The Boys from Brazil is unlike the literary novels that I usually read. Ira Levin handles some crucial elements of storytelling superbly, with power and delicacy - while refining others down to their bare outlines.
The first two sections of this diary analyze novels in general: what are the main ingredients that make novels work? and how is genre fiction different from literature? This background will help clarify the lines that Levin built his book on, and how it's an excellent thriller, but middling as literature. Which is no flaw, per se: Levin set out to build a suspense juggernaut - and succeeded.
After considering The Four Prime Dimensions of Novels and Genre Fiction vs. Literature, we explore the superb plot powering this book, which is the story, a puzzle, and two hunts all at once. Levin fills his plot in with just enough character exploration and colorful writing, to balance his machine of flawless logic with humanity and flair.
The Four Prime Dimensions of Novels
I'm making this up as I go along. If you don't like my System of Fiction, or disagree with some of my elements, please share your own views in comments below. If you can make my hypotheses about novels go Boom!, it will make our debate lively, and hopefully illuminating.
Novels have four prime dimensions: World, Plot, Characters and Style. Great novels explore and create on all these levels. Yes, sure, you can posit dozens of other dimensions (and please do!) - Originality, Ideas, Passion, Depth, Dialog, et al. - but I find these four work well as primary colors, so to speak, in the art of fiction.
World is where the story happens. Some writers only paint brief facades, just splashes of color for the characters to run past in their breakneck action. Others write books for the World-building: they want to daydream a place down to its acorns and blades of grass, and need a book just to hold it all. Tolkein and Rowling spent years imagining their Worlds, working out details and fitting them all together, before they published their fantasy books. Because they put such care into that work, the magic in their pages feels more personal and convincing than other writers' spells.
Writers are storytellers first. Plot is the beating heart that drives a book's pulse, and keeps readers turning pages to find the next development. Plot is also Ira Levin's greatest skill, and what he's most interested in. Stephen King said Levin is "the Swiss watchmaker of suspense novels, he makes what the rest of us do look like cheap watchmakers in drugstores."
A novel needs at least one believable and interesting Character: a hero/ine we care about (or a villain we hate). More than one is much better. The more developed characters a story has, the more deeply it explores its main ones, and the more they show different sides and evolve in response to events, the more we readers will get drawn into the book's human drama. We want characters to have quirks and inner conflicts; to speak in distinctive voices; to stay true to their essence, yet sometimes surprise us.
My fourth dimension is a grab-bag of various qualities the other categories didn't cover. Style is different in kind from the others, as time is from the three spatial dimensions. It is the author's distinctive voice, infusing every page they write. It includes an author's particular concerns (that keep appearing in their fiction), their entire craft and the way they wield it. Some authors stamp themselves on every line - read two lines by Emily Dickinson or E. E. Cummings, and you'll know who wrote them. Some authors handle their narrators (or the flow of time and thought, or any of a million other details) in ways that no one else could write just so.
Certain authors craft a distinctive style, which captures and crystallizes a particular kind of story - so that hundreds of other authors can follow in their footsteps. These genre-creators either invent or expand a province of fiction. Writers who have created genres include Sir Walter Scott (Historical Fiction), Jane Austen (Romance), Arthur Conan Doyle (Mysteries), Jules Verne and H.G. Wells (Science Fiction), and J.R.R. Tolkien (Epic Fantasy).
There's a cautionary tale here, of how immense Originality can ossify into imitation. Each of those genre-creators devoured libraries full of influences, then mixed up all their favorite literary ingredients in the cauldrons of their own distinctive personalities. There, they each cooked up a brand new kind of story. But these new voices they discovered were so powerful and enchanting, that followers were enthralled, and slavishly reproduced their rich, living spells as formulae. Writers who came after them copied every element these genre-creators had discovered, in the same order - often, with only a fraction of the vital spark found in the creators' brave inventions.
Genre Fiction vs. Literature
Each genre is founded on a formula, which shapes its cosmos from its gods down to its dirt. Similar plots, stakes, settings, characters and styles of speech recur in thousands of books across a given genre. Some authors rely purely on these stock elements, to churn out hundreds of cookie-cutter books that all taste the same. Others start with the formula, but then bend rules and add spices, to craft a fresher version. Occasionally authors pour all their soul and craft into the formula, and manage to create an original novel that transcends its genre. 1984 is Science Fiction, but it also is universal literature. However, each genre is mostly filled with cookie-cutter product, and remarkably few genre writers win Nobels or Pulitzers for crafting great novels.
