A Work in Progress

Inspiration for German Literature Month

Here we are heading towards the end of November and reading has been going on all month for the tenth annual German Literature Month already, so I am very tardily going to share a stack of books that might be read now (or later in my case).  I am reading one of the books with my sights set on another one to sneak in before the end of the year.  But the beauty of a pile of books is that they can be read and enjoyed anytime.  

My current read from this pile is After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life That Came Next by Jana Hensel.  I have been interested for a while now in the former GDR and this is proving a really interesting read.  So many of us can look back fondly on childhoods spent elsewhere and maybe even return to the locale and still feel a sense of what came before.  Hensel's childhood has all but disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  

As a companion read I cam across and have borrowed from the library Savid F. Strack's Letters Over the Wall: Life in Communist East Germany.  Strack was a German language teacher who kept up a decades long correspondence with four East Germans.  I can't wait to dig into this one.

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann -- "In Malina, Bachmann uses the intertwined lives of three characters to explore the roots of society's breakdown that lead to fascism, and in Bachmann's own words, "it doesn't start with the first bombs that are dropped; it doesn't start with the terror that can be written about in every newspaper. It starts with relationships between people."

Gilgi, One of Us by Irmgard Keun -- "Gilgi knows where she's going in life: she's ambitious, focused and determined, even when her boss tries it on with her, even when her parents reveal a terrible secret on her twenty-first birthday. Then she meets the charming but feckless Martin and, for the first time, Gilgi finds herself bewilderingly and dangerously derailed. Irmgard Keun's electrifying debut was an instant sensation in Weimar Germany, with its frank, fearless exploration of sex, work and love."

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder -- "Funder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of theresistance against East Germany's communist dictatorship in these harrowing, personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain--and, especially, of life under the iron fist of the Stasi, East Germany's brutal state security force."  A very different perspective on life behind the Wall.

The Have-Nots by Katharina Hacker -- "Jakob and Isabelle meet at a party on September 11. They marry and move to London, where Jakob takes the post of a colleague killed in the World Trade Center attack. But the couple's relationship, like the world they once knew and the happiness they once shared, proves more fragile with each passing day."

And a recent find and perhaps one (along with the book of correspondence) to read for my December prompt!  I Have No Regrets: Dairies 1955-1963 by Brigitte Reimann -- "Frank and refreshing, Brigitte Reimann's collected diaries provide a candid account of life in socialist Germany. With an upbeat tempo and amusing tone, I Have No Regrets contains detailed accounts of the author's love affairs, daily life, writing, and reflections. Like the heroines in her stories, Reimann was impetuous and outspoken, addressing issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the era of the German Democratic Republic. She followed the state's call for artists to leave their ivory towers and engage with the people, moving to the new town of Hoyerswerda to work part-time at a nearby industrial plant and run writing classes for the workers. Her diaries and letters provide a fascinating parallel to her fictional writing. By turns shocking, passionate, unflinching, and bitter--but above all life-affirming--they offer an unparalleled insight into what life was like during the first decades of the GDR." 

Any good books about the GDR or just interesting novels or nonfiction about Germany that you have read recently?

GermanLit Month Reading Choices

First up for new books for November is the German Literature Month pile of potential reads!  Although I wanted to join in in any case, it was helpful that I am already in progress with Alex Beer's The Second Rider, which is newly published by Europa Editions.  I have been very tempted by most of their newest releases.  And things are not looking good for my pocketbook for their forthcoming books either.  

The Second Rider is a first book in what is likely going to be a series of mysteries set in post-WWI Vienna featuring Inspector August Emmerich.  He is a curious character and I am not sure yet what I think of him.  He fought in the war and has come home 'damaged' as so many men did.  Although he was only wounded he walks with a limp and his leg pains him to the point of needing to rely heavily on pain killers.  He is somewhat taciturn on the surface, but there is a real affection for his partner Luise and her three children.  But things have become complicated in his life--both with a set of murders he is investigating (and which everyone is determined to call suicides) and in his personal life.  There is a very good, though not overdone feeling of place and time to the story and I think this will be a good start to an atmospheric series set in a place I am interested in reading about (but finding a scarcity of novels that take place in Vienna).

A few other books that look interesting and that I want to read (one is on my TBR pile and two are library finds/borrows).

