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The Weather in Berlin: A Novel
For decades, film director Dixon Greenwood has lived the Hollywood life — the studio intrigues, the abrupt rise and fall of careers, grand aspirations come and gone. Dix’s own fame rests on his one great work, SUMMER, 1921, an antiwar classic that has become a cult film. Now he believes he has lost his imagination and genius for reading the times. His audience has vanished. So, on a kind of personal rescue mission, he embarks on a three-month journey to Germany, the birthplace, as he sees it, of the twentieth century.
In postwar, post-Wall Berlin, Dix finds the winter skies gray and the cultural climate turbulent. While fellow artists debate politics and art, he discovers that a nostalgic Prussian costume drama is the most popular program on German television. With decidedly mixed feelings, he agrees to direct an episode — a fateful decision that unexpectedly reunites him with an actress who disappeared from the set of SUMMER, 1921 thirty years before. Their final collaboration takes Dix into the heart of the German century and back to his own imagination.
THE WEATHER IN BERLIN showcases Ward Just’s unmatched eye for restless Americans abroad. Imbued with the glitter and darkness of both old Hollywood and the new Europe, it is a terrifically atmospheric novel by “one of the most astute writers of American fiction” (New York Times Book Review).
In postwar, post-Wall Berlin, Dix finds the winter skies gray and the cultural climate turbulent. While fellow artists debate politics and art, he discovers that a nostalgic Prussian costume drama is the most popular program on German television. With decidedly mixed feelings, he agrees to direct an episode — a fateful decision that unexpectedly reunites him with an actress who disappeared from the set of SUMMER, 1921 thirty years before. Their final collaboration takes Dix into the heart of the German century and back to his own imagination.
THE WEATHER IN BERLIN showcases Ward Just’s unmatched eye for restless Americans abroad. Imbued with the glitter and darkness of both old Hollywood and the new Europe, it is a terrifically atmospheric novel by “one of the most astute writers of American fiction” (New York Times Book Review).
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Ward Just
36 books83 followersWard Just was a war correspondent, novelist, and short story author.
Ward Just graduated from Cranbrook School in 1953. He briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.
His influences include Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. His novel An Unfinished Season was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story "About Boston," and again in 1986 for his short story "The Costa Brava, 1959." His fiction is often concerned with the influence of national politics on Americans' personal lives. Much of it is set in Washington, D.C., and foreign countries. Another common theme is the alienation felt by Midwesterners in the East.
Ward Just graduated from Cranbrook School in 1953. He briefly attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He started his career as a print journalist for the Waukegan (Illinois) News-Sun. He was also a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post from 1959 to 1969, after which he left journalism to write fiction.
His influences include Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. His novel An Unfinished Season was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. His novel Echo House was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997. He has twice been a finalist for the O. Henry Award: in 1985 for his short story "About Boston," and again in 1986 for his short story "The Costa Brava, 1959." His fiction is often concerned with the influence of national politics on Americans' personal lives. Much of it is set in Washington, D.C., and foreign countries. Another common theme is the alienation felt by Midwesterners in the East.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 29, 2013
Papa hasn't been well served. There are probably more lines of Hemingway parody in the world than actual Hemingway. In fact, changing tastes, feminist criticism, and -- it has to be admitted -- some really bad writing by the Nobel Prize winner himself have conspired to overshadow his work with memorable winners from various "Bad Hemingway" contests.
That is not fair. It is not fair at all, but that is the way it is, and there is nothing one can do about it. Nada.
But if you choose carefully (avoid the love scenes at all cost), you'll rediscover stories of profound depth in prose that's hauntingly modulated. It's a pity, really, that there isn't a good Hemingway contest, because Ward Just would win it for his latest novel, "The Weather in Berlin."
The sun also rises in Berlin, but mostly it's cold and rainy during Dixon Greenhouse's three-month fellowship. He accepted the trip on a whim, with a promise that nothing would be required of him but an interview about his moviemaking career.
