Word: doblin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
ALEXAXDERPLATZ, BERLIN - Alfred Doblin; translated by Eugene Jolas- Viking...
...birth of books is never quite legitimate, and often their parentage is hopelessly confused. Few carry their lineage so plainly in their lineaments as Alexanderplatz, Berlin, first Big Book obviously fathered by Maestro James Joyce's potent, muchdiscussed, comparatively little-read Ulysses. Author Doblin makes no acknowledgment to Maestro Joyce; none is necessary...
Like Ulysses, Alexander platz is a many-charactered merry-go-round with one unheroic central figure bobbing through the realistic din. Not less topical than Ulysses, Alexander platz is more sordid, more sentimental. Herr Doblin's Dublin is Berlin: his hero one Franz Biberkopf, denizen of the city's lesser deeps. Just released from Tegel Prison after serving four years for killing his harlot-mistress, Biberkopf in tends to go straight, shake off the crooked company he kept before. He sells news papers, manages respectability for a while. Then he runs into his evil genius, one Reinhold...
...author. His cultivation of the "stream-of-consciousness" method, use of a wide-angled lens in picturing his landscapes, resulted in writing too hard for the general reader. Other authors have taken from Maestro Joyce a hint here & there, or have aped him slavishly for the precious few. Herr Doblin is the first to copy him on a large scale and for a wide audience. Perhaps only through such filters as Alexander platz will Joyce's strong waters be made potable to the public...
Occasionally Doblin's pages read like a parody of Joyce: "At twenty-three minutes, seventeen seconds after eight, another man steps up to the bar, the milling-bar, the swilling-bar, a fellow-one, two. three, four, five, six, seven, all good children go to heaven-who might it be? You say it's the King of England? No, it's not the King of England, driving in grand style, to the opening of Parliament, as a symbol of the English nation's sense of independence. It's not he. Then...