#1929Club – some previous reads! 😊📚

As usual with our Club reading weeks, I thought I would take a look back at some previous read from our current year of 1929; it’s really a bumper year, and when I started compiling a list of books I realised I had read quite a few from 1929. I shan’t cover them all, but here are a few favourites!

“Grand Hotel” by Vicki Baum

I actually reviewed this wonderful book for Shiny New Books back in 2016, and absolutely loved it! It was a runaway hit at the time, and made into a successful film starring Greta Garbo. The book pulls together a number of stories, all set in and around the titular hotel, and Baum’s writing and control of her material is stunning. You can read my full review here, and I rather wish I’d had the chance to revisit this one.

“Eve in Egypt” by Stella Tennyson Jesse

“Eve…” was one of Michael Walmer’s rediscoveries, and I covered this is 2018 when he reissued it. Stella was the sister of the more well-known F. Tennyson Jesse (author of “A Pin to See the Peepshow”) and this lovely book is a cross between a frothy 1920s romance and a travelogue, and was a real treat to read. More about it here!

“Speedy Death” by Gladys Mitchell

I got my fingers burned with this one… I had lined myself up to start the week re-reading “Speedy Death” by the great Gladys Mitchell, her first Mrs. Bradley title. Then something niggled in the back of my head, I checked the Ramblings, and found out that I had already covered this quite some time ago… (2014 to be precise!) So that plan went out of the window! Looking back, I did love this to bits, though – a remarkable debut for author and character, and you can see what I thought of it here.

“Clash” by Ellen Wilkinson

“Clash” was a random find in a charity shop in Leicester, and turned out to be a real stunner! Wilkinson was a left-winger from a working-class background, a Labour politician who joined in the Jarrow March when she could. “Clash” tells the story of a woman trade union organiser and the choices she has to make. It was an unforgettable read, and another title I would happily have revisited for this week! More here!

“Hudson River Bracketed” by Edith Wharton

Another Virago book, though this time from across the pond. Telling the story of a young American coming of age and dealing with all that life can throw at him, it’s a beautifully written book. It also deals with class and the struggle to make a living, so I suppose there *is* a bit of a link with “Clash”. There is a follow up to this that I have a copy of, and one day I will get to it… Meanwhile, you can read my full review here.

“Buchmendel” by Stefan Zweig

Back in 2014 there was a bit of a kerfuffle about Stefan Zweig, with some questioning his status and claiming he only wrote about trivialities. Well, I challenge anyone to read “Buchmendel”, a short and poignant tale which captures the horrors of anti-semitism, and not be convinced of his greatness. Zweig was a wonderful and powerful author, and you can see what I thought about the furore here.

*****

Well, I shall stop here. These are only a few of the many 1929 books I’ve previously read, some pre-blog (e.g. “David Golder” by Irene Nemirovsky) and others on the blog (“The Poisoned Chocolates Case” by Anthony Berkeley). It certainly must count as one of the best years for books we’ve chosen (if not *the* best!) – what books have been your favourites from 1929???? 🤔😊

Stefan Zweig: More thoughts plus “Buchmendel”

There was a bit of a furore over on the LibraryThing NYRB group recently on the subject of Stefan Zweig. I follow the group because I like a lot of the books NYRB publish, and I was interested in the thread because I’ve read a few Zweigs and in many ways feel I haven’t quite got a handle on him yet. The views on LT were quite polarised, with some writers loving his work and some trashing him. One commenter linked to a piece from the London Review of Books several years ago, a really venomous article that absolutely laid into Zweig – pilloried him as a writer and a person, which seemed a little out of proportion to me (and frankly, in places it was really distasteful and disrespectful). Certainly, the Zweigs I’ve read are very personal, inward looking stories, but that doesn’t seem reason enough to condemn him.

Digging about on the net, I came to another piece in the Guardian which again questioned his reputation. The feeling seems to be that he wrote trivial, superficial tales, refusing to engage with the changes in the world around him, the collapse of his empire and the bigger issues. However, one commenter on the Guardian, Will Stone (I assume maybe the translator of “Rilke in Paris, which I reviewed here) sprang to Zweig’s defence and mentioned the short story “Buchmendel” as an example of Zweig’s art. I was intrigued enough to search this out, as I felt much of the criticism was unjustified.

“Buchmendel” appears in an old volume from Pushkin Press of Zweig’s “Selected Stories”, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. As it opens, a writer takes shelter from the rain in a bar. Sitting waiting for the storm to pass, a hint of memory flashes into his consciousness – he knows the bar somehow, has been there before, and as he struggles to regain the past and walks round the room, his memory suddenly comes back. Before the First World War, he used to visit the same bar, when he was a student; and he starts to recall the most striking personality in the bar, Jakob Mendel, who was in effect a walking library. On any subject, his prodigious brain could recall the books to read, and he could find rarities for students and scholars. His celebrity was such that he was allowed to stay in the bar at all times, sending out for meals, while people came to consult him. But now the war is over, the world has changed and the bar is in different hands. How can the narrator find out what happened to Mendel? Luckily, there is still one old staff member at the bar who can tell him…

Well, Will Stone was right. This story is a powerful argument in favour of Zweig’s talents as a writer, and a strong refutation of the accusation of his lack of engagement with the real world. The narrator is emotional about  the changes that have taken place in his world, saddened at the fate of Mendel, regretful of the missing past. But this is no overwrought and highly coloured tale of love and loss; instead it is the story of an intelligent but blinkered man overtaken and crushed by events. Zweig engages with the brutality of the real world, the stupidity of those in uniform and authority, and the increasing intolerance of modern society towards those who do not fit in. Mendel lives in a world of his own, of books and learning, and is totally unsuited to deal with the closed, narrow minds of the military. The end is inevitable and moving, and I empathised with Zweig’s narrator in his elegiac recalling of a lost world. And the writing is superb, particularly at the start when the narrator is suddenly assailed by a sense of deja vu, trying to dredge for lost memories, for a past he has put out of mind.

I’m so glad Stone’s comment pointed me to “Buchmendel”; the criticisms of the naysayers have gone down in my estimation and Zweig has gone up. His talent as a writer is enormous, to be able to pack such emotional punch into one short story, and comment on civilization versus brutality. There is room for all kinds of literature in the world, and you don’t have to write a huge political novel, railing at the world, to make a point. Like Zweig, you can work on a smaller canvas, but with skill like his the effect can be just as devastating. I shall *definitely* be reading more Zweig.