Erich Maria Remarque Is More Than "All Quiet on the Western Front"

 I read  Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front in high school. In prison, I read it again. There I also read Three Comrades and Arch of Triumph. Up to this point, the only German novelists I had read were Gunter Grass and Thomas Mann. Remarque writes as well as those two, while being also more digestible,

Erich Maria Remarque: The Eternal Pacifist provides a biography with an emphasis on his politics, and a synopsis of his works.

The movies have mined his work, but as a novelist he comes across as a one hit wonder. That seems like a mistake. Even more than Grass or Mann, he faced down the Nazis. Those worrying about the current rise in fascism would do well to read hm.

I like him. I have written abut him here.

What I have read of Understanding Erich Maria Remarque follows what I understood from my reading - he was not creating allegories or philosophical masterworks, but drawing upon his own experiences. Unlike Hemingway in that way. My recollection of his style it is akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I will go out here suggesting the man must have been something - an affair with Marlene Dietrich and a marriage to Paulette Goddard.

Read the man's books, please.

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