It's both flattering and depressing to realize that one's life is of interest to historians. Thirty years have passed since he directed his greatest film, his only great film, a cult classic called "Summer, 1921" about a group of German artists between the wars. Since then, "scripts continued to arrive but he did not understand them, complaining that they seemed written in a foreign syntax." His patient wife encourages him, even as she begins a new movie of her own in Hollywood. But convinced that his "audience has vanished, gone away, emigrated somewhere," he bids a farewell to her arms and joins a listless band of intellectuals in Germany.
As promised, except for a few hours of interviews, there is nothing for him to do. He chats with Germans caught in the quicksand of their peculiar history. With his marriage interrupted by 6,000 miles and 10 time zones, Dixon and his wife communicate only by long phone messages, monologues that seem to keep them up-to-date but really only emphasize their lost synchronization. Meanwhile, his companions' viscous nostalgia leads him deep into his own past, memories of his charming father who interrogated Nazis and especially the surreal atmosphere surrounding the creation of "Summer, 1921."
It was the late 1960s when Dixon and his wife traveled through Europe looking for settings and actors that would give form to the script he had worked on for 10 years. Everything about the project had seemed serendipitous: the miraculous funding, the magical lake, the three young girls he found at a restaurant. They had never even seen a movie before, but Dixon immediately recognized in them the sort of captivating mystery that eventually won his film an Oscar.
But perhaps it was the freak accident on the last day of filming that gave "Summer, 1921" its mysterious aura. It was tempting to regard the loss of one of the cast as a tragic reflection of the film's theme, a reckless hiatus between two conflagrations. But over the years, Dixon has found the accident frustratingly resistant to interpretation or burial.
In the dark Berlin winter, he fades from one memory to the next, struggling to discover some coherence. Just is a master at navigating the crosscurrents of real dialogue, the jagged non sequiturs that mark conversation. The narrative seems to move in place, full of evocative implica- tions that draw us on without our knowing entirely where we're going. The most masterly quality of this plot is its persistent lack of apparent construction, the way it follows the ordinary and the bizarre with equal fidelity: the monotony of a long car ride, a confrontation with a wounded boar, his father graciously interviewing a war criminal.
Toward the end of this disorienting semester abroad, Dixon is asked to direct an episode of Germany's most popular TV drama. "Wannsee 1899" is a weighty historical soap opera, a period drama that encourages viewers to return to an untroubled past. "The turn of the century was not such a bad time in Germany," one of the crew tells him. "The nation was prosperous and stable." Dixon has his own reasons for finding such nostalgia irresistible, but the project unearths old complications that enliven him rather than allowing him to fall into repose.
Unfortunately, the country remains too shadowy in the novel to support its provocative discussion of the "new Germany," with "Berlin as the capital of the 21st century." Just is a master at creating the interior of a clean, well-lighted pub or moving across the river and into the trees of Germany, but he gives almost no impression whatsoever of the dynamic city. That omission renders the novel's political content strangely hollow.
Like Hemingway, Just honed his skill as a war correspondent. You can hear the crisp descriptions in both as an imprint of their first career. And Just relies on the same almost pretentious dialogue, packed with amorphous irony. (Pop quiz: Which one wrote this? "Oh honey," she said, "things have gone to pieces.")
The disaffected American, adrift in a country scarred by war, rendered impotent by circumstance, burdened by the responsibility to live a meaningful life, Dixon makes a curious reincarnation of Jake Barnes.
That genealogy doesn't take anything from "The Weather in Berlin," of course. Just has his own inimitable things to say about reawakening a creative life. And he says them here in an atmospheric novel that's mysteriously alluring.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0606/p1...
That is not fair. It is not fair at all, but that is the way it is, and there is nothing one can do about it. Nada.
But if you choose carefully (avoid the love scenes at all cost), you'll rediscover stories of profound depth in prose that's hauntingly modulated. It's a pity, really, that there isn't a good Hemingway contest, because Ward Just would win it for his latest novel, "The Weather in Berlin."
The sun also rises in Berlin, but mostly it's cold and rainy during Dixon Greenhouse's three-month fellowship. He accepted the trip on a whim, with a promise that nothing would be required of him but an interview about his moviemaking career.