Jarmila by Ernst Weiss is a novella by another Austrian writer who committed suicide in 1940 when the Nazis invaded Paris where he had been living.  "Set in the idyllic landscape of rural Bohemia in the 1930s, this is the tragic love story of Jarmila, the village beauty, and a toy maker who falls under her siren spell. The wife of the far older local feather-merchant, Jarmila enjoys all the pleasures her husband's wealth can buy, yet still longs for true love which she hopes to find in her affair with the penniless toy-maker. When she conceives a child by him, he urges her to leave her husband for a life of love and freedom in New York. Guilt-ridden and suddenly facing a destitute life in a strange country, Jarmila refuses lo leave. Her devastated lover asks for one more meeting and tragedy ensues. The typescript of this novella was discovered recently at Prague University. Stefan Zweig, a friend of Ernst Weiss, believed it to be Weiss' best work."  I have a feeling that the slightness of this book might be misleading and it will be more  challenging that I expect.  From what I have read he was influenced not only by Freud and Kafka but also the writers of "literary Expressionism".  So, we'll see about this one.

Now Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher and translated by Niall Sellar might be far more approachable.  I really want to see the series that is streaming on Netflix, but I wouldn't  mind reading the book (the first of I am not sure how many by the German author).  "It’s 1929 and Berlin is the vibrating metropolis of post-war Germany―full of bars and brothels and dissatisfied workers at the point of revolt. Gereon Rath is new in town and new to the police department.  When a dead man without an identity, bearing traces of atrocious torture, is discovered, Rath sees a chance to find his way back into the homicide division. He discovers a connection with a circle of oppositional exiled Russians who try to purchase arms with smuggled gold in order to prepare a coup d’état. But there are other people trying to get hold of the gold and the guns, too. Raths finds himself up against paramilitaries and organized criminals. He falls in love with Charlotte, a typist in the homicide squad, and misuses her insider’s knowledge for his personal investigations. And as he gets further entangled with the case, he never imagined becoming a suspect himself."

I really want to read Maybe Esther: A Family Story by Katja Petrowskaja and translated by Shelley Frisch, which I am almost certain has either won awards or is up for an award (perhaps a translation award?).  I have seen her writing compared with W.G. Sebald, so it is likely more challenging that I am expecting, too, but I want to give it go anyway.  "In a series of tightly connected stories, Petrowskaja charts a remarkable cast of characters. Her grandfather joined the revolutionary underground and split his branch of the family from the rest. Her great-uncle was sentenced to death for shooting a German diplomat. Five generations of her Jewish relatives dedicated their lives to deaf-and-mute children, and her grandmother ran a school for wartime orphans. Her Ukrainian grandfather spent years in a POW camp and disappeared after the war, only to reappear forty years later. And, finally, the most elusive figure, her great-grandmother whose name may have been Esther. She alone remained in Kiev at the outset of the war and was killed by a Nazi guard outside her house in the city center.  How do you talk about what you can’t know, and how do you make sense of the controversial past? To answer these questions, Petrowskaja reflects on a fragmented and traumatized century, and brings to light family figures who threaten to drift into obscurity. Maybe Esther is a poignant, haunting investigation of the effects  of history on one family as well as a deeply affecting exploration of memory."

I have loads of other books in my TBR that are translated from German, but I am trying to keep the choices narrow so I don't go even more overboard with new books next month than necessary (even as I try and whittle that in progress pile down).  If I finish the Beer novel I will be thrilled and anything more is just a cherry on top of an already sweet treat of a reading month.

Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum

I think there has been a good handful (and likely more than just a handful) of really good novels set in hotels.  As a matter of fact, if done well, and I think Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel (Menschen im Hotel published originally in 1929, NYRB edition translated by Basil Creighton with revisions by Margot Bettauer Dembo) is really done well, they show hotel society as a microcosm of the larger world but played out on a much smaller and more intimate scale.  A panorama of life, if you will.  Vicki Baum's hotel is the Grand Hotel in Berlin of the 1920s.  The Great War is over, life is literally a cabaret, and the drama of life is depicted in all it's vibrant hues.  The cover illustration is very aptly chosen by the way! 

It was easier to get caught up in the drama of some characters' lives more so than others, but then isn't that true of life in general.  From the hotel staff to the guests who come and go through that revolving door (can't you just imagine a truly grand hotel with a revolving glass door attended by a nattily dressed doorman?), the guests are the wealthy and the dreamers, the downtrodden and the schemers.  And the staff are called upon to serve them as their own lives play out downstairs and in back hallways--from the hotel detectives snooping on potential thieves to hall porters whose wives are soon to give birth. 

