Jonathan Little: Smirk explained?

Here’s a surprising one: The narrator of Jonathan Littell‘s giant new novel, The Kindly Ones, is named after a current professor of German studies at Emory University, Maximilian Aue, who also goes by Max, as does the character in Littell’s novel. Littell spent time at Emory and had contact with Aue; Littell’s former girlfriend, Claire Nouvet, is also a professor at Emory.

As for the real life Maximilian Aue, one wonders if he has any objections to giving his name to a character who, according to a New York Times story, is a “former Nazi SS officer, who in addition to taking part in the mass extermination of the Jews, commits incest with his sister, sodomizes himself with a sausage and most likely kills his mother and stepfather.”