Three Novellas: The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Fallmerayer the Stationmaster and The Bust of the Emperor

by Joseph Roth

Written in the final days of Roth's life, it is a novella of sparkling lucidity and humanity. "Fallmerayer the Stationmaster" and "The Bust of the Emperor" are Roth's most acclaimed works of shorter fiction.

Genres: Fiction, German Literature

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2003

About the author

Joseph Roth, journalist and novelist, was born and grew up in Brody, a small town near Lemberg in East Galicia, part of the easternmost reaches of what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now Ukraine. Roth was born into a Jewish family. He died in Paris after living there in exile.

http://www.josephroth.de/

Reviews

[Angelina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to finally get acquainted with the works of J. Roth and these novellas seemed like a good place to start. All three possess a fable like quality, with their protagonists experiencing some unusual twists and turns, often a bit detached from reality and filled with nostalgia about the past. I definitely enjoyed the last one the most, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, which contains some autobiographical elements. Roth himself had problems with alcohol and died in his mid forties (1939) disillusioned and unhappy about the state of the world.
All in all, I'm glad I read this short volume although in a way I expected to be more impressed by it.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have only read a handful of books by Joseph Roth, but I can already deem him one of the foremost chroniclers of the end of empire in central/eastern Europe. Two of the stories here return to that common theme, and it’s the second one, “The Bust of the Emperor,” that is the most memorable for me. Roth gives a surprisingly compassionate view of an aging supporter of the defunct Austro-Habsburg Empire in post-WWI Poland. He laments the time when all ethnic groups could be harbored under one umbrella and fears the factionalism of nationalism that is the inevitable result of the post-war turn – fears that would be quite well-founded as the continent barreled toward WWII. Roth quotes Grillparzer, which might stand as an epitaph for the 20th century: “From humanity via nationality to bestiality.”

Roth is suggesting that there is a place for monarchy in giving a home to those who might not otherwise have settled ethnic or national geographic ties. He laments the new world of American nightclubs and passports needed to travel to various states. The somber burial at the end would almost be comic if Roth hadn’t so masterfully crafted a narrative of empathy for this man who can only watch as his world crumbles around him, ironically under the guise of progress and freedom. Roth’s story achieves the aim of all great literature: to give readers a more human (and humane) understanding of a perspective far different from their own, and to question certain assumptions we have been conditioned to take as absolute truths. Any one of us could have been this aging monarchist, if only for the fate of being born at a certain time and place; one person’s patriotic republican revolution is another person’s loss of stability and security.

All three stories in this collection are on this level. Highly recommended.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was worried when I disliked the first book--Fallmerayer. It seemed to be a conventional story of a man driven by passion to adultery. But the other two novellas were unusual and interesting. The Legend of the Holy Drinker was both funny and sad as the Drinker finds himself driven alternately by "miracles" and alcohol. The Bust of the Emperor is a humane portrait of a man unable to accept the fall of the Empire

[David C Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three very different novellas, all excellent. Varying in style, and subject matter, they all deal with loss and disappearance, and the unattainable. At the end of each, something disappears. I think Roth is at his best when he deals with the dissolution of the old Empire, so I preferred the Bust of the Emperor. Holy Drunkard is how most drunks want to go out, but rarely do, Roth included.

[bess Stiffelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps my favorite of all the roths, of course you don't get incest or sex with with a piece of liver like in henry and philip's infamous novels. But I strongly recommend. Haunting and lovely.

[Ali Thursland · Rating 5 out of 5]

The other day, we were giving feedback to a girl in my intermediate fiction workshop class. Her story was about a teenage boy who felt abandoned by his parents.
My professor asked her: 'Do you have a bad relationship with your parents?'
She replied, 'Uhhhh, no not really?'
to which he said, 'That's too bad!'

This same professor recommended that I read 'The Legend of the Holy Drinker', so I checked this short anthology out of the campus library. All three stories were extremely pleasant to read. Roth takes the darkest of subject matter—obsession, addiction, and a great world war—and makes stories that are light and airy.

