How It All Began: The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerrilla

By Tess Fragoulis

The modern tales in Stories to Hide From Your Mother provide directions for conduct in a difficult world, filled with hysterical wedding parties, abusive lovers, and judgmental mothers. In Stories to Hide From Your Mother , the body plays a central role--a site of lurid spectacle and misplaced lust; and the various characters--a woman who obsesses over a young man on a bus, another who regularly confronts her lover's wife in dreams--wear their moral ambiguities on their sleeves as sacrificial signs of life. The women in Fragoulis' intense, visceral stories are outsiders--social outlaws redeemed by their fixations and temptations, informed and infested by tradition, etiquette, and transgressive fluids. Fraught with danger, these Stories to Hide From Your Mother will leave you shaking to the core.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1551520451
• ISBN13: 9781551520452
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
• Length: 156 Pages

Customer Reviews

Destroying What Destroys You

Perhaps one of the most important nonfiction books of the Cold War, "How It All Began" is the rare story from the terrorist's unapologetic point of view.The June 2nd Movement that Michael Baumann took part in and writes about was a product of its times; its members were bored students and hippies, tired of the paranoia of a culture focused solely on not being communist. In 1969, news of American college rebellions and "love-ins" flowed into Germany and ignited a youth culture. At the same time, news of wars and global chaos ignited youth activism. The young Germans who objected to the Vietnam war did so as strongly as their counterparts in the States--though, of course, to even lesser effect. Baumann writes that the resulting frustration made it easy to protest a little more strongly against the status quo, to take more aggressive actions. Vandalism here, arson there--and frighteningly soon, loose groups became tight-knit commando cells; students like Baumann became specialists in bomb-building, napalm, and burglary. The West German government was only too happy to match the terrorist actions with raids, secret police tactics, beatings, and torture.Who was right? No one, of course; in a society where people have learned to respond to violence with more violence, then questions of motive and justification soon fall by the wayside. The motto of Baumann's movement, "destroy what destroys you," perfectly characterizes the irony of the situation, describing a viscous circle that entraps all of the combatants.The idea that Baumann would eventually walk away from all this, that he could found more promise in love than in hate, is the most remarkable part of the book. It's not a novel idea, of course, except that it's real remorse, real willingness towards good coming from a mire of confused evil. All of this actually happened. So cliche or not, I was glad to rediscover that good can win, that people can change--and I was glad to find this book.I won't debate whether this book is relevant to today. Personally, I think it is.Note: Baumann was arrested in London in 1981. There is no record of him anywhere after that date. He effectively disappeared.

Dark, voluptuous and forbidden

This book was a surprise-- and a pleasant one. I love short stories for the fact that there's no room in them for the author to hide inadequacies and falterings in the plotline. This book underlines that point in dripping red marker: Tess Fragoulis' voice is strong, sexy and very, very sure of itself. Her mind is full of shadows and her eye sharp and cynical. Her imagery alone is worth 6 stars on 5. Take, for example, this passage from 'How to pick up women' : "His fingers worked expertly as if he were tuning a short-wave radio. Every once in a while he would hit a foreign frequency, and only his tongue filling my mouth kept me from singing out loud in German, Romanian and Basque. That was the summer I became multilingual."But not every moment is that intense. Fragoulis throws in delicious bits of humour as in her tale 'Fragments of the Acropolis':"After we leave, my lover comments on how great it must be to be part of a community where people know each other and are bonded by their history. Where old ladies and young men greet each other amicably.""Are you kidding?" I reply. They weren't greeting each other. The old ladies were chastising the young men for leaving the cafe door open because,"Old people get cold." The men shot back that if they wanted the door closed they could do it themselves. Then they made fun of my lover's earrings. Poor boy, WASP dreams dashed, becomes frightened of a culture where even old ladies don't take ... He looks over at me, worried."'Stories to Hide from your Mother' is the sort of collection where it's hard to pick a favourite, they're all so satisfying. Buy this book if you like short fiction. If you like powerful imagery. If you like tight prose. But please, take Fragoulis' advice and hide it from your mother.

going to the left

Great book describing how a disgrutled german youth goes from being a grumbler to a bomb thrower. he goes from vandalizing expensive cars yelling "walk to work" to bombing police stations. well written, first person account interview style. it drives me nuts it's so hard to find. last time i interlibrary loaned it it came from ten states away. anyone who knows which way the wind blows needs to read this book.