The Kindly Ones and the “Scorched Earth” Principle

A Joycean notion borrowed from military history, the 3scorched-earth´ principle entails exploring specific narrative strategies or themes to the fullest, as if to exhaust them as artistic or ideological resources. The Kindly Ones seems to seek a maximal, sequel-preempting development of the theme of a Nazi perpetrator who represents himself as a victim. This paper discusses the enhancement of motifs and narrative strategies (such as the unreliable narrator, reader-entrapment, and allusion as a principle of plot-construction) at the service of this agenda, while underlining corresponding motifs and techniques in Flaubert, Joyce, Hemingway, Pasternak, and Nabokov. Of course, scorched earth cannot be expected to lie fallow for long.