Books, Arts & Manners: Boll’s ‘Lost’ Novel

A Soldier’s Legacy, by Heinrich Boll (Knopf, 131 pp., $11.95)

My advice to young novelists: don’t ever throw out anything you’ve written. Cop a little international success and it’ll all be “found” again. (I keep everything, along with the 408 unused spools of dental floss given me by one well-meaning oral hygienist or another since 1954. Some day, in fact, I may write an early, “lost” novel.) This book must’ve come straight from Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll’s old WW II footlocker—written in 1947, at age thirty (his first novel wasn’t published until 1949). A fetal thing it is: finger bud and the suggestion of some interesting visage are there. But if, like most, you read five books per year, feel free to miss this one.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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A Soldier’s Legacy, by Heinrich Boll (Knopf, 131 pp., $11.95)

My advice to young novelists: don’t ever throw out anything you’ve written. Cop a little international success and it’ll all be “found” again. (I keep everything, along with the 408 unused spools of dental floss given me by one well-meaning oral hygienist or another since 1954. Some day, in fact, I may write an early, “lost” novel.) This book must’ve come straight from Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll’s old WW II footlocker—written in 1947, at age thirty (his first novel wasn’t published until 1949). A fetal thing it is: finger bud and the suggestion of some interesting visage are there. But if, like most, you read five books per year, feel free to miss this one.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.