Penology Paraphrased

THE WORLD OUTSIDE--Hans Fallada--Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) thought he had proved by cranial and facial measurements that there is such a thing as a criminal type. Modern criminology loads its dice heavily in favor of environment, says that most criminals are normal human beings to start with. Author Fallada's tragic story tells, better than a cabinet-full of penological statistics, how a human being can become an incorrigible criminal. Twice as potent a book as his best-selling Little Man, What Now? The World Outside may prove too strong a dose for some stomachs, but for those who can take it, it will act as a classic purge.

German Author Fallada's tale is laid in Germany, but its application is wider. Victim-hero is Willi Kufalt, middle-class young man of average intelligence and sensibilities, who is just finishing a five-year stretch for embezzlement. When his story opens he is no longer the youth he was or might have been; prison has shown him many a rope. A model convict, he has learned to trust nobody, to look out for himself at anyone's cost. His family and friends have cast him off. He knows it will be hard to go straight but the fear of prison makes him try. He goes to Hamburg, voluntarily enters a home for ex-convicts, slaves in a typewriting sweatshop for the pittance that will keep him alive. When he and his fellow-slaves hear of a big job their boss is about to get, they form a company of their own, get the contract by a low bid. But they are unable to trust each other; the scheme breaks up in mutual betrayal, with Kufalt as scapegoat. The police let him off. For a while longer he tries to make an honest living on his own. but with no luck. Finally he blackmails a fellow-crook, gets enough money to leave Hamburg.

Back in his prison town, he lands a job canvassing subscriptions for a local paper, does so well at it that he begins to act and feel like a settled citizen. He courts a shopkeeper's daughter, is soon to be married when he is arrested on suspicion of robbery. The charge is false and Kufalt is released, but the damage is done. His job and his girl lost, he leaves town again, goes back to Hamburg. Now he is through with the hopeless, devious pretense of being an honest man. He finds an old prison acquaintance, plans a robbery on a big scale. But because Kufalt is too inept, the other pulls it off without him. In revenge Kufalt tries to double-cross him, succeeds only in getting them both arrested. Back in prison, this time for seven years, he is definitely glad. "Here a man was in perfect peace. No one could talk to him. Here a man never needed to make up his mind-here there was no need for effort. An admirable place. He was utterly at home."

The strength of Author Fallada's story lies in its showing, without any sentimental fuss, the gradual disintegration of a man with normal feelings and desires into a pathological specimen: the progress of a tragic hero into a resigned villain. Readers who breathed in sympathy with his pathetic young couple in Little Man, What Now? will feel a deeper shudder as they look into the mirror of The World Outside.

The Author pronounces his name Fal-la-da, but his friends call him by his real name, Rudolf Ditzen. A Pomeranian lawyer's son, Ditzen was many things in turn and nothing long before he settled down to be a writer. After tries at farming, clerking, bookkeeping, dealing in provisions, he wrote two novels, both failures. He wandered six years in a private wasteland, wrote nothing. Then he married, began to write again, this time a political novel (Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben) which critics applauded. His next (Little Man, What Now?) drew critical sniffs but popular plaudits, came out in twelve foreign translations within a year, was turned into a fair cinema (TIME, June 11). On the strength of this success Author Ditzen bought a farm in Pomerania, at 41 lives there shyly, quietly with his wife and two children. The World Outside has already been published in twelve countries, not counting Germany.

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