I've been rather busy, had you noticed? Here's one of the things I've been working on.
My friend Florian Duijsens and I have invented The Dead Ladies Show! It's a show about ladies who were really impressive when they were alive but are now dead. We'll be inviting illustrious guests to tell us about dead ladies who have impressed them, to read from their work, show clips from their films, play their music, recite their speeches, put on slide shows of their art, stage parts of their plays, recreate their experiments and generally celebrate them in any appropriate way. Then we'll drink cocktails and dance to music by dead ladies. I'm sure you'll agree this is a very good idea.
Our first Dead Ladies Show involves Florian and myself and the German writer Daniela Dröscher sharing our love for Dorothy Parker, Irmgard Keun and Pola Negri. It's at the delightful ACUD Club on Tuesday, 19 May and you can buy yourself a Martini afterwards because that's what we think Dorothy would have wanted. Or indeed you can buy yourself a Martini before or during she show. DJ Johnny Stardust will spin blues, jazz and country tunes by dead lady musicians.
Here's the Facebook event. Please come along because it will almost certainly be a really excellent night out, and also the best opportunity to get dressed up in a fancy outfit on a Tuesday all month. It costs €4 to get in. And if you have a dead lady you'd like to rave about on stage in Berlin in an entertaining manner - in German or English - do get in touch.
Showing posts with label irmgard keun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label irmgard keun. Show all posts
Friday, 24 April 2015
Monday, 1 August 2011
Interesting Links
Three interesting links after two weeks away: first of all to a piece by Emily St. John Mandel at The Millions all about Irmgard Keun. I'm a huge fan of Keun's 1932 hit novel The Artificial Silk Girl, now re-released in English translation, not just as a historical document but as a piece of writing. It contains one of my favourite passages about Berlin, in which the young woman narrator describes what she sees on the streets of Berlin to a blind man in a breathless documentary style. Mandel also tells us about her later novel After Midnight, and you can read my review of Child of All Nations here. So glad this fascinating and talented writer is being rediscovered.
Then there are the fascinating results of a Goethe Institut survey on how the rest of Europe sees Germany. The British statistics are here; explore the site for other countries. Best book in German? Faust.
And thirdly, an interesting attempt at linking places and prose: the project Streetview Literatur. Various German writers have contributed short stories about people going places in four cities (Berlin, Leipzig, Munich and Nuremberg), whose journeys you can follow on Google Maps, get the app or ebook (which don't yet exist), or whatever. Unfortunately I found the site a little lacking: there's no list of the authors involved and the quality of the pieces varies, let's say. Creator Marion Schwer has accompanied the project with a blog, again interesting reading - particularly the piece on whether and how to actually pay the writers for their contributions (under Teilnahme). That's always going to be a problem with exciting no-budget projects like these, I suppose.
Then there are the fascinating results of a Goethe Institut survey on how the rest of Europe sees Germany. The British statistics are here; explore the site for other countries. Best book in German? Faust.
And thirdly, an interesting attempt at linking places and prose: the project Streetview Literatur. Various German writers have contributed short stories about people going places in four cities (Berlin, Leipzig, Munich and Nuremberg), whose journeys you can follow on Google Maps, get the app or ebook (which don't yet exist), or whatever. Unfortunately I found the site a little lacking: there's no list of the authors involved and the quality of the pieces varies, let's say. Creator Marion Schwer has accompanied the project with a blog, again interesting reading - particularly the piece on whether and how to actually pay the writers for their contributions (under Teilnahme). That's always going to be a problem with exciting no-budget projects like these, I suppose.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Child of All Nations
It's actually a coincidence, but I've just finished a book by Irmgard Keun - one of the writers whose books were banned by the Nazis. It's Michael Hofmann's translation of Child of All Nations. Goebbels & co. weren't keen on her strong female protagonists, who had no time at all for Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
Nine-year-old Kully tells her story. Schlepped around Europe by her emigré parents but never despairing, she is a wonderful character with many astute observations to make. Her father is a writer, banned by the Nazis for saying nasty things about them. Her mother is her mother, and seems to serve no other purpose than to look after her and her father.
