Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters

by Joseph Roth, Michael Hofmann (Translator)

Who would have thought that seventy-three years after Joseph Roth’s lonely death in Paris, new editions of his translations would be appearing regularly? Roth, a transcendent novelist who also produced some of the most breathtakingly lyrical journalism ever written, is now being discovered by a new generation. Nine years in the making, this life through letters provides us with our most extensive portrait of Roth’s calamitous life—his father’s madness, his wife’s schizophrenia, his parade of mistresses (each more exotic than the next), and his classic westward journey from a virtual Hapsburg shtetl to Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, and finally Paris.

Containing 457 newly translated letters, along with eloquent introductions that richly frame Roth’s life, this book brilliantly evokes the crumbling specters of the Weimar Republic and 1930s France. Displaying Roth’s ceaselessly inventive powers, it finally charts his descent into despair at a time when “the word had died, [and] men bark like dogs.”

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2012

About the author

Joseph Roth, journalist and novelist, was born and grew up in Brody, a small town near Lemberg in East Galicia, part of the easternmost reaches of what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now Ukraine. Roth was born into a Jewish family. He died in Paris after living there in exile.

http://www.josephroth.de/

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lacking an English-language biography of the Austrian writer Joseph Roth, MIchael Hofman's selection and translation of Roth's letters will have to suffice for now. The selection ranges from Roth's first letters to his cousins in 1911 up to shortly before his death (from alcoholism) in 1939. One can gather together some major themes in Roth's letters: his tiresome dealings with publishers and endless wheedling for money; his commentaries on contemporary authors including Thomas Mann, Annette Kolb, Irmgard Keun, and of course his great friend Stefan Zweig; his pining for the lost world of the Austro-Hungarian empire; and his bitter and exceedingly clear-sighted vision of Germany and the Germans.

In 1925, Roth wrote, "My so-called subjectivity is in the highest degree objective. I can smell things he won’t be able to see for another ten years." At the time, he was writing marvelous short pieces for Berlin newspapers. A few years later, Roth noted to a friend that "What’s insufferable about Germany isn’t the technology so much as the romantic cult of the technology. ... The most important difference between the American and the German is that the former uses the technology as naturally as a baby drinks milk, while the latter is incapable of making a phone call without lyrical commentaries on what a great thing the telephone is." It’s as if Roth new the horrible uses to which Germany would put technology in the decade to come. And after Hitler's rise to power, Roth knew very clearly what was to come, and told his friends in no uncertain terms: in a February 1933 letter to Stefan Zweig, Roth observed, "It will have become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe. Quite apart from our personal situations—our literary and material existence has been wrecked—we are headed for a new war. I wouldn’t give a heller for our prospects. The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns." Roth's comments on Germany became increasingly bitter as events progressed. "Don’t make comparisons with Germany. Only hell is comparable. Everything, everything evil in the world, becomes noble by comparison with Germany. Germany is accursed, you have to learn to get out of the habit of comparing anything at all to this German shit."

I was struck by Roth's extravagant praise for the Bavarian-French author Annette Kolb (1870-1967). To Felix Bertaux Roth wrote, "In this context, can I draw your attention to the newest novel by Annette Kolb (published 1927, chez S. Fischer) [Daphne Herbst]. It describes nothing less than the last remnants of a cultivated German society. It’s exemplary, less a novel than a symptom, last sign of life of people who no longer exist." Roth wrote to Kolb herself in 1934:

"Truly loved Annette Kolb, here is confirmation of your great talent, and my great devotion to you as well. If I could ever have thought your charm led me to rate your work higher than my cruel authorial conscience permits: well now, thanks to your divine Schaukel,1 I can turn to myself in triumph, and say: you know, you were right about her all along. She is beguiling IN EVERY WAY! Annette, I want to say—no Kolb—but don’t worry, I’m only intrusive like this in my initial rapture! I have just finished reading your Swing, interrupting work on my own book, thinking I can read ten pages—and now you’ve cost me a day and a half of work. Blissful vacation! How rotten I feel, confronting my own book again! You write like a bird, and I like an elephant."

I hope some of Kolb's work makes it into English--there isn't anything available now, and I would like to get to know this author who is so highly praised by Roth.