The literati who judge Literature (and award its prizes) are often snobs, who look down their noses at Genre Fiction. This snobbery is a reaction against how formulaic so much Genre Fiction is, and how it short-changes the deeper and more individual aspects that Literature focuses on. Reading Genre books is a more extrovert experience, like watching a movie; whereas Literature also engages our inwardness, like meditation. In Genre books the Plot is paramount: Plot is a rollercoaster the reader rides, all about twists, crises and triumphs. This precise rollercoaster ride is what the genre's formula was designed to provide. The book's World is filled in enough to feel familiar, to make the reader comfortably at home. People who only read in one genre don't want to explore in all directions, they want to go on pretty much the same ride, again and again and again. Plot and World are the more extrovert, cinematic or amusement-ride aspects of a novel.
More inward explorations of human nature are found in a book's Characters. The individuality of the writer, their personal flourishes and flights of fancy, are expressed in their Style. In Genre Fiction, Characters and Style are pared back, to make room for a bigger rollercoaster. Genre Fiction doesn't often explore the relationships and developments between several rounded characters. We readers still get one or two Characters to care about - the hero/ine is our roller-car to ride, as we watch the Plot whiz by through their eyes. But reading Genre is a more passive experience than Literature. We don't open up our sense of wonder, we don't stretch ourselves to find new elements of humanity, and we don't collaborate in creating the story.
But I generalize. Ambitious writers in any genre will find ways to add glimmers of depth to their story. Ira Levin didn't write Literature, but he crafted brilliant suspense novels around startling big ideas, and he leavened this story with just enough humanity to keep readers fully invested in his puzzle and hunts. Levin didn't churn out potboilers, he had talent, and he spent years working on each of his seven novels. He had a feel for the zeitgeist, and a knack for plots to grab his readers' attention. His three most successful thrillers each hit popular culture like meteors (and made gripping movies): Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil.
An Evil Nazi Plot to create The Fourth Reich
Ira Levin had this magnificent idea in 1976, just when readers were ready for it. WWII had faded three decades into our rearview, but the Final Solution still chilled our hearts and filled us with horror. Rumors whispered of middle-aged Nazis lurking in South America, against all notions of Justice. Levin's Plot was like a streamlined Porsche engine, and it was resonant and intricate enough that - once he found his epiphany - he just needed to follow its implications, to build a thriller that would speed from start to finish, and hug every corner along the way. The Nazi Plot required a certain kind of hero; the necessary villain was obvious; and the science and mystery, the puzzle and the hunts all followed from Levin's first premises.
The man in white put his snifter aside and said, "Let's get down to business now, boys." Tipping his cropped gray head, he pushed his glasses lower on his nose and looked at the men over them. They faced him attentively, cigars poised. Silence took the room; only a low whine of air conditioning persisted against it.
"You know what you're going out to do," the man in white said, "and you know it's a long job. I'll fill you in on the details now." He leaned his head forward, looking down through his glasses. "Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years," he said, reading. "Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland, and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977."
He sat back and looked at the men again. "Why must these men die? And why on or near their particular dates?" He shook his head. "Not now; later you can be told that. But this I can tell you now: their deaths are the final step in an operation to which I and the leaders of the Organization have devoted many years, enormous effort, and a large part of the Organization's fortune. It's the most important operation the Organization has ever undertaken, and 'important' is a thousand times too weak a word to describe it. The hope and the destiny of the Aryan race lie in the balance. No exaggeration here, my friends; literal truth: the destiny of the Aryan people - to hold sway over the Slavs, and the Semites, the Black and the Yellow - will be fulfilled if the operation succeeds, will not be fulfilled if the operation fails. So 'important' isn't a strong enough word, is it? 'Holy,' maybe? Yes, that's closer. It's a holy operation you're taking part in. . . .
"All the men are sixty-five?" Hessen asked, looking puzzled.
"Almost all," the man in white said. "That is, they will be when their dates come around. A few will be a year or two younger or older." He lifted aside the paper from which he had read the countries and numbers, and picked up the other nine or ten sheets. "The addresses," he told the men, "are their addresses in 1961 or '62, but you shouldn't have any trouble locating them today. Most are probably still where they were. They're family men, stable; civil servants mostly - tax examiners, principles of schools, and so on; men of minor authority." . . .
