Comedy in a Minor Key A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Hans Keilson James Clamp Damion Searls translator Macmillan Audio Books
Download As PDF : Comedy in a Minor Key A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Hans Keilson James Clamp Damion Searls translator Macmillan Audio Books
A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation - and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners - Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, then must dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia.
This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time, shows Hans Keilson at his best deeply ironic, penetrating, sympathetic, and brilliantly modern, an heir to Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka. In 2008, when Keilson received Germany's prestigious Welt Literature Prize, the citation praised his work for exploring "the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications."
Published to celebrate Keilson's hundredth birthday, Comedy in a Minor Key - and The Death of the Adversary, reissued in paperback - will introduce American readers and listeners to a forgotten classic author, a witness to World War II, and a sophisticated storyteller whose books remain as fresh as when they first came to light.
Comedy in a Minor Key A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Hans Keilson James Clamp Damion Searls translator Macmillan Audio Books
In an occupied country, civil disobedience becomes patriotic duty.Wim and Marie are a normal, childless couple in their late 20s, in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during WW2. They are not normally given to exuberant emotions or declarations of pathos. They are willing to hide a Jewish refugee from Germany, a perfect stranger, in their house. The organizer of the network had appealed to Wim's patriotic duty, successfully. In other cases he would appeal to Christian charity or humanitarian obligations.
How do you hide a stranger? How do you keep the cleaning woman, the milkman, the postman, the fishseller, the sister, the friend and her child, the police from noticing the secret lodger? How do you feed him and wash for him? How do you get his hair cut and how do you keep him amused? Where do you find the reading matter for him? How do you make sure that he does not go crazy? How do you handle the inevitable nervous outbursts, the conflicts about nothing that crop up when people are locked up together? How do you care for him when he falls ill? Or, one up on that desaster scenario: what do you do with the corpse if he dies in your house?
Keilson knew what he wrote about. The long-story (in the German edition it is not called a novel)is dedicated to the couple who helped him in a similar situation. The book was first published in German in 1947. It seems to have sunk like a stone. I grew up without ever hearing of Keilson, until he was rediscovered by an American translator a few years ago. Keilson has just died aged 101. His small fiction collection has been published in one Fischer pocket book: 2 autobiographic novels, this long-story and a short story. Fischer had also been his first publisher in Germany in 1933, right in time to join the ranks of the banned authors..
I would be curious to see any reviews from 1947.
Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel (Audible Audio Edition): Hans Keilson, James Clamp, Damion Searls (translator), Macmillan Audio: Books, ,Hans Keilson, James Clamp, Damion Searls (translator), Macmillan Audio,Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel,Macmillan Audio,B0045BXB9C
People also read other books :
- Free Air Sinclair Lewis 9781478302889 Books
- Report on Human Rights Practices Country of Hungary US Department of State 9781481840132 Books
- Americans at Risk Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do (Audible Audio Edition) Irwin Redlener Paul Costanzo Audible Studios Books
- Infidelity edition by Jon Bradbury Literature Fiction eBooks
- How to Hack Like a PORNSTAR A step by step process for breaking into a BANK Hacking the planet Sparc FLOW 9781520478517 Books
Comedy in a Minor Key A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Hans Keilson James Clamp Damion Searls translator Macmillan Audio Books Reviews
The New York Times Book Review called Hans Keilson "a genius," so I rushed to order the two books reviewed in the NYT "Comedy in a Minor Key..." and "The Death of the Adversary A Novel."
It took at least one third of "Comedy..." to get to the core of the novella. As first I attributed my confusion to the style of the author, but soon came to the realization that, while the situation is very interesting, it leaves more to the reader's imagination and expectaction of a delicate fabric of intricate feelings and low-key developments than what the author delivers.
Hans Kielson's merit for being over 100 years old and still alive does not position him in the category of his contemporary Existentialist writers or of novelists of the caliber of Arthur Koestler or Stephan Zweig.