Interestingly Baum had been creating these characters' lives in her imagination from an early age.  Vicki Baum was born and raised in Imperial Austria, specifically in an affluent Viennese, Jewish family.  Her first published story came at the age of fourteen, and she jotted down sketches of people she encountered on a trip as a girl when vacationing with her family.  This notebook was returned to again and again over time.  First came the inspiration for Herr Otto Kringelein, a bookkeeper in ill health, who comes to Berlin to finally get a real taste of Living (yes, capital L), leaving behind his wife in the provinces.  He wants to get in as many experiences before he dies, with which the Baron will help him.  Baron Gaigern, a handsome cat burglar, was plucked from the headlines some time later in a 1920s newspaper, as well as the haughty General Manager Preysing (who also happens to be the head of the company where Kringelein works).  And a visit to the ballet in Berlin where she watched the "fading" Russian prima ballerina, Anna Pavlovna, brought the addition of Elisaveta Grusinskaya to the cast.  Add in the WWI shell-shocked Dr. Otternschlag and hall porter Senf (husband of the expecting wife) and you have most of the guests and some of the staff of Berlin's Grand Hotel.

If you have ever stayed in a hotel and felt something of a voyeur as you people-watch, that's what you can expect from reading Baum's novel.  There is lots of drama, what you might imagine really happening in a hotel.  Think of a luxurious Baroque hotel in Weimar era Berlin, but cut away the facade and see into all the rooms.  There is Kringelein trying to avoid the worst rooms of the hotel (216 and 218), and Gaigern slipping into Grusinskaya's room to steal her jewelry and then getting caught--wiggling out of his attempted thievery by seducing (and then falling for) the elegant, older Grusinskaya who still has her beauty no matter how faded she may seem.  Otternschlag keeps checking the front desk for messages.  And yes, there is the greedy Preysing wheeling and dealing as he tries to close his biggest business deal yet.  Such naughtiness and goings-on in the Grand Hotel, but only what you would expect.

When Baum published the novel it was to much fanfare and acclaim, though it was not her first book.  It was her tenth (talk about plugging away).  She serialized the story initially over several months in 1929.  Almost immediately it was adapted to the German stage, then translated into English, and when it was published in the US it spent months and months on the bestseller list.  She would then move to Hollywood to help in the adaptation to the silver screen (how many of you have seen the film?  It is now on my list of must-sees).  The movie starred Greta Garbo, the Barrymore Brothers and Joan Crawford.  And Wes Anderson's recent remake Grand Budapest Hotel was a cinematic homage to the story (I had no idea and missed it as well, so another one to watch).  That seems quite a literary and visual, too (with the film adaptations) pedigree. 

Vicki Baum ended up staying in Los Angeles when the Nazis came to power and never returned home and while she wrote a number of other books, I think none were ever as successful or as well known as Grand Hotel (how many other authors have been both lucky and plagued to have one such major hit that overshadows all their other work?).  This is a story that has grown on me considerably the more I think about it after the fact.  It was a good, albeit rocky, reading experience.  I loved certain storylines but I must admit some of the business wheelings and dealings did bog me down and turned the story into an uphill read at times.  I suspect matters were not helped much by the disjointed manner in which I read the novel.  But it is a book I am happy to have read and I still think NYRB (this is one of my NYRB Classics subscription books) can't publish a bad book.  Someday I think I need to revisit it with sharper attention to detail, the detail of the world of Weimar Berlin taking place in the background.  It is quite a rich story, indeed.

Teaser Tuesday: Five

"Every corpse is a clue."  That's what one of the blurbs says on the back of Ursula Archer's debut mystery, Five.  Archer is an Austrian writer who lives in Vienna and has written award winning children's and young adult novels; this is her first for adults.  Five is my first choice for this month's German Literature reading.  I was a little trepidatious when I started reading as the prologue begins "the place where his left ear used to be was throbbing to the rhythm of his heartbeat." 

I guess it has been a while since I have read any really gritty crime novels and too many cozies may have left me a little 'soft' when it comes to descriptions that verge on the gruesome.  While I am still just at the start of the story, I think any details will be just enough to set the scene and move the story along and not gratuitous.  Hopefully there will not be anything too over the top.  I know that as I was reading yesterday I was eagerly turning the pages of the book and getting more and more drawn into the story.

So let me set the scene, introduce Bea to you and then give you a little teaser of Archer's writing.  Imagine an Alpine meadow with the sound of cowbells ringing in the distance.  All is peace and quiet until the body of a woman (the story promises this will be the first among several . . .) is found.  And she has obviously been murdered as her hands are tied behind her back.  The most curious thing about the crime scene, other than this shocking murder, is the corpse is missing her shoes and a series of numbers have been tattooed on the bottom of her feet.

This is our crime (or the first one anyway).  Now, on to a more important aspect of the story.  Detective Inspector Beatrice Kaspary (or, in the story she is called Frau Kommissarin Kaspary by her partner) works alongside Florin Raininger to solve the crime.  I haven't quite gotten a fix on Florin (hopefully more details will be forthcoming)--other than his significant other is called Anneke, but I am learning a little about Bea.  She is a single mother and her relationship to Jakob and Mina's father, Achim, is an uneasy one.  She's already had to call her mother to pick up the children from daycare, and it is not the first time.  Bea is smart and perhaps a little intense and maybe doesn't look after herself as well as she should.  First impressions, however, so I look forward to seeing how close I come to the real Beatrice.  I'm not entirely sure yet where Bea and Florin work, but I think it must be Salzburg as that is where the victim lived. 

