German Literature Month--Plus a Wonderful Short Story by Friedrich Gerstacker

"Germelshausen" by Friedrich Gerstacker (1845, 19 pages)

Where the plot of Brigadoon originated!

When I saw that and Lizzy's Literary Life was having a November event  devoted to reading and posting on German literature I knew I wanted to participate.   In September I read and loved The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.   I have an e-book of his Death in Venice and seven of his short stories so I knew I could happily read more of his work.    

Yesterday I read "Germelshausen" by Friedrich Gerstacker (1816 to 1872-Hamburg, Germany).  It is  a very interesting fun to read short story from which the plot  of Brigadoon was lifted.

Gerstacker is a minor literary figure, dwarfed by the giants of German literature.   In my quick research, I found no other book blog posts on him.   He was the son of two opera singers and he and his family traveled all over Germany and nearby countries as his parents found work.  A very adventurous young man, at a twenty one he left for America and for six years traveled all over the then frontier regions making his living from what ever work he could find.   He spent a lot of time as hunter in Arkansas.   When he return to Germany he began to publish stories about his travels in America.  From the success of this he was able to become a full time writer.  He ended up producing forty volumes.  (There is a good background article on him here.)

As I was reading "Germelshausen" I kept thinking "this plot sure sounds familiar".   It is very much a story in the romantic tradition.   As it opens a traveling painter of portraits meets a beautiful young woman.  At first she says she is waiting for a man.   Some conversation ensues and the woman invites the painter back to parents house for dinner.  (For sure this is a man's fantasy story!)    The father really likes him and he and the woman really hit it off so compressing the family invites him to stay permanently.   He agrees but says he needs to leave and return tomorrow.   The next day he attempts to go back to the village of "Germelshausen" but it is totally gone.   At first he figures he is just lost so he asks an older man who has lived there all life for directions to the village.   The older man is shocked.   It turns out the village only appears every 100 years.    The rest of the time it is in some sort of nether world.  The producers of the musical and then movie Brigadoon took this plot and just changed the location to Scotland.   

You can read the story in English here.   The story I read was translated by George Harrap.

This is a fun story.    Modern readers may find the central male character a bit chauvinistic in his treatment of the woman but this is a male fantasy story for sure.  

I am glad I read this story and I think most readers will enjoy it.   If you read it and think "Oh this plot is so obvious" it is just because the author produced a work that has slipped almost unnoticed into the popular consciousness.   

Mel u

"The Tuxedos" by Jerome Weidman

"The Tuxedos" by Jerome Weidman (1938, 5 pages)

From the Streets of New York City

About a year ago my cousin Bonnie sent me a book that has been in the family for maybe sixty years, A Treasure of Short Stories (1947) edited by Bernadine Kielty.   It has turned out to be a great reading source for me.   It is also fun to see what short stories were considered among the world's best in 1947.   Kielty, at one time fiction editor for several prominent magazines and a selector for the Book of the Month club, has included her own short often fun mini-biographies of the authors.   Here is what she says about the subject matter of Jerome Weidman(1913 to 1998-USA):  "he seldom writes of anything but the streets of New York City, and more often than not, of the scum thereon".   Most of his short stories were published in The New Yorker as was this story.   He was jointly awarded a Pulitzer Price for drama and he wrote the book on which the super successful Broadway musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale" was based.  

I think almost everybody will like this short story with the exception of people from New York City of Italian background.   In this story it is a family of Italians that does indeed come across as scum.   The story is told in the first person by a man who works for a formal wear rental place.   People come to them for clothes for fancy weddings and such.   The boss was a decent man but he had a bad habit of sending him out on deliveries that he could not complete prior to his paid too quitting time of six in the evening.  His job was to deliver the formal wear, get a receipt for it and of course it has to be on time for the big event.   To compress a bit, just before closing time his boss sends him out to deliver six formal suits, top hats, etc.   This is a bulky heavy load.  When he finally gets to the place he has been dispatched to he hears screaming coming out of the house.   He hears a number of men loudly "jabbering away in Italian" in what sounds like a bad fight.   He gets the courage up to knock on the door and tells then man who answers he is there to deliver the tuxedos.   The man says in a bitter way "Oh yeah, the Tuxedos" and he escorts him in.   He is finds six brothers, big men, are holding down a woman that looks for sure like their sister.   Her mother is screaming and her and her brothers are slapping her very hard in the face.   It seems just a few hours ago the groom called the sister and told her the wedding is canceled.   The brothers want to go to see the man to give him, if he is lucky, a horrible beating but the woman will not say where he can be found no matter how bad her brothers abuse and threaten her.   The man is very afraid the brothers will not sign the receipt acknowledging delivery of the formal wear.   I will leave the rest of the plot untold.

