David Klein Gallery
presents
as in Germany and Austria.
Roth's background as a journalist
seems to both inform and inspire his
fiction writing. Ever curious, he was
able to see deeply and is a master of
the set piece, the well-observed
moment or character.
As translator Michael Hoffman
points out in the introduction to the
new book, Roth's journalism is often
unclassifiable; his pieces are a blend of
essay, article, travel piece and opinion.
In her essay "Looking for Joseph
Roth," novelist and essayist Barbara
Probst Solomon, whose, father was a
cousin of Roth's, wrote that "Roth the
novelist was not a separate being from
Roth the brilliant journalist; more to
the point, one endeavor, particularly
morally, fed into the other. The closer
one gets to understanding Roth's reali-
ty, the less allegorical his novels seem."
and "The Place I Want To Tell You
About ..." are warm portrayals of
shtetl life.
It's difficult to read these stories
without reflecting on the history that
Roth lived through.
"There's always deep, deep sadness
to Roth, always a trail of mystery and
elegance, worlds disappearing. You can
hear the music of Galicia in his writ-
ing," said Weil.
Roth was "a very Jewish writer in
theme and sensibility," Weil said,
although he was an "assimilated crea-
ture of his time."
Said Solomon, "I don't think we
really understood the varied back-
grounds of the Jews of Europe as
much as we are beginning to now ...
or the complexity of it, which Roth
does very well."
Last year, Norton published The
Wandering Jews: The Classic Portrait of
a Vanished People, a collection of
Mystery And Elegance
Michael Wood has written
in New Republic magazine
. that "Roth's greatest novels
simultaneously squeeze
comedy and romanticism
from their depiction of the
Austro-Hungarian
Empire."
This new volume gathers
14 short stories and three
novellas, arranged chrono-
logically; the earliest ones
Were published in newspa-
pers in 1916 and 1918.
The latest, the novella The
Leviathan, was first pub-
lished in serial form beginning in 1934.
Its publication as a book was
delayed due to the Nazi invasion of -
Holland. The Dutch publishers kept
the pages hidden until after the war,
when it was bound and distributed.
Some of the stories in the Norton
collection are vignettes, like "The
Grand House Opposite," the tale of a
relationship between two people who
greet each other from across a street,
and some stories that were never
before published feel perhaps unfin-
ished, more like sketches, although
with polished prose.
Roth's writing is textured, poetic and
rich in metaphor; his stories often
involve loss, homelessness and the
experience of war.
He uses irony in "The Honors
Student," the closely observed story of
an ambitious boy from a small town
who follows his life plan with great
success but without heart.
"Stationmaster Fallmerayer" tells of
Jove and longing, while "Strawberries"
Roth's writing is
textured, poetic and
rich in metaphor; his
stories often involve loss,
homelessness and the
experience of war.
William Glen Crooks
New Paintings
June 15—July 13, 2002
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Roth's journalistic pieces. Next year,
Norton will be publishing another
nonfiction collection, What I Saw,
Roth's notes and diaries from his years
in Berlin. The publisher also plans to
compile his Paris diaries.
Hoffman's translation of Roth's Tale
of the 1002nd Night was awarded the
PEN/ Book-of-the-Month Club Prize
for translation.
In his introduction to the new col-
lection of short stories, Hoffman
speaks of Roth's patterns of writing,
his versatility, and how his stories are
close to his autobiographical writing,
in that qualities are not embellished or
complicated as in the novels.
"The last and not the least thing
these stories provide is a swift index of
the range of styles that Joseph Roth
mastered over a writing career that
spanned less than 25 years," Hoffman
wrote.
"To read them is to get some sense
of the accelerated development other-
wise known as genius." II
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