Part of what I like about crime novels, other than the unraveling of the crime, is getting to know the detectives and the more the better.  I like knowing their personalities and what their private lives are like.  So here is a little description that might give you a sense of Bea's personality.

"At Florin's insistence, they stopped off at Ginzkey's instead of driving straight back to the office.  'Vegetable curry helps to restore the balance,' he informed her, ordering two portions.  By now, Beatrice was starting to feel like her stomach had been sewn shut.  It was only once the aromatic plate of food was put down in front of her, and she had shoveled in the first mouthful, that her appetite finally kicked back in.  She devoured the entire curry, then ordered some cake and hot chocolate."

"'Sugar therapy,' she explained.  'It generates temporary feelings of happiness.  By the time I feel sick I'll have forgotten everything else.'  She was relieved to see Florin grinning."

Why does all this endear her to me?  I think this is going to be a good read.  Certainly my interest has been well and surely caught.  It is definitely what my reading needed--a little injection of 'new and interesting'!  I wonder if I should be happy or disappointed that this is Archer's first book for adults and first crime novel?  On the one hand I am getting in on the story from the very start, but on the other, there is nothing more for me to buy when I finish this one.   I don't see another Bea Kaspary mystery out there yet!  I'll have to pace myself and not read too quickly, I guess.

German Literature Month: Book Choices

Tomorrow, November 1, kicks off the month long German Literature month hosted by Caroline and Lizzy.  So I have created a stack of books to choose from and we'll see what I can manage in the coming four weeks.  I am hoping to read a short story each weekend (and hope also to give one day over each week to my short stories--maybe Mondays) and then perhaps a crime novel and a novel.  And hopefully that will not be too ambitious.

So, running from top to bottom:

The Duel by Heinrich von Kleist -- It looks like I already read this one several years back, but classics are often well worth revisiting.  It seems I enjoyed it the first time around and the instant (or quicker) gratification of reading something reasonably short is always nice.

Nightdrive: Modern German Short Stories edited by Klaus Humann -- I found this while browsing my library's shelves.  It is a collection of stories by new-to-me German writers.  Many or possibly all the stories are by writers previously untranslated into English.  Shall I read the bios first and choose a story accordingly, or just open the book and start with wherever I happen to land?

The Country Road by Regina Ullmann -- I had my eye on this one when it first crossed my desk at work.  Ullmann is a Swiss writer and these are "nineteenth-century village tales" reminiscent of Adalbert Stifter and Robert Walser (forgot to add him to my pile, but I will be working in earnest on the NYRB book I received in my subscription).

Five by Ursula Archer -- Caroline suggested this one, and as it is written by an Austrian writer, I am hoping it is set in Vienna.  I was very fortunate to have lived in Austria and 'know' (or 'knew' in any case) the city.  I would love to revisit it through the pages of a book, though I think this crime novel might verge on the gruesome with victim's body parts showing up in a "cat and mouse"-type tale.

On Tangled Paths by Theodor Fontane -- I've read and liked Thedor Fontane, and lord knows I need to read more classics.  This is a favorite theme in literature--love across social classes.

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck -- This was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and imagines one woman's live, or rather "lives" in a variety of situations and places--very much in the vein of Kate Atkinson, I think.

The Bridge of the Golden Horn by Emine Sevgi Ozdamar -- I'm leaning heavily towards this one, not least as it has long been on my bookshelves (I think it is not currently in print as well).  The author was born in Turkey but now lives in Berlin and as far as I can tell this was written in German.  "In 1966, at the age of 16, our unnamed heroine leaves our native Istanbul and signs up as a migrant worker in Germany.  Lying about her age, she gets work on as assembly line in West Berlin making radios, and lives in a women's factory hostel."  It sounds like an interesting time, place and experience and would be an interesting look at what I think is a large ethnic group living in the country now.

And this is a little bit of a cheat since Berlin: City of Stones is by American author Jason Lutes but it is not only a graphic novel (I've been trying to add graphic novels into my reading in any case) but it would tie in nicely with my reading this coming month and with my run ins in October with Weimar Germany.  This is the first volume in a planned trilogy (I think the last one is in progress now).  The setting is the last years of Weimar Germany (from September 1928 to May Day 1929).  It focuses on art student Marthe Muller and journalist Kurt Severing.  I think it might complement my other reading nicely.

