Esta es la obra con la que Böll, a sus 48 años, se situó definitivamente, por así decirlo, en el centro de la conciencia alemana, no solamente de la literaria sino sobre todo de la moral y política y religiosa. Católico ferviente, Böll se ha sentido obligado a manifestar su repugnancia ante las formas de adulteración y preversión del catolicismo que, desgraciadamente, ciertos elementos representativos del catolicismo alemán han creído conveniente adoptar con el fin de defender posiciones de poder político. A través de la irónica y a la vez conmovedora historia de "su payaso", Böll quiere volver al catolicismo la conciencia de su espiritualidad y de sus deberes de caridad y sus humildes y patéticas pasiones individuales. La profunda seriedad del tema se expresa a través de una centelleante superficie de paradojas con lo que el libro seduce y divierte antes de obligar a pensar. No en vano ha sido éste el mayor bestseller de la posguerra alemana. ( )

I suppose this is the German version of the "angry young man" novel. Comedian Hans Schnier has had a kind of professional meltdown after his girlfriend Marie breaks up with him and goes off to get respectably married to someone else; with his last few Deutschmarks he retreats to his Bonn apartment and tries to take stock.

He blames Marie's Catholic friends who have been pressuring her to give up her sinful cohabitation with Hans, but widens this into a more general disgust with his wealthy parents, with Bonn, with the CDU, with the booming Wirtschaftswunder society that is obsessed with respectability and appearances but refuses to think about anything that it might have done wrong before 1945, and with the men in bars who are so happy to talk nostalgically about their good old days in the war at the drop of a hat.

Hans has made a stand against the hypocrisy of the world around him by dropping out of school and running away with Marie to build a stage career for himself, but after six years on tour this doesn't seem to have solved anything, and he has simply humiliated himself in the eyes of the world. Ironically, though, Böll seems to be suggesting that it's only by embracing this humiliation that he can start the process of reconciling himself with those around him. When we leave him in the last chapter he may be at the very bottom of his trajectory, but it seems that the only way is up.

In a way, this seems to be a bit like having your cake and eating it: Böll manages to enjoy the best part of 250 pages ranting against the hypocritical values of postwar German society in general and the Catholic Church in particular from the point of view of a radical atheist, but then plucks what looks very like a Kierkegaard-style Christian reconciliation out of it at the end. Very sixties, of course! ( )

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Fantastischer, fast vollkommener Roman -- Böll vermag, die Ansichten, Besessenheiten und logischen Rätsel eines aus seiner kleinen moralischen Welt ausgestiegenen Jungen mit Tiefe darzustellen, ausgerechnet wenn der Autor selbst nicht so jung war. Zu solchem ist der Roman geschaffen!!! Schade, dass so viele im Augenblick des ersten Abdrucks nichts des Jungen Gedanken kapiert haben, außer seine Abneigung zu Einfältigkeit, die sie ganz faul für Religionsfeindlichkeit nahmen. ( )