Late Fame (NYRB Classics)

A well-written and observant book about a civil servant whose book of poetry is discovered by a group of young writers in fin de siecle Vienna. I was excited to see something by an Austrian writer I hadn't read before. I love the stories and novels from this era. There's something so intoxicating about the fertility and the decay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.This book struck me as a bit of a minor work. I enjoyed reading it (only took an hour), and I liked its portrayal of young litterateurs (which really aren't too different from today), and of the urge to write and the urge to find fame, but it felt like something deeper was missing. Still, I'm excited to explore further works by this author.

If you don't know Arthur Schnitzler's work, and I confess I didn't, this novella offers an excellent starting point, even though it may not be especially representative of his larger body of work. The romantic story behind the novella's publication is that while it was written in the 30's it was lost among his collected papers, (because he wouldn't serialize it and its existence was forgotten after his death), and only recently discovered and published.Be that as it may, we have the story now. The broad outline of the story is that Eduard Saxberger, an "unremarkable civil servant", returns home one night to be met by a young poet who enthusiastically exclaims that a book of poems that Saxberger wrote as a young man has been rediscovered by the artistic youth of Vienna, who celebrate his artistic genius. So, rescued from a life of boredom, routine and obscurity, Saxberger finds himself surrounded by a circle of self-proclaimed young intellectuals and artists who treat him as a venerable poet. How divine.The joke here is that in his youth Schnitzler was a member of "Young Vienna", a circle of avant-garde artists, and the book is in many ways an affectionate, gentle, and partly melancholy send up of that crowd. (I imagine that if you really know your German literary history from that period you could play some guessing games about who might be who in the book. The excellent afterword to this volume does a bit of that). For mere mortals like myself, though, the fictional young artists were quite entertaining enough.The book, thus, proceeds on two levels. On one hand we observe the rise and fall and reconciliation with life and fate that is Saxberger's tale. On the other hand, we witness the excitement, pretentiousness, certainty, and self-delusion of the young artists. As I say, this is all done with a fair amount of affection - there is no figurative blood left on the floor and only a few bruises.The translation is excellent. The narrative, and especially dialogue, is crisp with just the right color, darkness, and wistfulness. The conflict between Saxberger, who is surprisingly self-aware once the flattery wears off, and his young admirers, who are delusional and oblivious, is penetrating, if gentle. This struck me as a kind but clear-eyed summing up by an accomplished writer, and was a delightful find.(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to the publisher of this book.)

New book, arrived quickly in mail

Vienna in the 1880s. Eduard Saxberger has been a civil servant for some 35 years and he us approaching the age of seventy. In his youth he had been a poet and a playwright whose works had been ignored by the public. He had almost forgotten all about them. But then a young poet called Wolfgang Meier found a copy of a volume of Saxberger’s poems called “Wanderings”, in a second-hand bookshop, was thrilled by it, and introduced it to a group of his friends, all writers or actors who had failed to be recognized. They include Saxberger in their circle and make a tremendous fuss of him; he is somewhat bemused, but of course flattered. Soon he feels more at home with them at their coffee house than with the humdrum friends with whom he used to spend his evenings at their restaurant.The young people decide to seek publicity by holding a public reading of their work. The rest of the novella is about the preparations for the reading and the actual evening. During this period Saxberger’s mood fluctuates all the time, not least because her knows he is no longer capable of writing poetry. The young people are certainly vain, dismissive of more successful authors as “careerists”, and quarrelsome; and it becomes increasingly clear that they were not neglected people of talent but really didn’t have any worth-while talent at all. They rage when the press notices of the reading disappoint them - only Saxberger’s response is philosophical, and confirms our impression that he is a very nice old man.An Afterword tells us that in the 1890s Schnitzler belonged to a writers’ circle called The Young Viennese and that several of its members are models for his cast of characters.The book, written in 1895 when Schnitzler was 33, was never published in his life time, was first issued in German in 2014, 83 years after Schnitzler’s death, and immediately translated into English by Alexander Starritt for the admirable Pushkin Press, to which we owe so many excellent translations of continental authors.