In the bookshop the other day I saw a book called Hitler’s Piano Player. While I don’t doubt that the book is well researched etc., the title alone seemed like an unintentional satirical jibe at the Hitler industry. In a few years (unless they’ve already appeared of course), the barrel will doubtlessly be further scraped as the accounts of Hitler’s masseuse, barber, and personal cook are given book-length treatments. In terms of entourage, the F�hrer even puts Elvis in the shade. Of course any tangentially relevant scribble would be gratefully received by Jack Gladney, protagonist of Don DeLillo’s great 1980s novel White Noise and founder of North America’s first program in Hitler Studies. Some of the laugh-out-loud passages concern Gladney’s flailing attempts to speed-learn German before he hosts an international conference on his area of expertise:”We advanced to three lessons a week. He [Gladney’s teacher] seemed to shed his distracted manner, to become slightly more engaged. Furniture, newspapers, cardboard boxes, sheets of polyethylene continued to accumulate against the walls and windows–items scavenged from ravines. He stared into my mouth as I did my exercises in pronunciation. Once he reached in with his right hand to adjust my tongue. It was a strange and terrible moment, an act of haunting intimacy. No one had ever handled my tongue before.”I’ve come across a site (via Rake’s Progress) that provides some interesting annotations (well, interesting if you’re interested in writing) on the opening page of perhaps DeLillo’s best work. Apparently he initially wanted to call the book “Panasonic” (not a bad name) but the Matsushita Corporation had an issue with it.