In "Comedy" - the shorter and better of the two novels - the delicate and confining cirumstances of a couple harboring a Jewish refugee in their home in Nazi-occupied Holland is played in such low key that the situation of a trinity - the threesome of two men and one woman - never flares into a conflict of characters revealing who they really are. Not even during the tense moment when the Jewish refugee, Nico, ironically dies of natural causes, depriving his benefactors of the satifaction of having put themselves at peril on his behalf.
The stumped dialogues at times raise the hope of a deeper level of literature... but by striving to keep up with the simplicity of his characters, the author simplifies his novel to the point of barely sketching an episode that could have been rich and life changing for characters and readers.
As for "The Death of the Adversary..," I started reading it in the hope of redemption and of losing myself in the delights of a well-written novel, only to be forced to throw the towel even before the end.
Hans Keilson knew at first hand what he was writing about. Though trained as a pharmacologist in Berlin, his Jewish birth made it impossible for him to practice, and in 1936 he fled to Holland, going into hiding when the War broke out. This novella, published shortly after the War, tells of a young Dutch couple, Wim and Marie, who take in a Jewish man and hide him in an upstairs bedroom. They are good people, but also quite ordinary; that is their beauty. One gets the impression that there are a lot of similar couples in their small town, some taking one refugee, some taking more. It is dangerous -- the interrogation rooms, cattle cars, and camps await -- but these are everyday heroes. Neither Wim nor Marie hesitates for a moment when asked, and you know they are just two among thousands quietly following their consciences. Keilson's novella is essentially a thank-you letter to the Dutch people.
But it starts with a twist. Their lodger, whom they know as Nico, catches a fever and dies. The succeeding chapters alternate between the details of disposing of the body with their doctor's help, and flashbacks to various points in the year that Nico spent in their house. The word "comedy" in the title is well taken, not that any of this is funny, but that it is a series of everyday accidents, brief embarrassments, unexpected encounters, all fortunately having a good outcome. Even the clumsy business of dealing with the body, in a different context, could be the stuff of farce.
Only at the end do Wim and Marie, alone once more, really take stock of what they have done. It is a really striking passage, extraordinary in its honesty, and so far from the heroic myth "And then there was also a little embarrassment, a little disappointment. Why did he of all people have to die? [...] It was practically a trick he had played on them with this death, on the people who had kept him hidden for an entirely different purpose. He didn't need to go into hiding in order to die, he could have just simply . . . , like all the countless others . . . ".
It breaks off in strings of dots. For those are ellipses they cannot fill, outcomes they cannot allow. In the understatement of those unspoken thoughts lies the true power of this tribute to the bravery of ordinary people in a dangerous time.
In an occupied country, civil disobedience becomes patriotic duty.
Wim and Marie are a normal, childless couple in their late 20s, in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during WW2. They are not normally given to exuberant emotions or declarations of pathos. They are willing to hide a Jewish refugee from Germany, a perfect stranger, in their house. The organizer of the network had appealed to Wim's patriotic duty, successfully. In other cases he would appeal to Christian charity or humanitarian obligations.
How do you hide a stranger? How do you keep the cleaning woman, the milkman, the postman, the fishseller, the sister, the friend and her child, the police from noticing the secret lodger? How do you feed him and wash for him? How do you get his hair cut and how do you keep him amused? Where do you find the reading matter for him? How do you make sure that he does not go crazy? How do you handle the inevitable nervous outbursts, the conflicts about nothing that crop up when people are locked up together? How do you care for him when he falls ill? Or, one up on that desaster scenario what do you do with the corpse if he dies in your house?
Keilson knew what he wrote about. The long-story (in the German edition it is not called a novel)is dedicated to the couple who helped him in a similar situation. The book was first published in German in 1947. It seems to have sunk like a stone. I grew up without ever hearing of Keilson, until he was rediscovered by an American translator a few years ago. Keilson has just died aged 101. His small fiction collection has been published in one Fischer pocket book 2 autobiographic novels, this long-story and a short story. Fischer had also been his first publisher in Germany in 1933, right in time to join the ranks of the banned authors..
I would be curious to see any reviews from 1947.
0 Response to "≡ PDF Gratis Comedy in a Minor Key A Novel (Audible Audio Edition) Hans Keilson James Clamp Damion Searls translator Macmillan Audio Books"
Post a Comment