There is a lot in this story.   It is from an era not obsessed with political correctness where Italians could be stereotyped as violent abusers of the women in their families in a story in The New Yorker.   

If you are a New Yorker subscriber you can read this story online.   Otherwise it is still under copyright and I did not find it online.   It is a fun story which will make you wonder what was in Weidman's mind about immigrant New York City Italians.   It is not a great work of art or anything like that just a slice of life in New York City in 1938 as seen by Jerome Weidman.

Mel u

Vita Sackville-West- Two Shorter Works of Fiction

"The Tale of Mr. Peter Brown" (1922, 26 pages)

"Chelsea Justice"  (1925, 21 pages)


Vita Sackville-West (1892 to 1962-UK)  is best known to most people as the role model for the central character in Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando.   Born into great wealth in an aristocratic family,    Sackville-West is a bisexual icon.  Among her most famous romantic partners was Virginia Woolf but there were numerous other famous women and men in her life.   In her day she was also a very successful fiction writer, selling more books than Woolf.  My knowledge of Sackville-West comes largely from the very interesting biography of her by Victoria Glendinning.   (The basic facts of her life and a list of her publications can be found here.)


I have wanted to read her work for some time so I was very happy to find two of her short stories online.  (In 2012 all of her work will be out of copyright under the rules of Australia and Indian so I expect much of her work to be online soon.)


"The Tale of Mr. Peter Brown" is a work of pure delight.   It starts in a cafe and is told in the first person through a male narrator.   The narrator goes to the same cafe a lot.   One day he sees for the first time a man who seems very lonely and very stressed.   He wants to speak with him but at first he hesitates as striking up a conversation with a stranger is a violation of social convention.   The two men eventually become  acquaintances and the man in the cafe tells his story.   He needed a place to live so a friend invited him to move in with him and his wife.   He had his own room and was very happy there.  Things happen and his friend comes home to find him in bed with his wife.   The friend says "No problem, carry on" and he makes no mention of the incident.   But he is plotting one of the most terrible revenges imaginable short of killing someone.   The revenge is just so horrific (and I have to admit, clever!) that I will not spoil it for you.   The standard of writing is very high.   I am really surprised this is not a famous story.


"Chelsea Justice" is a good story but not nearly so as "The Tale of Mr. Peter Brown".  It is a well written and kind of exciting crime story but I do not really liked the way it was ended.   It seems kind of like an artistic short changing.   


You can down both of these stories HERE.


Mel u

The Literary Book Blog Hop Nov 3 to Nov 6

I am always glad to see the Literary Book Blog Hop-sometimes I admit I feel out of place in a world of YA books, vampire romances and ARC reviews.   It is good to meet other people with interests beyond these.

When I started my blog nearly two and a half years ago, I planned to focus on books about people who lead at least partially reading centered lives.   This is still a core focus of my blog but in reality I post on a variety of topics including Japanese literature, post colonial Asia fiction, classics, and lately I have been very into short stories.  My  blog is the home of Irish Short Story Week II (set for March 2012).   I like to discover new to me authors and I am open to joint projects and events.

I will be glad to follow back all who follow me.   If you visit leave a comment so I can return the visit.


Every week we are presented with an interesting question to ponder.


Here is this weeks question:


To what extent do you analyze literature? Are you more analytical in your reading if you know you're going to review the book? Is analysis useful in helping you understand and appreciate literature, or does it detract from your readerly experience? 


I think I can give no better answer for now but to quote the words of the great Japanese novelist Natsure Soseki


"The pleasure we gain from a Noh play springs not from any skill at presenting the raw human feeling of the everyday world but from clothing feeling as it is in layer upon layer of art, and in a kind of slowed serenity of deportment not found in the real world".


When a work of art is considered as a Platonic entity, the purpose of reading is to become one with it.   Sadly as we are not up to this task very often, we must tear works apart.   