It's both flattering and depressing to realize that one's life is of interest to historians. Thirty years have passed since he directed his greatest film, his only great film, a cult classic called "Summer, 1921" about a group of German artists between the wars. Since then, "scripts continued to arrive but he did not understand them, complaining that they seemed written in a foreign syntax." His patient wife encourages him, even as she begins a new movie of her own in Hollywood. But convinced that his "audience has vanished, gone away, emigrated somewhere," he bids a farewell to her arms and joins a listless band of intellectuals in Germany.
As promised, except for a few hours of interviews, there is nothing for him to do. He chats with Germans caught in the quicksand of their peculiar history. With his marriage interrupted by 6,000 miles and 10 time zones, Dixon and his wife communicate only by long phone messages, monologues that seem to keep them up-to-date but really only emphasize their lost synchronization. Meanwhile, his companions' viscous nostalgia leads him deep into his own past, memories of his charming father who interrogated Nazis and especially the surreal atmosphere surrounding the creation of "Summer, 1921."
It was the late 1960s when Dixon and his wife traveled through Europe looking for settings and actors that would give form to the script he had worked on for 10 years. Everything about the project had seemed serendipitous: the miraculous funding, the magical lake, the three young girls he found at a restaurant. They had never even seen a movie before, but Dixon immediately recognized in them the sort of captivating mystery that eventually won his film an Oscar.
But perhaps it was the freak accident on the last day of filming that gave "Summer, 1921" its mysterious aura. It was tempting to regard the loss of one of the cast as a tragic reflection of the film's theme, a reckless hiatus between two conflagrations. But over the years, Dixon has found the accident frustratingly resistant to interpretation or burial.
In the dark Berlin winter, he fades from one memory to the next, struggling to discover some coherence. Just is a master at navigating the crosscurrents of real dialogue, the jagged non sequiturs that mark conversation. The narrative seems to move in place, full of evocative implica- tions that draw us on without our knowing entirely where we're going. The most masterly quality of this plot is its persistent lack of apparent construction, the way it follows the ordinary and the bizarre with equal fidelity: the monotony of a long car ride, a confrontation with a wounded boar, his father graciously interviewing a war criminal.
Toward the end of this disorienting semester abroad, Dixon is asked to direct an episode of Germany's most popular TV drama. "Wannsee 1899" is a weighty historical soap opera, a period drama that encourages viewers to return to an untroubled past. "The turn of the century was not such a bad time in Germany," one of the crew tells him. "The nation was prosperous and stable." Dixon has his own reasons for finding such nostalgia irresistible, but the project unearths old complications that enliven him rather than allowing him to fall into repose.
Unfortunately, the country remains too shadowy in the novel to support its provocative discussion of the "new Germany," with "Berlin as the capital of the 21st century." Just is a master at creating the interior of a clean, well-lighted pub or moving across the river and into the trees of Germany, but he gives almost no impression whatsoever of the dynamic city. That omission renders the novel's political content strangely hollow.
Like Hemingway, Just honed his skill as a war correspondent. You can hear the crisp descriptions in both as an imprint of their first career. And Just relies on the same almost pretentious dialogue, packed with amorphous irony. (Pop quiz: Which one wrote this? "Oh honey," she said, "things have gone to pieces.")
The disaffected American, adrift in a country scarred by war, rendered impotent by circumstance, burdened by the responsibility to live a meaningful life, Dixon makes a curious reincarnation of Jake Barnes.
That genealogy doesn't take anything from "The Weather in Berlin," of course. Just has his own inimitable things to say about reawakening a creative life. And he says them here in an atmospheric novel that's mysteriously alluring.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0606/p1...
September 2, 2021
I originally read this in print in October, 2004, but after I read Robert Hellenga's Love, Death, and Rare Books, I realized that his writing reminded me of Just's, so I came back for a re-reading. Here, the protagonist is a film maker and this is a book about story and his skill as a raconteur. His taking of a story and making a film and needing to know the backstory of his characters. It explorates the idea of story, the technique of taking a deep dive inside a story. Just writes with a welcoming cadence that pulls readers in; strong characterizations, measured pacing, expansive storyline as he explores what happened to East Germans after 1950s. Intriguing story, beautifully written.
