May 2019 NYRB Selection

Look at that cover. What’s not to love?

And then you have lines like this, “I looked at the two herrings, the two herrings looked a me, and none of us said anything” (25).

On one level the story is about a man and his lover going on vacation to Sweden. One the other hand is it that or the story the character wrote about two people going on vacation.

Then it is also a story of saving a child from an ogre.

There is humor in this story, this fairy tale about a tale. The names that are assigned to various kings are amusing. There is Adolphus the Unshaven, for instance.

There are comments about gender, “. . . you women take what you do seriously -that’s your undeniable advantage over the rest of us” (68).

It is strange reading this book so shortly after reading a Calvino work because there is still a strange sense of otherworldliness, of not quite knowing what it is going.

But that is also vacation.

The story is almost two because there is the child who becomes the child that the vacationing couple could have and therefore must rescue. It makes an interesting if weird little quest. It is almost like you are entering the picture on the cover, a weird castle and forest where almost anything goes.

But not quite.

It is a lovely read however.

I picked this up because I am a fan of Kurt Tucholsky's and this was a kindle freebie.

20 Gedichte (20 Poems) is a small and somewhat unusual collection of poems written between 1913 and 1931. It is unusual in that it features mostly poems about relationships - which, to be honest, I was not familiar with in Tucholsky's canon of work - other than the themes in Schloss Gripsholm and Rheinsberg.

It was an unusual selection but it was quite interesting, too, as some of the poems were written from a woman's perspective. 

The last page read and no words left.
I'm leaving this work of a lifetime and his author behind with admiration and love in my heart  and a warm and fuzzy feeling. Maybe there is only one thing you need to know about Kurt Tucholsky, in words found by his friend Erich Kästner:

"Ein kleiner dicker Berliner wollte mit einer Schreibmaschine eine Katastrophe aufhalten." 

'A little, fat man from Berlin tried to hinder a catastrophe with his typewriter'

It didn't help. He died in exile in Sweden, on December 21, 1935... the worst was yet to come.

I'm reading this slowly and with a lot of intermissions since 2009... I will finish it this year, and I'm happy about it, and a little bit sorry... not much left from Tucholsky's wise words, that I don't know yet. One last book...