The Emperor's Tomb (Works of Joseph Roth)

Rating:
Summary: joseph roth's farewell to europe
Review: "the emperor's tomp" continues where "radezky march" left off. Unfortunately it is not one of joseph roth's best books, despite some very touching scenes, when he writes up to his usual standards. roth aimed to write a story of the austria before hitler, but it seems he lost it somewhere in the middle, and couldn't remember what he was doing. at the time he was writing this book roth was already a lost-to-the-world alcoholic, which shows. Still, the heart-wrenching sadness of some passages make it an interesting read. I wouldn't recomend it as a first introduction to roth's work though (better start with radezky march).

Rating:
Summary: A Giant among Writers
Review: Although this novel is not a real sequel to The Radetzky March, it takes place within the confines of the same period, the wasteful and waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. But it goes a step further and brings us to the sad, purposeless, lost days following the end of the empire, where all that remains as a symbol of past glory is Franz Joseph's tomb, outside of which stands a lackluster guard who, in effect, is guarding a memory that is fading away. And from these vacant days emerges an evil, the Third Reich, almost as a consequence of the indifference that the narrator, Trotta, exhibits. Trotta, like the empire, loses everything in the end: his friends, his mother, his wife, his son, and his country. He is the ultimate alienated modern man in search of meaning. He longs for the certainty of the past and cannot change or adapt to the present. And he is utterly lost in the face of overwhelming evil.
All of this is presented in exquisite prose and imagery that captures delicate emotional nuances and historical events. Joseph Roth accomplishes more in just a few pages than most writers do in a hundred. He was a great artist, a literary giant, whose genius I hope will be fully recognized in the coming years.

Rating:
Summary: Not A Sequel
Review: Roth's novel of Austria-Hungary in the years before the first world war, The Radetzsky March, is one of the best novels I've read recently. Though billed as a sequel to The Radetzky March, this novel is considerably different with only a handful of minor characters that overlap the two stories. It has its pleasures but they are of a different nature.

Certain differences leap out right away. First, this "novel" is considerably shorter than The Radetzky March. Second, this novel is written in the first person, from the point of view of Franz Ferdinand von Trotta. Third, the language is considerably more colloquial than the more formal structure Roth used in the previous novel. Everything contributes to what feels like a more casual experience than The Radetzky March.

Still, Roth has a lot to say about the experience of pre- and post-Great War Austrians. Von Trotta, the narrator of the story, is a pretentious young man hanging out in the coffee shops of Vienna completely unprepared for the experience of war he will soon face. He sees little fighting, however, as he is captured early and spends the bulk of the war as a prisoner in Russia. Returning to his wife (with whom he never consummated his marriage) and mother, he finds a world he no longer understands through which he must find his way.

I am always fascinated how so many things we only consider "modern" problems crop up in these old stories. The intriguing lesbianism Trotta's wife engages in during his absence is one example. The vanity and conning of Trotta's elderly mother is another. It amazes me how we can read a novel like this and see how little human nature changes over the decades.

Though my personal taste leans more towards the formalism of The Radetzky March and its deep examination of the relationships between fathers and sons, there is much to enjoy here. It certainly has a more modern flavor that will appeal to many readers as some of Roth's other novels may not. Roth's ability to find truth in character is also on good show here. I would recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: Not A Sequel
Review: Roth's novel of Austria-Hungary in the years before the first world war, The Radetzsky March, is one of the best novels I've read recently. Though billed as a sequel to The Radetzky March, this novel is considerably different with only a handful of minor characters that overlap the two stories. It has its pleasures but they are of a different nature.

Certain differences leap out right away. First, this "novel" is considerably shorter than The Radetzky March. Second, this novel is written in the first person, from the point of view of Franz Ferdinand von Trotta. Third, the language is considerably more colloquial than the more formal structure Roth used in the previous novel. Everything contributes to what feels like a more casual experience than The Radetzky March.

Still, Roth has a lot to say about the experience of pre- and post-Great War Austrians. Von Trotta, the narrator of the story, is a pretentious young man hanging out in the coffee shops of Vienna completely unprepared for the experience of war he will soon face. He sees little fighting, however, as he is captured early and spends the bulk of the war as a prisoner in Russia. Returning to his wife (with whom he never consummated his marriage) and mother, he finds a world he no longer understands through which he must find his way.

I am always fascinated how so many things we only consider "modern" problems crop up in these old stories. The intriguing lesbianism Trotta's wife engages in during his absence is one example. The vanity and conning of Trotta's elderly mother is another. It amazes me how we can read a novel like this and see how little human nature changes over the decades.

Though my personal taste leans more towards the formalism of The Radetzky March and its deep examination of the relationships between fathers and sons, there is much to enjoy here. It certainly has a more modern flavor that will appeal to many readers as some of Roth's other novels may not. Roth's ability to find truth in character is also on good show here. I would recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: Beckett previsited
Review: Spanning the First World War, this short novel outlines the fall from grace of a minor Austro-Hungarian Noble, a scion of a once proud and heroic family.

It is quite a bleak book in many ways - and reminds me of the world Beckett creates in Waiting for Godot. There is an inevitability in the fall and no action could have prevented it.

The language used (at least in this translation) is minimal and strips to the bone images - making those that remain quite haunting. One which has remained with me for several days is the image of violets blooming from the bones of dead men.

Certainly a great, if troubling, book.

Rating:
Summary: Skeletal.
Review: The Radetzky March, which precedes this book, is a big, fully conceived novel of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with memorable and unique characters from the von Trotta family, vivid description, and narrative and thematic unity. The Emperor's Tomb, by contrast, is an incomplete outline, lifeless, cold, and mournful. Continuing the story of the Trotta family, this time concentrating on a branch of the family which did not receive a title or its privileges, Roth limply attempts to bring Austrian history from World War I up to 1938, the year of the book's publication.

In 1914 Franz Ferdinand Trotta is a young man with no real goals, other than pleasure. When the Emperor declares war, he becomes a soldier on the Eastern front and, very quickly, a prisoner of war sent to Siberia. Upon his eventual release and return to Vienna after the war, he finds the monarchy gone, the financial system in disarray, and his personal life in tatters. What remains--and never changes--is Trotta's lack of direction, his lack of purpose, and, most distressingly, his lack of motivation regarding his future.

Trotta's refusal to recognize that he can and must now assume power over his own life leaves the reader with a character for whom there can be no epiphany and no real climax. Trotta is a throw-back, insisting even twenty years after the war, "I still belong to a palpably vanished world, a world in which it seem[s] plain that a people exists to be ruled and that, therefore, if it wishes to continue being a people it cannot rule itself." Though the political situation in post-war Vienna, leading to the rise of Hitler, could have led to a chilling, dramatic story, Roth steers clear of this, choosing instead to memorialize the vanished past by giving us a character whose failure to adapt to change reflects some of the very characteristics which destroyed the empire he mourns....