Later in the letters, Roth's debilitating love of schnapps becomes a regular subject. In 1935, four years before Roth's untimely death, he wrote to Stefan Zweig, "Don’t worry about my drinking, please. It’s much more likely to preserve me than destroy me. I mean to say, yes, alcohol has the effect of shortening one’s life, but it staves off immediate death. And it’s the staving off of immediate death that concerns me, not the lengthening of my life. I can’t reckon on many more years ahead of me. I am as it were cashing in the last 20 years of my life with alcohol, in order to gain a week or two. Admittedly, to keep the metaphor going, there will come a time when the bailiffs turn up unexpectedly, and too early. That, more or less, is the situation." A sad, early end to a sad life. If there is any mercy in Roth's early death, it's that he did not live to see how terribly right he was about the barbarism of the Germans.

[Michael]

By the end of this book you are eavesdropping on a brilliant and sensitive person (Joseph Roth, 1894-1939) as he worries, works, and drinks himself to death while Europe loses its mind. It's a sad read. He's a fascinating character.

Some excerpts from the letters:

to Benno Reifenberg, April 22, 1926:
“I don’t write 'witty glosses.' I paint the portrait of the age.”

to Stefan Zweig, May 13, 1931:
“Life is so much finer than literature! I feel sorry for literature. It is a SWINDLE!”

to Zweig, March 26, 1933:
“The world is stupider now than it was in 1914. The human no longer bestirs himself when humanity is hurt and killed.”

to Zweig, Nov. 7, 1933:
“One more time: you will have to finish with the Third Reich, or with me. You cannot simultaneously have relationships with representatives of the Third Reich - which includes every single publisher - and with me. I won’t stand for it. I can’t justify it, not to you, not to myself.”

to Zweig, Nov. 30, 1933:
“…all the proletariat garbage that you get over the airwaves. Wherever they oppress us, in Russia, Italy, Germany, is a TOILET. It stinks there. It’s not true to say that Communism has ‘transformed an entire continent.’ Like f*ck it has. It spawned Fascism and Nazism and hatred for intellectual freedom. Whoever endorses Russia has eo ipso endorsed the Third Reich.”

Albert Einstein to B.W. Huebsch at The Viking Press, February 24, 1935
“…this consoling book by a real mensch and great writer.” [About Roth’s novel Job.]

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This is perhaps the single most striking quality of Roth's letters: their fervor, their temperature....The burn off the page with their indignation, their desperation, their indifference to excuses, their terminal wretchedness, and combusted dignity." (from the introduction by Michael Hofmann)

[Dwight]

My summary post with links to excerpts from the book

What emerges from these letters is a man constantly on the edge during troubled times. In many ways Roth reflects the turbulence of civilization coming apart at the seams. I’ve included a lot of excerpts from the Roth’s letters (and some to him) in the links below, trying to provide a flavor of his life as he described it. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, Roth was a very complex, flawed, gifted, and troubled man. Even if he exaggerated some of his troubles in these letters, it’s a wonder that his novels were written under such circumstances. The troubles he foretold for Europe, though, were often accurate. Roth’s life, reflected in these letters, shows the price of being an émigré, not just from a country but from the world at large.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

think ya got it tough? bills due? woman troubles? empire disappeared under your feet? joseph roth's letters (and received letters from his friends [stefan zweig mainly], translators, editors, bosses, lovers) chronicle his wrenching life in exile, poverty, alcoholism, and incredible output of novels, feuilltons, and articles.
a must read for roth fiction fans The Radetzky March

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable collection of letters by the remarkable Austrian novelist. Though he considered himself both Jew and Catholic, Roth's primary sense of identity seems to have been writer and Austrian. In these letters one sees quite deeply into his personality--especially in relation to his colleague Stefan Zweig, who helped support Roth for many years, and to his wife's parents--in a way particularly revelatory since his novels were not in any way "autobiographical" as so many novels by other writers are. Not always admirable by any means, but always remarkable, Roth was quite a human human being.

[Emma Richler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less comprehensive a selection of letters and with an introduction and notes by someone other than Hofmann would have perhaps exposed this wonderful and tortured angry writer to a larger audience. For his admirers, much of this is fascinating and much repetitive and depressing.

[Geoff]

Michael Hofman is a lovely translator. Joseph Roth is a lovely writer. This could be great!