidegger and Julie Kavner as Hannah Arendt with the vocal intonations of Marge Simpson. Altogether fitting in its own weird way.