Disturbing, queer things these—two unconnected novellas ["Absent without Leave" and "Enter and Exit"] in one thin volume—tales told in the first person by German males who, like the author, were of military age during World War II. The reader must bring to each his own understanding of Germans and the war, for the principal materials used by Heinrich BÖll are blanks and holes.

He uses the qualities of nothingness as a modern sculptor does, which sounds like a rotten idea, but he makes it work like a dream. Take the second of the tales, "Enter and Exit." It begins with the first day of the war, and ends with the day of the narrator's return to peace. There is not one word about what happened between those two days. Hey presto! Do what you will with the missing six years.

"Enter and Exit" is easy reading. The two days are odd but natural. The other novella ["Absent Without Leave"] which has the same title as the whole book, is a royal pain, a mannered, pretentious, patronizing, junky sort of Notes From the Underground. It seemed a sophomoric piece of work to me. I couldn't imagine the narrator, even though he did his best to tell me wry, funny, warm stories about himself in the war. He was apparently a yardbird, a foul-up, a Sckweik, a coward and a fool in the Nazi scheme of things, but he didn't amuse me much.

What burned me up especially was his explicit refusal to tell me this or that, things that would be interesting to know. "The pastor's words at her graveside were so embarrassing," he said of his mother's funeral, "that I prefer not to repeat them." He refused to say what she looked like, too. On his relationship with his wife he said, "It is neither my purpose nor within the scope of my capabilities even to try and describe, let alone explain, the power of love," and so much for that.

The suspicion might be too easily aroused that his work is anti-militarist or even pro-disarmament or anti-armament. "Oh no," he said a little farther on, "I am concerned with something much more exalted. . . . with love and innocence." I thanked heaven that he had at last told me something mildly useful, but then he booted that by asking, "Who can describe innocence? Not me. Who can describe the happiness and ecstasies of love? Not me." He refused to try.

So I threw the book across the room. And then I understood: The narrator was being so absurd and evasive, his story was so full of holes because there were so many things he dared not let himself remember. What were they? Who knows? Each reader has to guess. So we had another story built mainly of nothing—not a nothing sandwich like "Enter and Exit," but a very airy and stale Swiss cheese.

I approve. Does anybody really need to go over the nauseatingly familiar details of World War II yet again? Why not call the era "X," or do what Böll has done, which is to leave a blank, and then go on to the more profound business, as Böll does, of what the effects of "X" or blank were on various human souls?

"I urge everyone to go absent without leave." On the basis of skimpy clues, I hazard the guess that he attempted rather ineffectually to get out of serving in the war, was severely humiliated and punished for it and finally decided that he might as well do what everybody else was doing, which was serve in the war.

He recommends desertion to the young of today, with this warning: "But watch out when they start shooting! There are some idiots who aim to hit!" In other words, the alternative to dishonor is frequently death. And, from the way the narrator fails to tell his story, the young of today can also learn that the results of service in a bad cause, voluntary or involuntary, can be holes in the memory and a half-dead soul.