Das Boot

The cover of my copy says, like Comedy Central regarding Napoleon Dynamite, it's pretty much the best book about war ever written. Admittedly, I's paraphrasing, but the publisher was wee understated when saying it was one of the best books about war ever written. Since I have now read three books about war (The Things They Carried, All Quiet on the Western Front, and I guess you can count the Dragonlance series, but I wouldn't), but only one this century, I can with extreme prejudice say what the publisher of Das Boot couldn't, presumably because they're British: Das Boot, by that lovable rascal Lothar-Günther Buchheim, kicks ass.

I also now get those jokes from Beerfest. "I don't like submarines. Had a bad experience in one once," said Jürgen Prochnow, playing the BBEG from Beerfest. Okay, I didn't need to read Das Boot to get this, just see the movie, since Prochnow also played the Commander (Herr Kaleuen, The Old Man, Herr Kapitänleutnant, but only tools call him that). But he was Leo Atreides in the good Dune!

If Das Boot has a flaw, it is not enough Fremen. Actually, though, it does have a non-Dune-based flaw. The first chapter isn't interesting. It's just all the submariners in a bar drinking, peeing on stuff, and throwing people out of the window. I will admit that sounds like an awesome chapter, rather than a flawed chapter, but it's 98 % drinking and only 1 % peeing, which has to make room both for peeing on oneself and on other people.

On the other hand, there are two chapters entitled "Frigging Around," but they are almost the opposite of boring, even though the sailors are bored. They have crazy unexcited officers, mixing together, mmm, lemons and condensed milk (prevents scurvy). And apparently, German U-boat Lords have filthy minds. In fact, the dirty jokes are the best part of the book, even better than pages and pages of sneaking around dodging depth charges and putting up with the mother of all storms. It makes you feel un-funly wet, but that just shows how good is the prose.

The depth charge dodging is once rewarded with each crew member getting half a bottle of beer (you see, there's one bottle aboard for each, for the first kill). The prose made me really want a German beer, exactly, in fact, as if I'd been raised in München and had been on a U-boat for five weeks. (Luckily there was a Bev Mo down the road suitable for such emergencies.) I still suffer the aftereffects, as I would right now, about a week later, like another beer. The prose is that good.

Same goes for the food. The crew had a "feast," once, of pork knuckles and cabbage. I have never wanted a pork knuckle so much in my life. In a pork knuckle, this is why this book is awesome.

And then at the end of the book, everyone has ice cream and marries his favorite French prostitute. Sorry for giving away the ending, but I hope readers read Das Boot anyway.