February 5, 2013
I actually began this book many weeks ago. I had taken it to the hospital to read during my husband's stay. Numerous necessary interruptions made me realize I could not do the book justice reading it piecemeal - the book demands that you pay attention to it. So I switched to a light read - Sweetgrass - which was easy to keep up with in spite of hospital conditions. I returned to this book weeks later.
The novel is rich on so many levels. Mr. Just is the kind of storyteller that tells multiple stories within his mainframe, and I like that. His sentences are satisfying and his thought processes make you think. I found myself on the internet learning about the Sorbs. The title of the book is apt because many parts of the book include the effect of the weather on the characters and the city. "The wind came from all directions and never let up. A prewar wind was replaced in an instant by a freshening breeze from just yesterday. But the old wind lingered, never absent, a part of every day, and in that way you were reminded of the dawn of the modern world."
I don't know what it must be like to live in a country where tourist attractions include concentration camps and ovens. We had only 2 days in Germany when we went to Europe and it never occurred to me to want to go to that part of the country and see those things. How strange to grow up in a country still villified by so many in the world for its recent history. "It's always uncomfortable, isn't it? It's not a good conversation. One is always misunderstood, these intimate things, events of so many years ago. It is hard to find a language to express our thoughts, our ordinary words and phrases won't do."
"The story belonged to whoever could tell it best, and Berlin was a narrator's utopia, the story of the world, ruin and rebirth."
The novel is rich on so many levels. Mr. Just is the kind of storyteller that tells multiple stories within his mainframe, and I like that. His sentences are satisfying and his thought processes make you think. I found myself on the internet learning about the Sorbs. The title of the book is apt because many parts of the book include the effect of the weather on the characters and the city. "The wind came from all directions and never let up. A prewar wind was replaced in an instant by a freshening breeze from just yesterday. But the old wind lingered, never absent, a part of every day, and in that way you were reminded of the dawn of the modern world."
I don't know what it must be like to live in a country where tourist attractions include concentration camps and ovens. We had only 2 days in Germany when we went to Europe and it never occurred to me to want to go to that part of the country and see those things. How strange to grow up in a country still villified by so many in the world for its recent history. "It's always uncomfortable, isn't it? It's not a good conversation. One is always misunderstood, these intimate things, events of so many years ago. It is hard to find a language to express our thoughts, our ordinary words and phrases won't do."
"The story belonged to whoever could tell it best, and Berlin was a narrator's utopia, the story of the world, ruin and rebirth."
April 9, 2024
This thoughtful, meditative book crept up on me in turns (as meditative books should) so that by the time I hit my stride I was at least half way through, utterly glad that I'd persevered and not abandoned it during the long, quiet establishing sections. It's a beautiful book in which detail and nuance accumulate to build a rich and compelling portrait of a director, Dix Greenwood, famed for a handful of movies, but one in particular, "Summer, 1921" set in Germany after the First World War, and starring a group of young unknown actors, including a Serb girl, Jana. Back in German after a 30 year absence, Dix is able to wander through the city, in a deft exploration of place, time, and national identity, but also - through a series of flashbacks - of his own life in the movies, including the circumstances around the making of "Summer, 1921", and the disappearance of Jana, after diving into a lake on the last day of filming. It's the offer to direct an episode of a popular German soap opera, and the reappearance of Jana, 30 years on, that sets the scene for the book's third section, the strongest, in which Dix rediscovers his creative spark. The Weather in Berlin is a slow-burn of a novel, but full of wonderful character descriptions and elegant nuggets of wisdom, such as John Huston's advice to directors: When you film a red waggon, never say, This is a red wagon. In other words: trust your swing.
