Good evening!
Friday at last (but somehow not the last Friday of March, which has gone on forever).
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about voice, in part because of this tweet by throat lozenge queen (she’s been reviewing them on her Instagram stories) Amelia Horgan:
So much writing now has an extraordinarily didactic tone as if it’s someone holding both your upper arms and looking at you saying “this is very serious I hope you’re listening”. Where’s the fun in that!
All this wordy boring worthy writing that adopts a voice somehow in the middle passive.
I don’t know if Amelia was talking about fiction, but this immediately put me into mind of a lot of contemporary novels. Where I find this tone the most jarring is a dissociation with work in favour of inner feeling, which is somehow not impacted by work, or by political structures, or anything outside of the protagonist and their relationships with other people and themselves. A lot of characters get jobs easily when they need them, and going to work is incidental, with the focus of the narrative being what they do in their leisure time, written in this very worthy, thoughtful tone that implies that there is a lesson in the way that they move around the world. This always feels strange to me, because work takes up so much of our lives, even if it is a part time job. Work does impact the way that we think and feel much more than a narrative voice written in the middle passive that is concerned with relationships only. We’re meant to learn about, not just the character, but the world through this perspective, which isn’t feasible if it counts work as some kind of side-mission that doesn’t exist outside of the parameters of your shifts.
I’ve also been thinking about voice because the novel I read this week takes maybe the absolute opposite tone to what I’m referring to here. I read Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin (1931), translated by Sophie Duvernoy. It’s written about Weimar Germany as it slips into fascism, and it’s primarily about things that seem quite boring -- newspapers, property, inflation -- but is told in an absurdist, surreal way. The titular Käsebier is a singer and pianist who is latched onto by journalists who need something new to write about. Their enthusiasm for him catapults the unglamourous Käsebier into instant fame, with fan merch popping up everywhere and his songs played everywhere. Through Käsebier, the intentions and priorities of Berlin’s high society are enacted, with bankers funding projects around him, such as a new theatre with him as the headline, collaborative projects by writers with him as the subject, and flats being thrown up in Käsebier affiliated areas. Anti-semitism and nationalism run as currents throughout all of this, outlining how questions of how the German identity of the time is constructed as the far-right creep into power.
Tergit is clearly criticising all of it, through an almost disorientating myriad cast of characters that represent key areas of Berlin’s society. The prose goes at 100mph, with conversations that run over each other and quick changes in scene. As a small example:
“Miermann was kind enough to introduce me by my real name. A journalist introduces himself by saying, ‘Berliner Rundschau’ or ‘Berliner Tageszeitung’ or ‘Allegmeines Blatt’. We aren’t humans you see. We’re a kind of --”
“Well, we’re galley slaves,” added Miermann.
“We’ve been branded,” said Gohlisch.
Käte’s smile was frozen in place. How can I manage to steer this conversation with Gohlisch toward gymnastics lessons? she wondered.
“We’re all galley slaves,” she said.
“What are you chained to?” asked Gohlisch.
“I’m a gymnastic teacher.”
“That must be fun.”
“It is. I’m hoping it will also be profitable.”
“Do you work a lot?”
“A decent amount. I’ve got a very particular method. Part Mensendieck, part Loheland.”
“I’ll have to check it out sometime.”
Humour undercuts every exchange, even if that exchange is illustrating how larger structures are enacted by, and impact individuals, and/or showing their absurdity. It’s a very nuanced portrait of this period, similar to Vicky Baum’s Grand Hotel (1929) and Irmgard Keun’s After Midnight (1937), both of which have large casts of characters acting absurd but portraying German history.
I think that is such a departure from what Amelia was talking about, that middle passive “there is a lesson in this, you know” style, that becomes jarring and revels in its own knowingness. Even though something like Tergit’s novel is so far at the other end of the scale that it becomes disorientating, it at least tries to have fun with it. I watched the Orson Welles’ film The Third Man (1949) this week, and I was struck by its opening -- it has Welles talking over a montage of exchanges made on the black market in Vienna, and his character interrupts himself, makes mistakes and speaks exactly how someone who is recalling something would tell you something. Even though the film is intended to be serious (seeing as it was written by Graham Greene, who took himself very seriously), Welles is clearly having fun and brings it to his character, which lends him plausibility. It’s funny how that happens. Another film I was reminded of while reading Käsebier Takes Berlin was His Girl Friday (1940), also set largely in a newspaper office with people who talk very quickly (so much so that it often feels like Rosalind Russell is chewing on words). Again, there is a lot of humour in this film, while at the centre there is a serious topic, the execution of an accused murderer. There are lessons in all of these texts, but they don’t lead with them.
I started reading Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon (1963), which is also quite relevant to all of this, because it’s quite literally about how her family spoke to each other, and is largely set during the fascism years in Italy. I haven’t really read enough to weave it into this discussion, but it is funny and presents absurdity in a similar capacity.
Books on my radar
I bought a couple of books from charity shops this week -- Living Pictures by Polina Barskova, translated by Catherine Ciepiela (2014) and The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans (1995). Excited to get to both of them.
I received some exciting proofs this week, namely Alison Rumfitt’s Brain-Wyrms and Dan Chaon’s Sleepwalk, both out this year.
Loved this, Jess - you’ve perfectly expressed something I’ve been trying to put my finger on for a while!