Thanks 

Mel u

Three Grim Stories by Thomas Hardy

"The Distracted Preacher" (1879, 63 pages)
"An Imaginative Woman" (1893, 28 pages)

"Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1896, 37 pages)


Prior to today I have posted on six short stories by Hardy and The Return of the Native.   I really enjoy reading his short stories a lot but I will say if you are in a downcast mood and looking for something to raise your spirits, you might look elsewhere! 




 In the  three Hardy short stories I read yesterday a beloved mother dies,  smugglers are shot, a poet kills himself, an innocent child is falsely thought to be the product of a late wife's infidelity and will have his life ruined over this, a man is in a horrible accident and is badly disfigured, a woman is driven nearly mad by the cruelty of her husband, ten out of eleven of the  children in one family die before they are twenty and those were the cheerful parts of the stories.   Most of Hardy's short stories seem to have a bitter surprise at the ending.


Like all of the stories by Hardy I have read, they are set in rural England.   Even as Hardy was writing about the people from this area, their way of life was rapidly disappearing.   


"The Distracted Preacher" somehow reminded me a lot of Daphne de Muarier's novel about smugglers, Jamaica Inn.   Of the two, "The Distracted Preacher" is the most exciting and suspenceful.   As the story opens a new to the town minister (one of the true stock characters of Victorian fiction) is renting a room in the house of an attractive widow about his age.    The man falls in love with her but she seems to have mysterious nocturnal activities that he at first does not understand.    He also is confused when he sees her leave the house wearing the clothes of her late husband.  I do not want to tell more of the plot of this wonderful story. It really is exciting and kept my interest high right until the end.   It also helped me understand the importance of smuggling to coastal people in rural England.   


"An Imaginative Woman" is about two poets (Hardy saw himself primarily as a poet who wrote fiction for a living.)    As the story opens a family, husband, wife and children are renting a place for a holiday stay.   The wife agrees to accept the place on the condition the current tenant move out for the short time they are there as they need the whole space.   The woman has always fancied herself a poet and has published a few items.   It turns out the man who they displaced is a  male poet she has always very much admired.   I do not want to at all spoil the plot of this very sad but beautifully done story.


"Barbara of the House of Grebe" is a very sad story.   It is a small master work.   The characterizations are simply brilliant.

Hardy's short stories are kind of like "mini novels".   Each one of these stories could be further developed into a captivating novel.   


If you have read a short story this week, please post about it on  Breadcrumb Reads by Risa in support of her Short Stories on Wednesday event.


I plan to read Hardy's collection of related short stories, Wessex Tales soon.


All of these short stories can be found online.  


Mel u

Henry James: Two of His Most Famous Short Stories

"The Beast in the Jungle" (1903, 44 pages)
"The Jolly Corner" (1908, 34 pages)

At Sixteen

Two Stories About What Might Have Been

The Library of America collected four volume set of the short stories of Henry James (1843 to 1916-USA)  runs to nearly 4000 pages.  (Now there is a reading challenge worthy of the name!)  "The Beast of the Jungle" and "The Jolly Corner" are considered by those who have read a lot of his work as among his very best short stories.  (There is some background information on Henry James in my prior posts on him.)


Both of these stories have something interesting in common.   The unmarried confirmed bachelor  male lead character in each story has a very close woman friend with whom he has had a very long purely Platonic relationship.   "In the Beast in the Jungle" the male character explicitly states that one of the reasons he values his close relationship to his female friend is that she makes him appear to be more like other men.   "In the Jolly Corner" the male leads faces a ghost like figure which seems to represent what his life would have been like had he been more like other men.   In his introduction to the volume in which I read these two stories David Sweet of the American University in Cairo says that some do take this as a reference to the male lead characters inability to accept his homosexuality.   I can see how one might reverse engineer the facts of the life of Henry James into such a reading but I think it is a reach in terms of the text but it is there as a possibility.  


"The Beast of the Jungle" is a wonderful work of art of a genius at the heights of his power.   The man in the story has a very close long term female friend. He has never married or had as far as we are told, any romances at all.  He also has a long standing fear that something terrible is going to happen in his life.   He uses this as an excuse not to pursue a romantic relationship with the woman as he does not want to involve her in the terrible thing that will happen to him.   He genuinely likes her but it is a bit sad to see he values her mostly as it makes him seem less strange in the eyes of society.   This for sure is a reference to the strong homophobic values of the society in which the story unfolds.    The ending is perfect and when we find out what the beast in the jungle is it comes with a heartbreak.   This is a very powerful story.