The life of German exiles, wonderfully captured in Anna Seghers' oppressive Transit, is an endless round of applying for visas, finding accommodation, trying to make money and applying for the next visa. In between, there is lots of sitting in cafés making a little last a long time. Irmgard Keun takes a different, perhaps less worthy view to Anna Seghers. We see Kully and her family as they put up a constant front of great wealth - staying in the most expensive hotels, sunbathing on the expensive beach, eating prawns and drinking champagne, with pet tortoises and a dolls' kitchen in tow.
Only the family is stone broke. Her father leaves Kully and her mother as a kind of deposit as he gallivants around Europe trying to drum up some money - perhaps a benefactor will start up a literary magazine with him as editor. Perhaps a distant cousin will lend them some money before realising they're not actually related. Perhaps his publisher will give him another advance.
The father, apparently modelled on Keun's lover at the time, Joseph Roth, is utterly dislikeable. A philandering alcoholic, but seen through the eyes of his daughter you can't help but feel a perverse pity - poor daddy, vomiting in the sink every morning. The mother, again, is wetter than wet can be, seemingly incapable of making her own decisions, a faded beauty tied to her once fine husband. Kully, as Hofmann points out in his excellent afterword, is the most adult of the three of them. The story traces the path Keun took through Europe herself, which makes you wonder whether Kully is voicing her experiences or the mother is a bleak self-portrait.
The plot? Oh the plot's not important. I was disappointed by the ending - as was Hofmann himself, which made me feel terribly wise to have second-guessed such an eminent writer and translator - but that didn't really matter. What I love about the book is Kully's voice. Clichés often abound when an adult writes as a child, but not here. Hofmann has a very light touch, with just the occasional deliberate grammatical slip - "my mother and me went..." - and thanks his son, "then thirteen, this translation's first reader and editor."
I was reminded of Daisy Ashford, whose book The Young Visiters I lost on the way home from school when I was about 14, which made me very sad. I never found it again until I came across a German translation in a junk shop a few years ago. And guess what, Hofmann namechecks her in his afterword too, which was just about the icing on the cake in the "feeling pretty darned clever" stakes for me, let me tell you.
So take my advice and read this book. You won't regret it and it's only short. I'm very pleased it's been published in the Penguin Classics series - as it is a genuine modern classic.
Nine-year-old Kully tells her story. Schlepped around Europe by her emigré parents but never despairing, she is a wonderful character with many astute observations to make. Her father is a writer, banned by the Nazis for saying nasty things about them. Her mother is her mother, and seems to serve no other purpose than to look after her and her father.
The life of German exiles, wonderfully captured in Anna Seghers' oppressive Transit, is an endless round of applying for visas, finding accommodation, trying to make money and applying for the next visa. In between, there is lots of sitting in cafés making a little last a long time. Irmgard Keun takes a different, perhaps less worthy view to Anna Seghers. We see Kully and her family as they put up a constant front of great wealth - staying in the most expensive hotels, sunbathing on the expensive beach, eating prawns and drinking champagne, with pet tortoises and a dolls' kitchen in tow.
Only the family is stone broke. Her father leaves Kully and her mother as a kind of deposit as he gallivants around Europe trying to drum up some money - perhaps a benefactor will start up a literary magazine with him as editor. Perhaps a distant cousin will lend them some money before realising they're not actually related. Perhaps his publisher will give him another advance.
The father, apparently modelled on Keun's lover at the time, Joseph Roth, is utterly dislikeable. A philandering alcoholic, but seen through the eyes of his daughter you can't help but feel a perverse pity - poor daddy, vomiting in the sink every morning. The mother, again, is wetter than wet can be, seemingly incapable of making her own decisions, a faded beauty tied to her once fine husband. Kully, as Hofmann points out in his excellent afterword, is the most adult of the three of them. The story traces the path Keun took through Europe herself, which makes you wonder whether Kully is voicing her experiences or the mother is a bleak self-portrait.