Now the difficulty of choosing.  I'll be starting with a little crime and a short story and going from there!  I wouldn't mind reading a story set in the former DDR if I can find something that looks interesting and easily obtainable.  Any suggestions?  Otherwise I think I have a nice variety of reading head of me.

And Now for the Hard Task of Choosing

This is what happens when you think about something for too long!  I thought I had a plan for Caroline and Lizzy's German Literature Month, but you know how it goes and how moods change on a whim.  Several whims ago, I had thought Ernst Lothar was my author of choice, but I have reconsidered.  I still do want to read him, but as the book is pretty massive and my reading time seems limited (and then there is still the clean up list), I will try and choose a book that seems more reasonable in length that I can really manage to finish this month.

I have a story collection I want to at least dip into and then one of these books is surely calling my name.

The Ghost-Seer by Friedrich von Schiller - It's a classic, written in the 18th-century.  Of course it is all in how you look at it.  It's a German classic written in the 18th-century!  Even with just over 100 pages it may be more challenging than I think seeing how it is a "fascinating, experimental and deliberately fragmentary work."

The Lord Chandos Letter and Other Writings by Hugo von Hofmannsthal is a collection of stories and this is one I will most definitely dip into. 

The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun - Less than 200 pages and written in the 1930s it was hugely popular when it was published.  It is a "rare portrait of the life of a young German woman at a time when the force of modernity in the Western world was at its most potent."  It is a very strong contender!

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll - I have read Boll before and have meant to read more of his work.  Just over 100 pages this sounds quite intriguing.  "Turning the mystery story on its head, Heinrich Boll begins his novel with the confession of a crime, drawing the reader into a web of sensationalism, character assassination, and unstoppable violence."

Léon & Louise by Alex Capus - The story begins in 1918 about two lovers who get separated, each believing the other is dead.  They reunite decades later but Léon has remarried.  It seems to have gotten very good reviews.

The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller - She is a Nobel winner (as is Boll) who I have long meant to read.  This sounds good but very heavy as it depicts the "landscape of the dispossessed".  It is the story of a seventeen-year old boy who is deported to a Russian labor camp. 

So, I'll start with the story collection and then ponder which novel to choose using the always scientific method of reading the first page or two and seeing which one grabs me. 

So many books, so many reading plans and now so few days left in the year.  My how 2015 has flown by.  I blinked and there it went!

German Literature Month 2015

Now that it's October is it too soon to think about November's reading?  You know what I always say, the next thing to reading is thinking about reading.  Sometimes reading requires a little advance planning and as Caroline has announced the fifth annual German Literature Month in November that she and Lizzy are hosting, I might as well start giving it a little thought so I can clear my piles a bit and maybe start one of my potential reads since it is a chunkster.

You can do as little or as much as you'd like and there are plans for themed reads each week in November.  The only 'requirement' is that the books be originally written in German.  I will likely just try and read one or two books, but I might try and tailor my choices to coincide with their schedule, if I can.

So here's the fun part--looking through my piles and scoping potential reads.  I do have the first choice all ready to go as it is a review copy of a novel I have been looking forward to reading:

The Vienna Melody by Ernst Lothar -- "All Vienna knows that the inhabitant of number 10 Seilerstatte is none other than Christopher Alt, piano maker, the best in Vienna, probably in all of Austria, and possiblly the world over. His piano keys have given life to melodies by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and many more. On his deathbed, moved by the wish to keep his children united, he leaves a will specifying that his descendants, if they are to get their inheritance, must live together in the family home."  I lived for a year in Austria and traveled often to Vienna so I am very much looking forward to this portrait of a family, a home and hopefully a city.  The novel was written in 1944 and has just this summer been reissued by Europa Editions.

Another "Vienna" book I have long wanted to read (had to have it in hardcover when it first came out--and now I think it might even be out of print--yikes) is Eva Menasse's Vienna.  "From this tale's very beginning—the birth of the narrator's father in the middle of a bridge party—the reader is plunged headlong into a novel crowded with voices, characters, tragedy, and joy."  It sounds like it might be a rather circuitous family tale through the twentieth century, but what's one more challenging book to add to my in progress collection?

Something by Stefan Zweig.  Maybe short stories as I have his Collected Stories, which I have dipped into in the past.  Or maybe one of his many novellas.  Something by him, because he is really good and it has been far too long since I have read his work.

If I do read along with the group I might pick up The Ghost-Seer by Friedrich von Schiller.  "For a rich young prince and his loyal companion, Venice promises nothing but unfettered pleasure—until they encounter a mysterious masked Armenian who delivers them a strange prophecy. And when his words prove true, this enigmatic figure develops a deeply sinister influence over them, drawing them into darker forms of 'magic.'  As the narrative progresses, it become increasingly unclear whether the apparitions the prince sees are the manifestations of a troubled spirit world or simply an elaborate hoax."