'The Legend of the Holy Drinker' was the last piece of short fiction Roth wrote before his death by alcoholism at 44 years old. I am amazed at the capacity of writers to tap into the worst parts of themselves, the ugly parts that most would tuck away, in order create something that a woman like me can chuckle at a century later.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing my Joseph Roth kick. Short book, @ 120 pp. Hard to call these 3 stories "novellas", as they each come in at about 30-40 pp. 2 of them are in Roth's "Collected Stories", but this is the only available publication of Roth's last work, "The Legend of the Holy Drinker". Which gives you some insight into his own alcoholism. All 3 stories are quite different, and "Bust of the Emperor" gives you a better understanding that this Outsider Jew missed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially when compared to what replaced it in '30's Austria and Germany.
For Roth fans only. I did enjoy it, and it gave me further insight into his beliefs and ideas. And nothing here made me want to stop reading his other works - "Hotel Savoy" next on the list.

[David Chess · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to give a rating of at most five, and always a whole number of, stars, to three lovely little character pieces by a middling-great writer from the 20s and 30s? Especially when, any second now, I'll need to indicate that I mean the 1920's and 30's, not the 2000 ones?

Europe between the First and Second World Wars isn't, I have the general feeling, a time and place that we know enough about here in the days of Twitter and Internet billionaires whimsically firing automobiles into space. Read these stories, it won't take long, and you'll acquire something in the way of a texture of that area of spacetime, and something in the way of three new pictures of the human condition. A fair payoff for such a minor investment!

[Al Maki]

Late short stories by Roth about death, drunkeness, obsession and entrapment, also love. Apparently, one of his editors once told him he wrote better when he was sad. There's a lot of sadness in this book and it's beautiful.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read the Holy Drinker - it’s a lovely little parable, oddly reminiscent of Jean Giono’s The Man Who Planted Trees

[maddie's reading]

*only read The Bust of the Emperor*

[Wiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really a fan of Roth's writing style, but Bust of Emperor warmed my heart a little.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd reading for all of these.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Three Novellas? I don't think so.. More like 3 short stories, the entire book coming in at around a hundred pages. I enjoyed them all, but they were gone before I knew it, and so was the book. Why make a collection with only these tiny pieces, my first sampling of Roth's prose? In any event, the stories were creative & well told, and quite different from each other, but I needed more to sink my teeth into. Maybe another time...

[Darryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent introduction to Roth, which consisted of three very good novellas:

Fallmerayer the Stationmaster: The life of a stationmaster in a small Austrian town is permanently altered after he rescues a Russian countess from a horrible train crash a short distance away.

The Bust of the Emperor: An aging count and relic of the defeated Hapsburg Empire is forced to come to terms with the changes in post World War I Europe and his diminished status.

The Legend of the Holy Drinker: A vagrant in Paris experiences a series of good strokes of luck, which renew his faith and self worth. He is indebted to his original benefactor, and makes several futile but humorous attempts to repay the saint who inspired his gentleman friend.

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

i checked this collection out of the library for one of its stories, "the legend of the holy drinker", and that's the only one i've read so far. it's an interesting story -- a strangely whimsical account of a hapless drunk who an unspecified holy power keeps helping -- sort of the opposite of Job, i guess. it's translated from german, and if the translation is an accurate one, i'd say the story has an oddly whimsical tone. my first impression after reading it was: fun-to-read but kinda insubstantial. and yet it has stuck with me.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) preserves in fiction the lost world of the Austro-Hungarian empire between the world wars and of Eastern European Jewry. Whenever I read his work, I feel as though I am reading the history of my ancestors. The writing is staggeringly good. These three novellas are expertly crafted.

[Catherine Corman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An honest man is doubly shamed at the sight of meanness, first because the very existence of it is shameful, second because he sees at once that he has been deceived in his heart.

-Joseph Roth, The Bust of the Emperor

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three nearly perfect novellas. One is tempted to cite Chekhov, but Roth is more political than Anton. The demise of the Austrian Empire looms large, explicitly in the first two, more symbolically in the third. Highly recommended.

[Pastor Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored the middle novella, "The Bust of the Emperor." I give it seven stars out of five. The other two were fine, but couldn't shine next to their compatriot. It touched a nerve for me and I'm not being rational in the slightest. But don't stories do that sometimes?

[HrCristobal]

danish translation