I discovered Joseph Roth by way of a friend from long ago and far away. This friend urged me to read Joseph Roth’s magnificent novel of the Napoleonic wars, The Radetzky March. From the first line, I was mesmerized and read it straight through on a long spring day and night. I found a few other works by Roth, and while I found them all interesting and enjoyable, none quite reached the soaring heights of Radetzky. I recently came across The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth, and I have found the seeds and the imagination which led to his masterpiece.

Joseph Roth was born in Galicia and he died at the young age of 44 in Paris on May 27, 1939. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army for a couple of years. In 1918, he returned to Vienna where he began writing for left-wing papers. In 1920 he moved to Berlin, and in 1923 began a distinguished career with the Frankfurter Zeitung. When WWII broke out he moved to the south of France. At his death, an invitation from the American PEN Club – which had brought many writers to the states – was found among his papers. His themes of the simple man, Judaism, Austria-Hungary, and alcohol dominate his fiction. Some of his stories and novellas are considered by some critics to reach “literary perfection.” I cannot disagree.

Joseph Roth: The Collected Stories contains a selection of short stories – some undated, some incomplete – and three novellas. The stories were translated by Michael Hofmann, who also contributed an Introduction. In the Intro, he discussed the stories and added some background to Roth’s life. Joseph Brodsky stated in a blurb, “There is a poem on every page of Joseph Roth.” I never looked at his works that way, but as I traveled through the stories, I began to see what Brodsky meant. Roth does have an impressive way with words. I am going to have to try harder to acquire more of Roth’s works.

My favorite from the collection is a story from 1916, “The Honor Student.” Roth writes, “Anton, the son of the postman Andreas Wanzl, was the oddest child you ever saw. His thin, pale little face, with its sharply etched features, emphasized by a grave beak of a nose, was surmounted by an extremely sparse tuft of white blond hair. A lofty brow lorded it over a practically nonexistent pair of eyebrows, below which two pale blue deep-set eyes peered earnestly and precociously into the world. A certain stubbornness showed in the narrow, bloodless lips, clamped tight. A fine, regular chin brought the ensemble to an unexpectedly imposing finale. The head was perched on a scrawny neck; the whole body was thin and frail. Altogether incongruous on such a frame were the powerful read hands that looked as though they had been glued on at the delicate wrists. Anton Wanzl was always neatly dressed and in clean clothes” (17). His style of detailed descriptions of his characters reminds me of Chekhov -- the preeminent master of the short story in my opinion.

He also has a talent for locale of his stories. In a brief story, “The Grand House Opposite,” he writes: “I found a small hotel that was only different from any of those I had patronized hitherto by virtue of the fact that it was in a wealthy suburb. My neighbors were rich people fallen on hard times, unwilling to leave the proximity of money because they evidently believed that, that way, when their fortunes finally changed, they would have less time and trouble. In the same way, a dog one has put out will stay close to the door by which it was made to leave. Opposite my small, narrow window was a large broad mansion. Its brown gate was shut, and in the middle of it was a golden knob that caught and intensified and reflected the light” (134-35).

Start with Roth’s The Radetzky March, and then move to Joseph Roth: The Collected Stories and you will find a wonderful world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 5 Stars

--Jim, 8/6/16 ( )

To say that I was bewildered by the time I’d finished the first eight stories in this collection by Joseph Roth is putting it mildly. While I didn’t exactly question whether the man could actually write clear and cogent prose, I began to think the translator, Michael Hofmann, had done him a disservice — not in his translation, but in exposing these pieces to an English-speaking public. I wondered: might they have something Kafkaesque in the original German that was simply untranslatable?


By way of example, I give you this snippet (on p. 86) from his story “April”:

“My friend Abel yearned for New York.

“Abel was a painter and caricaturist. Even before he could hold a pencil, he was already a caricaturist. He had a low opinion of beauty and he loved crippledom and distortion. He couldn’t draw a straight line.

“Abel had a low opinion of women. What men love in a woman is the perfection they think they see in her. Abel, though, had no use for perfection.

“He himself was ugly, so that women fell in love with him. Women suppose that male ugliness hides perfection or greatness.

“Once, he was able to travel to New York. On the boat he saw, for the first time in his life, a beautiful woman.

“When he reached port, the beautiful woman vanished from his sight. He took the next ship back to Europe.”


I read on, however — and am glad I did. When I entered his first novella-length story (even if not listed as a novella) in this collection, “The Blind Mirror,” I was pleasantly surprised to see that my initial misgivings were simply too hastily formed. Roth needed time and space to work out a story, and the following paragraph on p. 109 is a fair demonstration of his solid authorial skills:


“Night is full of feeling and surprise: out of the blue, longings come to us, when the distant whistle of a locomotive catches in the window, when a cat slinks along the pavement opposite hungry for love, and disappears into a basement window where the tom waits. There is a big starry sky above us, too remote to be kind, too beautiful not to harbor a God. There are the little things close at hand and there is a remote eternity, and some relation between them that escapes our understanding. Maybe we would understand it, if love were to visit us; love relates the stars and the slinking cat, the lonesome whistle and the vastness of the heavens.”


How this novella eventually plays out is, of course, another story – but whether well, badly or indifferently is for you, a potential reader, to decide, and not for me to say.


“Stationmaster Fallmerayer” (also not listed as a novella, even if of novella-length) is, alone, worth the ‘price’ of reading Roth’s entire opus.


The final three pieces in the collection, all of which are listed as novellas, demonstrate Roth’s immense skill as a story-teller and sometimes stylist. “The Triumph of Beauty” is as good a depiction of ‘the age of hysteria’ as any you’re ever likely to read. “The Bust of the Emperor” is an excellent — if somewhat sentimental — portrait of the passing of an era (following WWI and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). And the final contribution, “The Leviathan,” is about the slow corruption and quick end — sometimes clumsy and off-kilter in the telling — of a simple man in the early days of the Soviet Union. It shares with Roth’s other stories the prevailing theme of an old world order collapsing and succumbing to a new.


Take heart (and a stiff drink) before sitting down with The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth. They’re not everyman’s cup of tea — not by a long shot — but I dare say your time and keen attention will be amply rewarded.


RRB
09/03/14
Brooklyn, NY


( )

This collection contains all of Roth's shorter fiction; some seventeen stories, novellas and never completed fragments. Roth’s writing is inspired and frequently arresting (for which some credit should go to the translator, Michael Hoffman.) Roth was a close observer of both social relations and the individual human heart, an uncommon combination. The sense of longing and loss is especially pervasive. Roth was also prophetic; foreseeing in these works a time when a failed art student would sail the dark tide of fatuous nationalism to a destination even darker than the meat grinder of WWI.

Many of the pieces are five star triumphs: April, Strawberries, The Bust of the Emperor, The Leviathan and, probably, The Triumph of Beauty and Stationmaster Fallmerayer, as well. Others are good but not exceptional, especially among the earlier stories. One or two of the fragments are interesting, but it is apparent why he left off in the instance of all of them except Strawberries. ( )