A Life In Letters – Joseph Roth (1)

He wrote back yesterday, at long last. I’m going to appeal to you. If you can manage, can we meet tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon? I’m free then. Sincere best wishes to you and Mrs. Bertaux, your humble Joseph Roth 187. To Félix Bertaux 4 March 1933 My dear friend, I’m just back from seeing Mr. M.1 He is very keen to have my book on his list.

He is one of too many figures in the book business with strong aesthetic convictions, and a quick and instinctive grasp of things, but who remain fundamentally unreliable. He completely understood my position. He even said I was right. He is a nimble translator, and is quick to find the right form of words. He wants to send me someone who, he thinks, will match my intentions. He would rework the translation completely. I am to give this gentleman a sample.

I can then present that to you for approval. Then we’ll see. It appears that Mr. Marcel has several reasons for not offending Mrs. Gidon. I said more than once that I relied entirely on you. He spoke very warmly of you. Almost dismissively of Werfel.2 All in all, I formed the impression that he doesn’t want to lose me, but that he’s a little hemmed in by Mrs. Gidon. If I get a good translation from someone else, then I don’t really care what happens between Mr. M. and Mrs. G.

I’ll phone you on Monday evening. Grim news from Berlin.3 I’m exhausted. I can’t even go on working on the novella. I really am exhausted. Best wishes to Mrs. Bertaux, Ever your old Joseph Roth 1. Mr. M.: Gabriel Marcel. 2. Werfel: Franz Werfel (1890 Prague–1945 Beverly Hills), writer, poet, essayist, one of the most successful and bankable names among German writers between the wars. His best-known novel is The Song of Bernadette, completed in the United States in 1942, after he and his wife, Alma Mahler, made a dramatic escape through occupied France.

It was also made into an Oscar-winning film during World War II. 3. Grim news from Berlin: a reference to the burning of the Reichstag on 27 February 1933, and the promulgating the next day of an emergency decree that suspended civil liberties and permitted the central government to take over authority in the individual states.

This “temporary” decree was never rescinded. 188. To Félix Bertaux (written in French) Tuesday 1:30 [no date] My dear friend, I’ve been making myself try and telephone you for the past hour. It seems the telephone has other ideas. I hope you’re not angry with me. I would like to see you at the end of this week or early next. (Give me a written time and place.) I will come, or be there already. Mrs. M.B. is doing better, at any rate—thanks be to God—she won’t need an operation.

Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925–1939 What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920–1933 The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth The Wandering Jews Rebellion The Tale of the 1002nd Night Right and Left and The Legend of the Holy Drinker Job: The Story of a Simple Man The Emperor’s Tomb Confession of a Murderer The Radetzky March Flight Without End The Silent Prophet Hotel Savoy Tarabas The Antichrist Weights and Measures Zipper and His Father The Spider’s Web 1kitap1.com/en Frontispiece: Joseph Roth on a railway platform, somewhere in France, in 1925.

1kitap1.com/en 1kitap1.com/en For my friend Rosanna Warren 1kitap1.com/en Contents Introduction PART I 1894–1920 Youth, War, Brody, and Vienna PART II 1920–1925 Berlin, Newspapers, Early Novels, and Marriage PART III 1925–1933 Paris, Points South and East, Disappointment, Tragedy, and Triumph PART IV 1933–1939 After Hitler: Work, Despair, Diminishing Circles, Work, and Death Bibliography Index 1kitap1.com/en Joseph Roth, age three Joseph Roth’s student ID at the University of Vienna Joseph Roth’s military training company Friedl Roth with dog Joseph Roth in Paris, with two friends from Brody Joseph Roth with the trademark newspaper Joseph Roth with Heinrich Wagner Joseph Roth with Bernard von Brentano in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris Joseph Roth in Albanian folkloric costume, in 1927 in Albania Joseph Roth with Friedl in Berlin, in 1922 Joseph Roth with Paula Grübel and a friend Joseph Roth in the company of Dutch writers in a café in Amsterdam in 1937 A signed portrait of Joseph Roth 1kitap1.com/en Introduction Nothing to parents (but Joseph Roth never saw his father, Nahum, who went mad before he knew he had a son, and reacted to his overproud and overprotective mother, Miriam, or Maria, to the extent that he sometimes claimed to have her pickled womb somewhere).

Nothing to his wife (poor, bewitching Friedl Reichler, who after six years of a restless, oppressive, and pampered marriage disappeared into schizophrenia, and left him to make arrangements for her, and pay for them, and wallow in the guilt and panic that remained). Nothing to the lovers and companions of his last years—the Jewish actress Sibyl Rares, the exotic half-Cuban beauty Andrea Manga Bell, the novelist Irmgard Keun, his rival in cleverness and dipsomania— nothing to perhaps his very best friends (with such a protean, or polygonal character as Roth’s, who contrived to present a different aspect of himself to everyone he knew, it’s hard to tell for sure)—Stefan Fingal, Soma Morgenstern, Joseph Gottfarstein.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 2caffffe6de60a2a
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,909,534 bytes (4.682 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 608
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 899.9 minutes
• Total Words: 179,980
• Total Characters: 1,005,038
• Average Words per Page: 296.02
• Average Characters per Page: 1653.02

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