The plot? Oh the plot's not important. I was disappointed by the ending - as was Hofmann himself, which made me feel terribly wise to have second-guessed such an eminent writer and translator - but that didn't really matter. What I love about the book is Kully's voice. Clichés often abound when an adult writes as a child, but not here. Hofmann has a very light touch, with just the occasional deliberate grammatical slip - "my mother and me went..." - and thanks his son, "then thirteen, this translation's first reader and editor."
I was reminded of Daisy Ashford, whose book The Young Visiters I lost on the way home from school when I was about 14, which made me very sad. I never found it again until I came across a German translation in a junk shop a few years ago. And guess what, Hofmann namechecks her in his afterword too, which was just about the icing on the cake in the "feeling pretty darned clever" stakes for me, let me tell you.
So take my advice and read this book. You won't regret it and it's only short. I'm very pleased it's been published in the Penguin Classics series - as it is a genuine modern classic.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Jittery Tag
Nervous. Bowlserised has dared me to do the following:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
I have to cheat because I know nobody wants to read the fifth to seventh sentence on page 123 of Sesamstrasse von A bis Z. Most of the sentences are things like: "Ein Buchstabe stimmt nicht. Wie heißt es richtig?"
But also at arm's reach (must do some tidying) is Irmgard Keun's Child of All Nations. What a coincidence! Translated from German by Michael Hofmann, and recently published by Penguin Classics. I haven't started reading it yet so I'll just give you the jacket blurb:
'Irmgard Keun's hugely engaging child-narrator travels headlong through Europe and through life's lessons, while the world careens towards war. With the flashbulb of a single phrase, character and milieu are revealed to the core; and despite - or rather because of - Keun's precision, this book breathes compassion. There is room for everything - shrewdness, forgiveness, wit and loneliness - while love makes all its hopeless deals with hope.' Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces.
Nice use of the word "careens" there, don't you think? And the sentences are:
Some young Americans were sitting at the next table, drinking champagne, and waving their hands and talking loudly all at once. The Swiss man kept looking at my mother with his ill-looking green eyes. He wanted to be nice to her and treated her to a bottle of Vichy water, and said: 'You must have been very beautiful when you were younger.'
How fitting. And what a lovely slap-in-the-face compliment.
The only problem now is that I'm a bit new at this malarkey and can only think of one person to pass it on to - partly, I admit, because I've noticed similar things on other blogs I read like is a blog so I don't want people to have to repeat themselves. But then I was always one to break chain letters and the like, so who cares?
So, literary rapture, you're up next.
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
I have to cheat because I know nobody wants to read the fifth to seventh sentence on page 123 of Sesamstrasse von A bis Z. Most of the sentences are things like: "Ein Buchstabe stimmt nicht. Wie heißt es richtig?"
But also at arm's reach (must do some tidying) is Irmgard Keun's Child of All Nations. What a coincidence! Translated from German by Michael Hofmann, and recently published by Penguin Classics. I haven't started reading it yet so I'll just give you the jacket blurb:
'Irmgard Keun's hugely engaging child-narrator travels headlong through Europe and through life's lessons, while the world careens towards war. With the flashbulb of a single phrase, character and milieu are revealed to the core; and despite - or rather because of - Keun's precision, this book breathes compassion. There is room for everything - shrewdness, forgiveness, wit and loneliness - while love makes all its hopeless deals with hope.' Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces.
Nice use of the word "careens" there, don't you think? And the sentences are:
Some young Americans were sitting at the next table, drinking champagne, and waving their hands and talking loudly all at once. The Swiss man kept looking at my mother with his ill-looking green eyes. He wanted to be nice to her and treated her to a bottle of Vichy water, and said: 'You must have been very beautiful when you were younger.'
How fitting. And what a lovely slap-in-the-face compliment.
The only problem now is that I'm a bit new at this malarkey and can only think of one person to pass it on to - partly, I admit, because I've noticed similar things on other blogs I read like is a blog so I don't want people to have to repeat themselves. But then I was always one to break chain letters and the like, so who cares?
So, literary rapture, you're up next.
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