As Henry James aged, his writing style is considered to become more and more "difficult".   "The Jolly Corner" would be considered stylistically on a par with his last novels.   If you have given up on his novels, you will probably not relish this story.   That being said, "The Jolly Corner" is considered his best paranormal type work after The Turn of the Screw.   The central male character is also a confirmed bachelor with a long time close Platonic female friend.   He has lived in London for many years (just like James did) and lived from the rents of inherited properties in New York City.   "The Jolly Corner" is about what happens when he returns to New York City and begins to renovate one of his old properties and how this changes his relationship to the woman.    "The Jolly Corner" is really a fun read.   


You can easily find both of these stories online.   


I will be reading and posting on more of  the shorter fiction of Henry James.   I will probably next post on "The Pupil", then on "The Alter of the Dead".   


Please share your thoughts and experience on Henry James.


Mel u

November Reading and Blogging Plans and a Look Back at October

October Blog Notes

My blog notes are mostly something I can use to look back on and judge the progress and regress of my blog.  My page views in October 2011 were 344 percent higher than October 2010 and my visits are up by 275 percent.   I do not know what my number of GFC followers was on October 31, 2010 but I ended October this year with 602 GFC followers and 1385 Twitter followers.

The top city of residence for blog users continues to be New Delhi, followed by London,  and then New York City.   In the United States the top state is California.   In the Philippines most readers are from Makati and Quezon City but I do have visitors from all over the country now, mostly brought here by school assignments.   The low days for readership are Saturday and Sunday with no real pattern found yet for the rest of the week.   

October Reading Notes

October was a very good reading month for me.    The big read of the month was Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.   This is the longest book I have read as an e-book and the longest since I began my blog in July 2009.   It is a great novel.   It is not a hard book at all, just long.  It will be one of the top reads of the year for me.  I read in all 11 longer works of fiction, 1 memoir of medical school in Manila in the 1960s, 1 play, Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov and 30 short stories.   


I posted on all but 2 of the novels I read and about half of the short stories.    If I do not post on a work, it is not a value judgement.    For example I read several more Saki short stories in October but I did not feel a need to post more on him.

November Blog Plans

I have as of now no big blog plans for November.    I will probably participate in a few events and am open to new ideas that will pop up.

November Reading Plans

   

Top Priority November Novels

1.  Dracula by Bram Stoker-already into and love it

2.  The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster-

3.  Gut Syndrome by Jeanette Winterson

4.  The Devil's Pool by George Sand-need to read more Sand

5.  The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

6.  The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

7.  The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie

8.  Death In Venice by Thomas Mann

I have also been sent e-books of four promising sounding historical novels to be published in December that I will post on if I like them.   

My next "big read" will be the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes.   I read it decades ago and I am looking forward to reading this much praised new translation.   

The Ruffington Boussweau Project

Mercalaliota Gaelwad

I also hope to read and post on at least  two more travel books by Ruffington Boussweau, starting with his very controversial account of his trip to Japan just before the Russian-Japanese war.    I also have an interview with Ms Mercalalitoa Gaelwad, director of the Sayajira Gaelwad Institute of Ruffington Boussweau Studies planned in which she will explain how she developed her interest in Boussweau and give us some details on her wonderful plans to publish a 25 volume joint English and Bengali edition  of Ruffy's work.   Her goal is to place a full edition in every school in her native Bangladesh.   Her great grandfather was a Maharaja of one of the richest Princely States in Bengal and she wants to use a small portion of the great wealth of her family to give something back to the people of the world.   I am very grateful to her for having a complete set of Ruffy's 25 books sent to me.  In the interests of full disclosure, The Reading Life is now under the very kind sponsorship of The Institute and the personal patronage of Ms Gaelwad.   

Short Stories

I will read some more Brazilian short stories and I hope some more Japanese and South Asian stories also.  Short stories are becoming an ever bigger part of my reading life and my blog.

Above all and always I give my great thanks to those who comment on my posts.   

Mel u