I should really read something by a woman writer, too.  I might pick up something by Christa Wolf, and I have The Quest for Christa T.  "Christa is a young girl in Hitler's Germany; she survives to embrace the new order but her idealism withers as crass materialists corrode its dream. Her story is the story of a whole generation, and a celebration of the unique value of each human being and all human life."  She seems, however, a very formidable writer, so it might not work to read her as well as the Lothar novel.

So, maybe Herta Müller would work?  I have several of her novels, including The Hunger Angel and The Passport.  The first novel might be a tad too heavy: "In The Hunger Angel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity."  The Passport is "a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu’s dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West."

"Before Sex and the City there was Bridget Jones. And before Bridget Jones was The Artificial Silk Girl."  I find that a most intriguing statement and wonder if it is anywhere near the truth.  It makes it sounds as is the novel is quite light-hearted, and I might need something lighter amongst all these other heavy reads, so I will be pulling Irmgard Keun's novel The Artificial Silk Girl out to round out my pile.

Of course you never know what I might come across between now and November.  A good mystery or crime novel perhaps?  Surely you would think I have something on my shelves.  Maybe you have read a good German novel this year?  Please, do tell, if you have.  Last year there was quite a turn out of readers.  Will you be reading along, too?

Fear by Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig's 1920 novella Fear (Angst in German, translated by Anthea Bell) is the story of one woman's torment when she becomes the victim of a blackmailer.  The catch is she's married and has been enjoying an affair with a pianist.  One day she is seen leaving her lover's apartment by his former mistress.  The woman begins gradually demanding ever larger amounts of money.  The fear of being caught out by her husband causes such agony that she despairs losing everything in her life that is comfortable and happy.  This is a morality tale of sorts, and a gripping one at that.

What is it that makes a woman who appears to have everything take a chance like Irene Wagner takes by having a fling with a man she doesn't even love?  The thrill of the chase?  The idea of an adventure?

"Satiety can be as much of an incitement as hunger, and it was the very safety and security of Irene's existence that made her feel curious and ready for an adventure."

Irene is happily married to a successful lawyer, one of the best known and regarded in the city.  She has two lovely children and a beautiful home.  She leads a completely comfortable middle-class, bourgeois existence.  Her life is, apparently, too calm and contented.  Her life it not unlike other famous heroines--Emma Bovary maybe, or Eline Vere--who glimpse a world of romance in the books they read and the plays they see at the theatre.  A world unlike their own and peopled with romantic figures who lead lives of extravagance.  Into the mixture of this comfortable boredom add one young man filled with "ardent and obvious desire" and a new and exciting passion is sure to ignite.

"Perhaps all that really attracted her to him was a touch of grief lying like a shadow on his rather too interestingly arranged features."

This is not the stuff of her usual mild but meaningless flirtations with other men.  Irene has a certain something and the men of her class pay her "respectful court".  But perhaps it is the added danger attached to this artist.  They meet, they chat.  He pays her attention and shows interest in what she has to say.  Interest moves from curiosity to the sensual sphere, and then all is lost for Irene.  Into her orderly, middle class life she adds a weekly tryst with this young man.  He becomes just one more of her normal pleasures.

It becomes a dangerous game to Irene.  Her life, which was so full of routine, takes on an added and exciting hue.  She begins pushing the boundaries.  Like a top whirling around and around she herself begins to spin out of control. 

"Not since girlhood had she felt so light at heart, with all her senses so animated.  Nothing like it had sent sparks flying through her body, not in the first days of her marriage or in her lover's embrace, and the idea of wasting this strange lightness, this sweet frenzy of the blood, on well-regulated hours seemed unendurable."

And then it happens.  It all comes to a head.  There's a woman waiting in the stairwell.  A knowing look in her eyes.  She knows Irene's name.  Knows what she's been up to.  The threat now, to her placid bourgeois existence is obvious.  In one blink of an eye she can lose everything she took for granted.  The woman bars her way, she has scorn in her eyes and a fierceness in her tone. 

"That's right, oh yes, what they call a real lady, every so respectable!  Not satisfied with her husband and all his money and that, no, not her, she has to go stealing a poor girl's fellow too!"

And so it begins.  The demands for money.  For more and more money.  Irene tells her the affair is over and she will not return to her lover's apartment, but the damage is, of course, done.  And now she is at the mercy of her blackmailer.  Irene feels hunted by this woman who seems to know all about her.  Where she lives.  Where she goes.  Irene now only feels safe outside the house and in the company of her friends and it is a frenzied existence she begins leading.  Again, like that top spinning out of control.

