Tiglath-Pileser the Third…
- His name is Howard W. Campbell, Jr., our narrator tells us, and he was born an American, got a rep as a Nazi, and chooses to be nationless. Hmmm… Might be worth a quick look at our take on the novel's epigraph really quick, right about now.
- Campbell also lets us know he jotted this memoir down in 1961 for Tuvia Friedmann, Director of the Haifa Institute for the Documentation of War Criminals.
- Friedmann wants as much info as possible on Nazi war crimes. As indication of this commitment, Friedmann has given Campbell a typewriter, stenographer services, and access to research assistants to help corroborate his story. Swank.
- Campbell is writing this all behind bars in Israel.
- Worth noting, Campbell says, is the type of typewriter: it was made in Germany during WWII and still supplies a key on the keyboard with a swastika on it. Jeepers.
- Campbell says this key is "ancient history" (1.12) because no one uses such typewriters anymore, even though he heavily made use of the symbol in his own correspondence during his time in Germany.
- Campbell describes his war crimes, the stones of his cell, and the collective memory of those around him surrounding WWII as "ancient history."
- Campbell notes that the eighteen-year-old guarding his cell, Arnold Marx, knows nothing about the war. He was born in Israel, never left, and wants to be a lawyer.
- Marx and his dad spend their weekends excavating the ruins of Hazor—a Canaanite city in Palestine that was invaded and burned down by an Israelite army, rebuilt by King Solomon, and then burned down again by Tiglath-pileser the Third in 732 BCE.
- Marx tells all this to Campbell, who is unaware of this particular strain of ancient history. Marx offers to bring Campbell a book on it.
- Campbell is appreciative, but he doesn't think he has time for "remarkable Assyrians" (1.34) like Tiglath-pileser, since he's got Germans on the brain. We're talking Paul Joseph Goebbels (Campbell's old boss) here.
- Marx hasn't heard of the dude.
- Campbell imagines himself being buried in dust of the Holy Land. What must be in the layers below him? Primitive kitchens, temples, a famous Assyrian?