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Title: The Emperor's Tomb by Joseph Roth, John Hoare ISBN: 1-58567-327-7 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Giant among Writers
Comment: Although this novel is not a real sequel to The Radetzky March, it takes place within the confines of the same period, the wasteful and waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. But it goes a step further and brings us to the sad, purposeless, lost days following the end of the empire, where all that remains as a symbol of past glory is Franz Joseph's tomb, outside of which stands a lackluster guard who, in effect, is guarding a memory that is fading away. And from these vacant days emerges an evil, the Third Reich, almost as a consequence of the indifference that the narrator, Trotta, exhibits. Trotta, like the empire, loses everything in the end: his friends, his mother, his wife, his son, and his country. He is the ultimate alienated modern man in search of meaning. He longs for the certainty of the past and cannot change or adapt to the present. And he is utterly lost in the face of overwhelming evil.
All of this is presented in exquisite prose and imagery that captures delicate emotional nuances and historical events. Joseph Roth accomplishes more in just a few pages than most writers do in a hundred. He was a great artist, a literary giant, whose genius I hope will be fully recognized in the coming years.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not A Sequel
Comment: Roth's novel of Austria-Hungary in the years before the first world war, The Radetzsky March, is one of the best novels I've read recently. Though billed as a sequel to The Radetzky March, this novel is considerably different with only a handful of minor characters that overlap the two stories. It has its pleasures but they are of a different nature.
Certain differences leap out right away. First, this "novel" is considerably shorter than The Radetzky March. Second, this novel is written in the first person, from the point of view of Franz Ferdinand von Trotta. Third, the language is considerably more colloquial than the more formal structure Roth used in the previous novel. Everything contributes to what feels like a more casual experience than The Radetzky March.
Still, Roth has a lot to say about the experience of pre- and post-Great War Austrians. Von Trotta, the narrator of the story, is a pretentious young man hanging out in the coffee shops of Vienna completely unprepared for the experience of war he will soon face. He sees little fighting, however, as he is captured early and spends the bulk of the war as a prisoner in Russia. Returning to his wife (with whom he never consummated his marriage) and mother, he finds a world he no longer understands through which he must find his way.
I am always fascinated how so many things we only consider "modern" problems crop up in these old stories. The intriguing lesbianism Trotta's wife engages in during his absence is one example. The vanity and conning of Trotta's elderly mother is another. It amazes me how we can read a novel like this and see how little human nature changes over the decades.
Though my personal taste leans more towards the formalism of The Radetzky March and its deep examination of the relationships between fathers and sons, there is much to enjoy here. It certainly has a more modern flavor that will appeal to many readers as some of Roth's other novels may not. Roth's ability to find truth in character is also on good show here. I would recommend it highly.
Rating: 5
Summary: Beckett previsited
Comment: Spanning the First World War, this short novel outlines the fall from grace of a minor Austro-Hungarian Noble, a scion of a once proud and heroic family.
It is quite a bleak book in many ways - and reminds me of the world Beckett creates in Waiting for Godot. There is an inevitability in the fall and no action could have prevented it.
The language used (at least in this translation) is minimal and strips to the bone images - making those that remain quite haunting. One which has remained with me for several days is the image of violets blooming from the bones of dead men.
Certainly a great, if troubling, book.
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Title: The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, Nadine Gordimer ISBN: 1585673269 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Job: The Story of a Simple Man by Joseph Roth, Dorothy Thompson ISBN: 1585673749 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-1933 by Joseph Roth, Michael Hofmann, Michael Bienert ISBN: 0393051676 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 02 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939 by Joseph Roth, Michael Hofmann ISBN: 0393051455 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Flight Without End by Joseph Roth ISBN: 1585673854 Publisher: Overlook Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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