October 27, 2020
Now I can't remember how I "found" Ward Just. But I am so glad I did. Every sentence is perfect (imho). Lots and lots of detail, but nothing extraneous, and under it is so much intelligence, perception, idea...and a lot of it is (in this book notably, maybe because the main character is a film director) sharing with the reader the telling details of how various characters see and act in the world. Yes, there is the filming of something at the end of the book, and I feel I learned so much about how a very fine director uses things like the clouds, the rain, the architecture, furniture and... "How do you want him?" Gunther asked. "Slow, the way farm machinery is slow. But powerful. Capable of anything." [said the book's main character, Dixon Greenwood, director). I was fascinated, and as a person who is always looking around and using light, shadows, trash, pareidolia, I felt I could...almost...direct a movie myself, as long as I kept my head and eyes and ears and instinct open, like Dix Greenwood. Ward Just, who I never even heard of until this year, has many novels, collections of short stories, at least one play. I wonder if he ever wrote a script for a movie!
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
November 16, 2014
First time reading a Ward Just book. I love the city of Berlin and I work in the Film Industry so when I stumbled across this book it sounded like it could be a good read. Well it was an alright read, just very dry and slow reading. I found myself speed reading the last half of the book after it took so long getting through the first half.
March 6, 2018
Hollywood, Berlin in the 50's, East Germany... It's not a spy novel - just a nice story about relationships, time, history and change.
July 10, 2021
Plot-wise, The Weather in Berlin is very basic. A movie director, famous for a film he made many years ago, gets a chance to repeat his success. The complications are minimal. The characters are of secondary importance. So what makes this book worthy of a four-star rating?
The answer lies in the author’s talent for seeing the world through the eyes of Dixon Greenwood, whose movie Summer 1921 is a cult classic. Based on a story Dixon heard his father tell his mother, the film is about three boys and three girls at a lake in southern Germany after World War I. During production, one of the girls mysteriously disappeared from the set and was presumed drowned, despite an aggressive search for her body. The girl’s performance in the film was so natural and unpretentious that she, too, has become a legend.
Now, at age sixty-four, Dixon returns to Germany on a fellowship for film students in Berlin. Willa Baz, a television director, takes him on a tour of what was East Germany before the reunification. He meets a variety of people who express their bitterness about life under socialism and how they despise Americans for supporting West Germany. None of them seem remorseful about the Third Reich’s crimes. “The West was trying to destroy us,” Willa says. “So naturally there were resentments. Surely you can see that.”
One of the best moments is Dixon’s encounter with a wounded boar in the forest. It seems a metaphor for the packs of young German soldiers abandoned to roam the countryside after the Wehrmacht’s defeat and, perhaps, a warning that the dark spirit that spawned Nazi Germany may not be dead.
Dixon, who cannot help seeing Germany through the eyes of a filmmaker, accepts an offer to direct an episode of Willa’s TV series. As he reads the script, we get a fascinating verbal tour of how the movie will unfold as only an artist could describe it. It is these two factors, the sense of a culture struggling to come to grips with its past, and the means by which a director brings a script to life, that make the book worth reading.
I must admit I found it difficult to get into at first. The Weather in Berlin exists more in the past than in the present, challenging the reader to adapt to Dixon’s way of looking at things. For those enjoy exquisite narration, it is very rewarding. Unfortunately, sprinklings of offensive language throughout the book prevent me from awarding it a five-star rating.
The answer lies in the author’s talent for seeing the world through the eyes of Dixon Greenwood, whose movie Summer 1921 is a cult classic. Based on a story Dixon heard his father tell his mother, the film is about three boys and three girls at a lake in southern Germany after World War I. During production, one of the girls mysteriously disappeared from the set and was presumed drowned, despite an aggressive search for her body. The girl’s performance in the film was so natural and unpretentious that she, too, has become a legend.
Now, at age sixty-four, Dixon returns to Germany on a fellowship for film students in Berlin. Willa Baz, a television director, takes him on a tour of what was East Germany before the reunification. He meets a variety of people who express their bitterness about life under socialism and how they despise Americans for supporting West Germany. None of them seem remorseful about the Third Reich’s crimes. “The West was trying to destroy us,” Willa says. “So naturally there were resentments. Surely you can see that.”
One of the best moments is Dixon’s encounter with a wounded boar in the forest. It seems a metaphor for the packs of young German soldiers abandoned to roam the countryside after the Wehrmacht’s defeat and, perhaps, a warning that the dark spirit that spawned Nazi Germany may not be dead.
