The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures is told from the point of view of Bernd Zeiger, a Stasi agent who once wrote the manual on interrogation and mental manipulation but who, nearing retirement, is now doing humdrum work. He is, however, asked to help search for a colleague’s son who recently disappeared. The case intrigues him only because another young person is missing, a young woman who works at the restaurant where he eats every morning, Lara. Surely he can look for both at the same time.

At first, my impression was that he was some Stasi bully who may have an obsessive sexual fascination for the woman, but as the story progresses, it became clear there were layers to his obsession that made it far more complex and interesting than a Stasi bully about to extort sex from a woman.

At the same time, he is haunted by an old case when he betrayed his neighbor and friend, a scientist named Held who specialized in quantum entanglement, how when two particles become connected, they stay connected when they become separated, even when separated no matter how far the distance. Zeiger and Held became entangled and now separated by Held’s imprisonment and Zeiger’s betrayal and all the intervening years, they remain entangled, Zeld is with Zeiger every day. He carries him in his head.

The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures is an excellent book. There is this grim sort of humor that frequently made me smile, almost against my will. For example, Zeiger makes his morning coffee with KaffeMix, “This was not coffee, it was coffee, pea flour, and disgrace.” Now, that’s funny. Thinking about TV news anchors, he thought “Anchors were unearthly beings, inhabitants of a realm untouched by the pain of their words.” That’s mostly true here, too.

The language in this book is pure magic. Silence coagulates, the world throws mysteries in passing, the hall of the Ministry where he worked was “all echo, iron, and polished teak.” His office is room with many desks that “reeks of furnace oil and polyester perspiration” while at the same time the vent merely “stirred the air with pained, human sighs.” Hofmann uses language with such precision. I imagine her writing a sentence that expresses an idea or action and then stopping to consider whether she could make it more precise, more evocative. But then, Zeiger is a man of precision, too. It’s fitting that the language of the book reflect his own dour exactitude.

This is an excellent book and one I will long remember for the language. I am going to think of silence coagulating whenever I am in a waiting room where nobody talks to anybody. I might not remember the plot because it had no precision and I often wondered why, where, and when Zeiger was taking us. I may not remember the route, but I will remember the ride.

The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures at Little, Brown and Co. | Hachette Book Group
Jennifer Hofmann Interview by Sally Whitehill

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