Farnbach, taking the sheet, leaned forward, his hairless brow-ridge creased into a frown. "All of them elderly civil servants," he said, "and by killing them we fulfill the destiny of the Aryan race?"
The man in white looked at him for a moment. "Was that a question or a statement, Farnbach?" he asked. "It sounded a little like a question there at the end, and if so, I'm surprised. Because you, and all of you, were chosen for this operation on the basis of your unquestioning obedience as well as your other attributes and talents."
Farnbach sat back, his thick lips closed and his nostrils flaring, his face flushed.
The man in white looked at his next clipped-together sheets. "No, Farnbach, I'm sure it was a statement," he said, "and in that case I have to correct it slightly: by killing them you prepare the way for the fulfillment of the destiny, et cetera. It will come; not in April 1977, when the ninety-fourth man dies, but in time. Only obey your orders."
We learn in the first pages about this plan for world domination, for "the Aryan people - to hold sway over the Slavs, and the Semites, the Black and the Yellow"; but we don't know what these Nazis have already done, or how they expect to reach their terrible goal. The details of the plot are almost genius. They're so simple and remarkable that, if anyone ever told you about this book (or movie), they probably revealed the answer to the puzzle in their first two sentences. But the book is shaped around solving that puzzle. The hero, Yakov Liebermann, finds a dozen clues scattered through almost 200 pages, before he finally solves the puzzle. Reading
The Boys from Brazil is supposed to feel like putting a jigsaw picture together, piece by piece. If you already know what that picture will be, the suspense at the heart of the book is lessened.
Despite knowing the answer, I still enjoyed the hunt. Levin put enough layers and complexity into his cat-and-rat game that I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. But not enough that I'd ever want to read this book a second time. The thrill of this book all lies in puzzling over the exact details of the Evil Plot, and in the two ongoing hunts: one by the Nazis trying to kill so many 65-year-old civil servants, another by the team trying to thwart and bring them to justice. Levin also gives us two compelling main characters, three stages of action, and sparse but punchy descriptions - enough realism to keep his world from feeling like cardboard.
The Nazi who devised this plot, and brings the demonic energy behind it, is "the man in white" in the quote above. He's hiding in his lair in the Brazilian jungle, bickering with the colonels who run "the Organization", and bullying his underlings. He's slightly cracked, with the dangerous unpredictability that entails. Levin handles his moodswings and outbursts nicely: drama pinned down with accurate insights into bipolar and paranoid behavior.
Yakov Liebermann, our hero, is a once-famous Nazi-hunter fallen into a decline:
Watching Liebermann nodding and shaking hands down the line, Beynon was dismayed to see how much the man had aged and diminished since their last meeting some two years before. He was still a presence, but no longer as massive or implicit with bearish strength as he had been then; the broad shoulders seemed pulled down now by the raincoat's scant weight, and the then-powerful face was lined and gray-jowled, the eyes weary under drooping lids. The nose at least was unchanged - that thrusting Semitic hook - but the mustache was streaked with gray and wanted trimming. The poor chap had lost his wife and a kidney or such, and the funds of his War Crimes Information Center; the losses were recorded all over him - the crushed and finger-marked old hat, the darkened tie knot - and Beynon, reading the record, realized why his inner self had blocked that return call. His guilt swelled, but he squashed it, telling himself that to avoid losers was a natural and healthy instinct, even - or perhaps especially - to avoid losers who had once been winners.
Liebermann is by far the most complex and human character in the book. We see his offices in Vienna, his arguments with his landlord, his loyal few employees, his family and memories of his wife. Beyond Brazil and Austria, there are dozens of civil-servants marked for death. So we travel to several other countries, and learn the backstories of a few of these victims. As Stephen King said, Levin's plotting is like the best Swiss watch: perfect, intricate, running smoothly, fascinating to observe.
The Boys from Brazil isn't literature. Many of the subtle wonders I enjoyed in An Artist of the Floating World aren't here at all. But, like Michael Crichton at his best, it's a dandy Airplane Book. If you're not looking to immerse your soul - if instead you want a book full of interest and entertainment, while you're waiting in an airport or crammed between strangers, unwinding in a hotel or lounging on a beach - then The Boys from Brazil is an exciting escape.