Dawn Powell

https://www.columbusmonthly.com/story/lifestyle/features/2021/11/16/ohio-novelist-dawn-powell-a-time-to-be-born-my-home-is-far-away-author/6387725001/

>> "New Yorker" ... film critic Richard Brody became the latest media figure to celebrate Powell, declaring her nine novels written from 1929 to 1948 (including three about Ohio) “one of the most extraordinary outpourings of sustained literary artistry that the United States can boast.” <<

#Books #DawnPowell #USLiterature #AmericanLiterature #20thCenturyLiterature #NewYork #Ohio

"Effingers" by Gabriele Tergit is a novel well worth your time if you enjoy family sagas, have any interest in Germany between Bismarck and Hitler, or want to immerse yourself in the diverse lives of the German Jewish bourgeoisie prior to their uprooting and destruction.

"Effingers" is also a Berlin novel, one that provides a quite different picture of the city than that displayed in "Berlin Alexanderplatz". That contrast stems from the differing class settings of the two novels.

Towards the end of the novel, Zionism as an ideology and settlement in Mandatory Palestine as possible option emerge as themes . Those looking for straightforward prefiguring of their own beliefs on these matters will be disappointed, but those seeking a novel's sensitive treatment of the uncertainties, hopes, and fears of individuals and families under pressure will be rewarded.

#Books #Novels #Effingers #GabrieleTergit #GermanLiterature #20thCenturyLiterature #JewishLiterature

https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/deutsch/tergitg2.htm

I've recently finished Gabriele Tergit's 1931 "Käsebier Takes Berlin" (Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm) in Sophie Duvernoy's translation.

I've got mixed feelings about the novel.

On the one hand, the organization of the narrative struck me as clumsy both on a large scale and in certain details. Overall, the journalistic satire that dominates the first half does not fit well with the property speculation plot salient in the second half. At times, the abundance of characters combines with some minimal attribution of dialogue to make parts of the novel difficult to follow. I can imagine impatient readers throwing the book aside.

Yet one should resist that impatient impulse, since the novel will reward the reader who perseveres. Anybody interested in Weimar Germany in general and Berlin in particular will profit from a reading. The flip side of the abundance of characters is Tergit's multiple snapshots of the cityscapes, media, interiors, outfits, and consumer goods as the 30s begin in Berlin. This aspect of the novel invites a contrast and compare exercise with "Berlin Alexanderplatz".

Tergit's background as a journalist helped her in both in the satire of the press and also in her acute observation of social climbing and pretension. This perspicacity coupled with her talent as a maker of fiction to create the loathsome Willi Frächter. This character will not only stick in the memory but, sadly, also be all too recognizable to observers of contemporary culture.

Readers today will inevitably have the coming of Hitler in mind as the novel unfolds. Of course, the journalists' mocking use of "Heil und Sieg und fette Beute", translated as "Heil and Sieg and catch a fat one", is now tinged with an irony that Tergit could not have grasped at the time of publication, although only two years later she fled Germany after a narrow escape from the thugs of the SA.

Today, we might do well to consider the parallels between the media of our own day and Frächter's gleeful transformation of the "Berliner Rundschau":

>> What you call dumbing down, Mr. Miermann, I call blooming. <<

I'm going to give Tergit's 1951 family saga "The Effingers" a try. The idea of a "Jewish 'Buddenbrooks' " I find hard to resist. I'm not expecting her to be another Thomas Mann, but it's not unreasonable to hope that her novelist's technique had developed in the two decades following "Käsebier Takes Berlin".

#Books #Bookstodon #GabrieleTergit #KäsebierTakesBerlin #KäsebierErobertDenKurfürstendamm
#Fiction #Novel #GermanLiterature #Berlin #20thCenturyLiterature #1930sLiterature #WeimarRepublic #Newspapers #Press #Media #Journalism

https://www.nyrb.com/products/kasebier-takes-berlin

One of my greatest pleasures recently has been discovering the writing of Dawn Powell.

I've just finished her 1942 novel "A Time To Be Born", which combines both her first hand understanding of the journalistic and literary New York of her time with a midwesterner's skeptical amusement at metropolitan self advancement and snobbery.

The novel also provides insights into American women's distinctive struggles with ambition, competition, and love in the opening years of the Second World War.

#Books #Fiction #DawnPowell #USLiterature #20thCenturyLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #Novel

https://marissavivian.substack.com/p/hidden-voices-004-dawn-powell

James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" impressed me both for its exploration of love, sex, and sexual identity and for the skill with which the author has the narrative unfold; I was gripped from beginning to end.

Although the protagonist is white, I know that some critics believe that the theme of race is obliquely present by virtue of the salience of various kinds of minority identity throughout the novel.

Quite aside from it being a "good read", I would recommend it to anybody interested in the literary treatment of bisexuality.

Expatriation also figures as an important theme. These words hit home with this migrant:

>> You don't have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back. <<

"Home", of course, can be more than a geographical location.

#Books #GiovannisRoom #JamesBaldwin #Fiction #AmericanLiterature #USLiterature #AfricanAmericanLiterature #QueerFiction #LiteratureInEnglish #Sexuality #Bisexuality #20thCenturyLiterature #1950s #Homosexuality #Gay #Expatriates #Migrants

Orwell's 1936 novel sees Gordon Comstock quit advertisement copywriting to work on his poetry and maintain his integrity in the face of the "money god".

Comstock's rebellion, like that of Winston Smith a decade later, ultimately fails.

In addition to being struck by the parallels between Comstock's life under British capitalism in the 30's and Smith's under Ingsoc in Airstrip One, I was also impressed by Orwell's sharp descriptions of the indignities of genteel poverty.

#Books #KeepTheAspidistraFlying #GeorgeOrwell #BritishLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #Novels #20thCenturyLiterature

I finished Nabokov's "Pnin" last night.

What a delight it was! Funny, clever, and oddly moving.

I would recommend getting hold of the Everyman's Library edition, as the introduction by David Lodge is both informative and perceptive.

#Books #Pnin #Nabokov #Fiction #Literature #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #20thCenturyLiterature #CampusNovel #DavidLodge

I know that they still read "An Inspector Calls" in English schools, but I suspect that I might be one of very few who wants to read a JB Priestley novel today.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/09/jb-priestley-adventures-of-the-tradesman-of-letters

#BritishLiterature #Books #JBPriestley #20thCenturyLiterature #Fiction #Novels