Dixon, who cannot help seeing Germany through the eyes of a filmmaker, accepts an offer to direct an episode of Willa’s TV series. As he reads the script, we get a fascinating verbal tour of how the movie will unfold as only an artist could describe it. It is these two factors, the sense of a culture struggling to come to grips with its past, and the means by which a director brings a script to life, that make the book worth reading.
I must admit I found it difficult to get into at first. The Weather in Berlin exists more in the past than in the present, challenging the reader to adapt to Dixon’s way of looking at things. For those enjoy exquisite narration, it is very rewarding. Unfortunately, sprinklings of offensive language throughout the book prevent me from awarding it a five-star rating.
May 14, 2017
1☆ No, its dull & choppy.
"...famous Hollywood director travels to post-Wall Germany to rekindle his genius, he is unexpectedly reunited with an actress who mysteriously disappeared from the set of his movie thirty years before."
We do learn some current (1999) German views on; WWII, Hitler, the cold war & Berlin wall, the DDR and details of daily life. But the story of a director with writer's block looking for inspiration in the gloom of a German winter--yikes it's dull.
The problem is also the narrator, interrupting the story with tangential detail, flashbacks, flash-forwards and leaving the reader wondering what's the time period and who's speaking.
Sorry to find it dull, muddled & choppy.
"...famous Hollywood director travels to post-Wall Germany to rekindle his genius, he is unexpectedly reunited with an actress who mysteriously disappeared from the set of his movie thirty years before."
We do learn some current (1999) German views on; WWII, Hitler, the cold war & Berlin wall, the DDR and details of daily life. But the story of a director with writer's block looking for inspiration in the gloom of a German winter--yikes it's dull.
The problem is also the narrator, interrupting the story with tangential detail, flashbacks, flash-forwards and leaving the reader wondering what's the time period and who's speaking.
Sorry to find it dull, muddled & choppy.
February 15, 2025
As with American Romantic, this book transports us to unique places and sensibilities. The protagonist returns to a place of his youth in hopes of rediscovering essential qualities of his life and craft (he's a film director with one, longag0 cult film success). There's much in this story about Hollywood and German cinema, about fame and obscurity, and especially about being a stranger in a strange land. Another very thoughtful and masterful novel by this author.
June 23, 2017
thoughtful review deleted by software or ? In a word S L O W. Gave up after two discs.
July 2, 2020
OK but I liked his other books better. I couldn't get into the movie making part of it.
June 15, 2014
Ward’s story follows Dixon, a filmmaker returning to Germany, where he had made his most famous film years ago, as he makes and renews connections. At its simplest level, this is a kind of mystery story about an actress who disappeared, a film-within-a-book. At another level it’s an exploration of the power and pain of memory. What I found most interesting is the insight into the way the history of the postwar period is personal for his characters. The ghosts of the past are always present: a bar owner exhibits her photographs of the war period, both of young Nazi soldiers and of her happy moments afterwards drinking with American soldiers. Dixon meets people who try to explain to him, and to themselves, how their lives have been darkened. A woman concealed her Communist affiliations; a man saw a young brother dragged off to fight and to die. As a friend explains, “Five decades later, no wonder many Germans wanted to be like Americans, enjoying the blessing of the free market without the inconvenience of memory.”
October 31, 2020
If you are going to read this novel, don’t read the reviews. Too many spoilers! Wonderfully written. Great character development and story. I read slowly near the end because I didn’t want to leave Just’s world. A treasure.❣️
March 9, 2011
Starts off slow, but works its way into you, like all Ward Just novels. A beautiful way with words.
December 11, 2012
Ward Just has gone too long with a Pulitzer. He's unjustly unrecognized.
December 24, 2012
Elegant, enchanting, nostalgic noir. Lovely.
November 21, 2014
I should've read some reviews before I read this. Yet another book wherein an American thinks about the Holocaust. I wanted to read about present day Berlin. Oops. Did not finish.
September 22, 2007
Quick read, interesting view of how the past comes back to haunt us.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews