Oh joy! It’s time for the Picks & Pans rite! You lounge in your boudoir in your favorite pajamas, preferably the silky kind worn by Joan Crawford, while you read and rate what you read and drink tea out of a porcelain cup. You want to make star ratings, but there is no star on your keyboard.
This has been a month for eclectic
PICKS & PANS!
A PICK. Käsebier Takes Berlin, by Gabriele Tergit. This satiric German novel, set in Berlin in 1930, will fascinate newspaper junkies who have witnessed drastic changes in the newspaper business this century. Tergit, herself a journalist, describes comparable changes in newspapers in Germany in the late 1920s.
The novel is also a paean to newspapers. She deftly captures the atmosphere of the hectic newsroom, where Miermann, a columnist and the editor of the Berliner Rundschau, inspires his favorite writers, Gohlisch and Miss Kohler, to pursue interesting leads and revises their articles into gold. While they gab and drink coffee, he battles daily with the printer who wants to cut articles. The printer prefers to cut from the bottom, so Miermann must intercede.
And then the newspaper becomes popular. On a slow news day, Emil Gohlisch writes a hyperbolic feature praising an unknown cabaret singer, Käsebier (whose name means Cheese Beer). Gohlisch’s article catapults Käsebier to fame and makes Gohlisch a trendsetter. All the newspapers scramble to follow his lead. Käsebier becomes a pop star, his concerts are sold out, there are Käsebier books, Käsebier merchandise, international tours, and everyone sings his songs.
This is fairly normal crazy newspaper stuff, until Frächter, an ambitious writer and control freak, muscles his way to a position of power and restructures the newspaper. He cuts salaries and fires veteran journalists. He wants the articles to be light and punchy, with no substance, and clickbait headlines to sell papers. Miermann tries to argue philosophically but is fired after 18 years at the paper. He goes on strike, but nobody notices.
There is a huge cast of characters who attend Kasebier concerts, have desperate love affairs, and make faulty business deals. A banker invests in a luxury apartment house and theater. The design is faulty and he cannot rent the apartments. The bank folds. People lose their savings. The economy crashes. The Nazis are rising and Berlin is changing.
Tergit describes the collapse of the free press. She had to flee Germany in 1933, a year after the publication of Käsebier Takes Berlin..
Star rating: *****
A PICK. Cousin Phillis, by Elizabeth Gaskell. This is my favorite novella of all time. In a gorgeous, lyrical style, Gaskell describes the tranquil countryside at the time when railroads were just beginning to be built. The narrator, Paul Manning, is looking back over his youth and reminiscing about his distant cousins at Hope Farm. When he left home at 17 to work to as a clerk for Mr. Holdsworth, an engineer who planned railway lines, he began to visit his cousins’ idyllic farm. Cousin Holman, the lady of the house, feeds him delicious fresh food, while her husband, Mr. Holman, a minister and farmer, engages him in conversation that is sometimes over his head. His beautiful, kind, scholarly cousin Phillis knows Latin, Greek, and is learning Italian, none of which he understands, but they are like brother and sister. The drama begins when he introduces his charming boss, Mr.Holdsworth, to the Holmans and Holdsworth begins to admire Phillis.
Star Rating: *****
A PICK & A PAN! Janet Doncaster, by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. A famous suffragette and feminist writer, Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929) is best-known for her superb articles on women’s rights. She wrote one novel, Janet Doncaster, which has been compared to Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
There is much to admire in this novel, in which Janet, a bright, vivacious young woman, is pressured by her dying mother to marry a rich aristocrat. Her mother is worried because her pension dies with her and Janet will be penniless. Pressured not only by her mother but by Lady Anne, Charlie Leighton’s aunt, Janet agrees to marry this weak, affable man. It is only after her marriage that she learns that Charlie is a falling-down-drunk alcoholic, who formerly was guarded by the butler and his “secretary” to keep him sober. The beginning is great, the middle mediocre, and the ending is absolutely fascinating.
Is this a pick or a pan? It is a pick-pan It is a radical novel for its time and deals with an important problem also treated by Anne Bronte in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It is historically important but it is a very uneven book.
Star Rating: ***
What are you picking and panning at your house? So many books…. so little time… etc.
Such a fun post. I look forward to ‘Cousin Phillis.
My pick: a 1953 Modern Library collectible of ‘Restoration Plays.’ Pan: ‘Miss Silver’s Past.”
Oh, I fondly remember William Wycherley and wish I had the Modern Library collectible!