The year, specifically my NYRB Classics subscription, is off to a good start. I've got my January book, which is very much of interest to me as it is not only in part set in Vienna, but also about the earlier part of the 20th century and about the early-ish days of filmmaking. Score on several fronts. The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel is an autobiography just over 300 pages, somewhat densely written but so far very chatty and interesting going. She knew knew writers and artists and actors and filmmakers and has lots of stories to share. I'm hoping it will be a fly-on-the-wall get a peek into a long gone world. Better than any historical fiction really, right?
Salka was born in 1889 in Galicia, the part of Poland that belonged to Austria and now is called Carpatho-Ukraine part of the Soviet Union. It sounds as though the book is broken into roughly three sections--her early life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire--Berlin, Prague and Vienna, then the war years and particularly her experiences on the homefront, and then her life in America and Hollywood.
She was a stage actress initially, I believe, but then went on to work in film. She was a close friend and confidante of Greta Garbo. I think many actors who started out in silent films (I'm not sure exactly if this is the case for her) had a hard time switching over to talkies, but I know she did eventually become a screenwriter. Like much of Hollywood in that era she was blackballed in the 40s. Eventually she emigrated to Switzerland where one of her sons lived.
I've just barely started reading, so let me share how the book begins and set the scene for further adventures to come.
"Long, long ago, when I was very young, a gypsy woman said to me that I would escape heartbreak and misfortune as long as I lived close to water. I know that it is rather trite to being a story with prophecies, especially when they are made by gypsies, but luckily this prediction did not come true. It was utterly irrelevant as far as the happiness or misery in my life was concerned, how near or distant I might be to a body of water. But I cannot deny that some of my inner storms would subside when I looked at the crested waves of the Pacific or listened to the murmur of an Alpine brook. And so I could never forget the prophecy of the gypsy which also evoked the landscape of my childhood and the house near the river, where I grew up. The name of the river was the Dnjester. It was young and wild where we lived, flowing only a short distance from its source in the Carpathian mountains in a pebble-lined bed, shallow in some parts, then suddenly deep and turbulent in others, following an irregular and unregulated course to the black sea."
That has set my imagination racing and I have high hopes the rest of the book will be as lush and descriptive and I will find Salka as fascinating as I expect her to be.
Usually NYRB sends a freebie book as part of the subscription, though last year I never received mine and this year seems to be following the same course. I am hoping still, it will show up. Not to be greedy or anything. But when the writing is as good as this, and their books are almost always keepers, of course I won't ever say no to a freebie.
I suspect I will have more to share or say about this as I read. Curiously for me, I have three nonfiction books in progress at the moment. And a three day weekend to look forward to. Bring on the reading time, please.