What is most eye opening to Irene is that she realizes how little she actually knows her husband and understands his feelings.  Despite their years together and their intimacies, she finds she cannot even imagine how he will respond to the knowledge of his wife's betrayal. 

Zweig quite brilliantly uses the idea of crime and punishments as meted out by Irene's husband to cast light on the characters.  Irene begins really seeing what her husband is like and his beliefs and how he will regard her own pitiful transgressions.  Will he understand that she was never in love with this other man?  It was only the idea of an adventure which lured her into straying.  Like a demon sitting on her shoulder at all times, this fear eats away at her until she is ready to pull an "Emma Bovary".  And if you've read Flaubert you'll know what I mean.  And if not, I'll just say a trip to the pharmacy and a small purchase of something powdery and lethal is one way out of her troubles.

This could have ended all too predictably.  A woman stumbles.  She has an affair.  She pays.  But Zweig is too much a master of his art to leave the reader with such an expected ending.  This is what I love about Stefan Zweig.  Aside from being an assured storyteller and careful observer of human foibles and shortcomings, he gives the reader something more.  I won't say Irene doesn't pay in her own way.  But there is a stunning twist at the end which leaves something more for the reader to think about when all is said and done.

I have loved everything I have read by Stefan Zweig.  And Fear is yet one more example of why I will keep returning again and again to his work.  He truly is a master of the short story and novella.  His works, slender though they may be, always pack a punch.

I read this last month for Caroline and Lizzy's German Literature Month.  I had hoped to read more of Zweig's short stories and more books translated from German in general, but there never is enough hours in the week to squeeze in all I want to read.  In this case, quality certainly trumps quantity. 

Short Story Sunday: In the Snow

A short post today for a short story.  Two short stories.  I'm not sure I have much to say about either, mostly due to a lack of energy (a weekend spent doing yard work since daylight hours are shorter and it's impossible to do during the work week now--and as it is going to change from fall to winter overnight this coming week).  One I liked very much though it was quite melancholic and the other one was good but maybe just not my own personal cup of tea.

First, the next story in The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig.  "In the Snow" sounds like it might be a cheerful holiday sort of story, however it is anything but.  It does take place on a holiday--the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. 

"A small Medieval German town close to the Polish boarder, with the sturdy solidity of fourteenth-century building: the colorful, lively picture that it usually presents has faded to a single impression of dazzling, shimmering white.  Snow is piled high on the broad walls and weighs down on the tops of the towers, around which night has already cast veils of opaque grey mist."

Darkness is falling, the streets are emptying out and a hush falls over the town.  Inside this house, the largest of the neighborhood which serves not just as a home but as the local synagogue, too, is filled with guests and merrymakers bustling about full of happiness and cheer.  Outside a horseman approaches, dismounts and knocks on the door and immediately all becomes quiet inside.  Knocks on doors don't always announce visitors of good intentions.  A young woman is sent to look out the window and sees it isn't just anyone but her fiancé.

The man had been abroad and when he came upon a vicious crowd--a group of flagellants wreaking havoc upon the community of Jews in his home town (a small town where everyon here has family).  He then followed the looters until nothing and nobody was left.  The house party is filled with fear and anguish and worse--resignation.  "It is the will of God".  Perhaps a common refrain?

The strength of their persecutors is too much and they decide to flee, here and now, despite the cold and snow and with nothing prepared. 

"One man did suggest, timidly, that they might appeal to the other citizens of the town for protection, but a scornful smile was all the answer he got.  Again and again, their fate has always brought the oppressed back to the necessity of relying on themselves and on their God,  No third party could be trusted."

And so they set off.  But the cold and the snow conspires against them even if they are alone and fleeing.  But they are forsaken.  With no one to help them or come to their aid.  I'll let you imagine the rest.

An eloquently told, if disheartening, tale.  Of course Stefan Zweig was Austrian and Jewish.  He was a Humanist though I don't think he ever gave up his Jewish faith entirely.  He left Austria just before the outbreak of WWII settling eventually in Brazil.  So despairing of what was happening in Europe he ended up taking his life. 

"In the Snow" is unlike any of the other stories I have read by Zweig so far.  Though it takes place in Medieval times, it's a bit of history that keeps recurring for the Jews.  I'm not sure when the story was written and published, so it is perhaps prescient in thinking of where history was then leading.  I'm sure it is filled with symbolism as well.  Most heartbreaking is the end and the idea that a new day dawns and the world continues sunny and joyful with new buds growing on the trees, not to be witnessed by this group of people.  A common refrain in Jewish history.

So, good but sad.

