Gabriele Tergit
Translated from the German by Sophie Duvernoy
New York Review Books
1932, 2019
Ms. Hen decided to read this on a whim because she read
about it in the PARIS REVIEW, and she thought it sounded important and timely.
She doesn’t usually buy books just because she reads about them, but this one
sounded like something she would be interested in.
When Ms. Hen first started reading this novel, she was
struck by the voice and the sound. The narration is quick and snappy, and is
not like contemporary novels she has read recently. It reminds her of films of
the 1930s and 1940s, in which the women are wisecracking and quick-witted. It
was difficult for her to get into this book, but she did.
This novel is about a group of newspaper reporters at
different papers in Berlin in 1929. They decide to take a mediocre folk singer
and make him a star by writing about him in all their papers. It is about
sensationalism, fake news and the power of the press. Kaisebier is not the main
character in this novel, it is the people that surround him that take the
center stage. One of the writers is writing books about him and selling rubber
dolls made in his likeness that kids can take in the bath.
Kaisebier goes on tour, and an apartment building with a
theater is built in his honor. There is a lot of discussion about the building
and how many rooms the apartments should have, and talk about money,
which Ms. Hen thought wearisome. The characters have different living situations.
This novel is about the Weimar Republic, with its excess and
extravagance. The country is recovering from a war, and they don’t realize they
are preparing for another one. The Nazis are on the peripheries, and a lot of
people don’t take them seriously enough. The characters complain when they have
to sell their china, but Ms. Hen wants to yell at them to look out because much
worse things will happen to them in the future.
This novel reminds Ms. Hen of Kafka’s THE TRIAL, with the
satire and absurdity discussing bureaucracy, and how the world is run. The
world is a messed up place, and even people ninety years ago knew this was
true. There is a part of the novel where the characters are talking about
machines taking over people’s jobs, and Ms. Hen thinks that’s incredulous. Now
it’s more pervasive that technology is in the process of pushing employees out
the door. (She just finished watching a Netflix show which discusses this issue called BETTER
THAN US, a Russian tragedy in the future with robots, and some characters want
them to replace the workforce.)
Ms. Hen liked this novel, though she thought it was tedious
at times, with all the talk of money and the building, and she would have liked
more about Kaisebier and music and the way people reacted to him. She
realizes that money is important, but reading about money problems is difficult for Ms. Hen. She has her own issues with money, and the subject bores her. She would rather read about tortured souls,
and people who have nothing to live for, but keep living anyway.
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