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This weekend's New Yorker story, (October 27 issue) "Alan Bean Plus Four" is by actor Tom Hanks.  Did you know he is a writer, too?  I didn't.  Surely the inspiration must have been his own work and the movie he made about the Apollo 13 mission.  The story is a take on flights into space, and in this case on a rocket built and launched from someone's yard.  Not sure how tongue in cheek it is meant to be, though it has its moments, but it definitely bends reality.  I'm not sure why it didn't click with me more.  He is a marvelous actor and his writing's not bad but the story just didn't do anything for me.  I guess it was just not what I was in the mood to read.  You can read the story, too, here.  And check out the Q&A with Hanks here.  I read the Hanks story before I read the Zweig by the way (so it didn't suffer in the wake of a story so very serious).

Next weekened's Zweig story, "The Miracles of Life" is quite a long story--almost novella-length, so I might start reading now.  And it is always an adventure what the New Yorker sends my way!

Short Story Sunday: Forgotten Dreams

I really wasn't looking for a new book to buy, but when I saw this gorgeous new collection of stories by Stefan Zweig I had to have it.  It helped that I can say I have bought and will read it in honor of German Literature Month, but I think I would have ordered it anyway eventually.  I don't think this contains all of Stefan Zweig's short stories, but there are nearly two dozen here, all translated by the very talented Anthea Bell (I have read her translations before and she is extremely good at what she does--you almost can't guess the work has been translated from German).  And it is a beautifully and simply designed book which is published by the Pushkin Press, so I knew it would be nice even as I was ordering it sight unseen.  This is where my November short story reading will take me, I've decided.  If the stories are as good as I expect them to be, my reading will likely continue beyond November. 

I really like Stefan Zweig.  I think he is a wonderful and perceptive writer, quite often melancholic, but someone whose entire oeuvre I wouldn't mind working my way through.  I have already read: The Post Office Girl, Beware of Pity (perhaps my favorite so far of his books that I have read), and Journey into the Past.  He tends to write shorter fiction rather than longer novels, but with some authors, and Zweig is one of them, they can write a book rich in meaning and and beautifully crafted in just a few pages.

I'm starting with the first story and going to just make my way through to the end. One of the blurbs on the little jacket notes that Zweig is a master at capturing the "best and worst of human nature", and I suppose it is the worst that we begin with in "Forgotten Dreams".  It is a simple story but eloquently told.  A woman is visited by a former admirer and friend who has traveled all the way from his new home in America when he hears she is betrothed to a man of shallow and contemptible morals.

Surely she must see something good in him that no one else does.  There must be some good excuse for her actions.  In just a few pages she is shown to have a matching set of morals--so very disappointing.  The financier she has married can offer her the life of luxury and beauty she has always wanted and strove for.  The tragedy, however, of the story--of the woman's life (and you don't feel particularly sympathetic towards her so far) is the missed opportunity she had as a young woman to marry and be happy with this other lover.

Aside from the quiet introspective quality to the writing and telling of the story, and the forming of the character's personalities, is the gorgeous prose and beautiful descriptions of place and person. 

"The villa lay close to the sea."

"The quiet avenues, lined with pine trees, breathed out the rich strength of salty sea air, and a slight breeze constantly played around the orange trees, now and then removing a colourful bloom from flowering shrubs as if with careful fingers.  The sunlit distance, where attractive houses built on hillsides gleamed like white pearls, a lighthouse miles away rose steeply and straight as a candle--the whole scene shone, its contours sharp and clearly outlined, and was set in the deep azure of the sky like bright mosaic.  The waves of the sea, marked by only the few white specks that were the distant sails of isolated ships, lapped against the tiered terrace on which the villa stood; the ground then rose on and on to the green of a broad, shady garden and merged with the rewst of the park, a scene drowsy and still, as if under some fairy-tale enchantment."

Fairy-tale enchantment indeed.  But with an unhappy princess.  One who thinks her life is rich and full and that she has everything she ever wanted but perhaps an empty heart.  Can't you see the scene Zweig sets?  It's vividly told.  I think I am in for a treat with this collection.  Next week's story is "In the Snow".

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I have to be honest. I was all set to not like this weekend's New Yorker (Oct. 20th--someday I really will catch up properly) short story--"Ordinary Sins" by Kirstin Valdez Quade.  But the more I read, the more I liked it, the more interesting it became for me.  The story is about a young woman who has made all sorts of wrong choices in her life and has ended up pregnant with twins and not boyriend or husband or even anyone who especially cares about her waiting on the sidelines.  To complicate matters she works in the office of a Catholic Church, where strangely the priest in charge makes her quite welcome in the parish.  Nothing is simple however--for the pregnant woman or the priest.  It's not what you're thinking, and that is what I liked about the story--the unexpectedness of it all which verges so much on real life.  Real life being messy and complicated.  This is one story of a forthcoming collection called Night at the Fiestas, which is due out in 2015.  You can read the Q&A with the author here.