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1939
The kirkus review:
The tremulous touch- and the rather tenuous activities- of Kay Boyle's French period (A Frenchman Must Die, Avalanche) again in evidence in a short novel, deliberately designed for a more popular audience. This tells largely by indirection- of Corinne Duroc, formerly of Paris and Biarritz, who for the past few years had lived alone in the mountains with her lover, Luggi Mart, Austrian ski teacher,- Corinne whose glamour incurs the malice and the envy of the peasant people. With Luggi's departure, as he goes down the mountain to fight, Corinne is for the first time as the other women. Also for the first time is she uncertain of their future when a native suggests that Luggi will not be allowed to fight- but as an alien will be interned- and Corinne, in her thoughts, touches in the rest. The predecessors to this had a certain- not always credible- story value missing here in what is largely a play on memory-mood.
The tremulous touch- and the rather tenuous activities- of Kay Boyle's French period (A Frenchman Must Die, Avalanche) again in evidence in a short novel, deliberately designed for a more popular audience. This tells largely by indirection- of Corinne Duroc, formerly of Paris and Biarritz, who for the past few years had lived alone in the mountains with her lover, Luggi Mart, Austrian ski teacher,- Corinne whose glamour incurs the malice and the envy of the peasant people. With Luggi's departure, as he goes down the mountain to fight, Corinne is for the first time as the other women. Also for the first time is she uncertain of their future when a native suggests that Luggi will not be allowed to fight- but as an alien will be interned- and Corinne, in her thoughts, touches in the rest. The predecessors to this had a certain- not always credible- story value missing here in what is largely a play on memory-mood.
152 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1948
14 people want to read
About the author
Kay Boyle
98 books42 followersKay Boyle was a writer of the Lost Generation.
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 17, 2018
This book is as BURIED as buried can get. Only one rating on Goodreads and just try and find a copy on Amazon, which is usually good at stuff like this. But there it was in a Seattle bookstore, a second printing in perfect mylar protection. I knew the author but not the book. (But, then, only Nathan the Obscure (which is admittedly a tad better than being Nathan the Impaler) knows the book, and he doesn't count).
My way of saying: the book found me.
There is not so much a plot as a situation. And typing that, I know it would sound so much more poignant in French.
Corinne Audal, in the French Alps, leaves her husband for the Austrian ski instructor, Ferdindand Eder. But the War comes. What will Ferdl do?
The novel is in two parts, not so much by storylines as by indirect exposition. In Part 1, Corinne goes through the shopping district of town as if nothing has changed. But things have changed, now that there's war.
There is brilliant writing, a side story weaving in and out. There were two skiers, caught in an avalanche. It was Ferdl who found the one, a long time later, only one circumstantial wooden ski on his frozen corpse:
(Corinne's voice): I could have stopped them as I didn't, and as I never saved Ferdl from disaster; I could have saved them: Did you see in the paper the day after tomorrow that two German lads from Düsseldorf were caught in an avalanche (ruthless as love) on the Mont Bâtard at one o'clock today and one of them, just one of them, couldn't get his skis off? . . . Where are you going at such a tempo? Only one of you has to die at one o'clock; the other needn't go.
Part 2 is about Fredl trying, sort of, to enlist in the French Army. As you can imagine, it's complicated. But we're not doing plot here.
It's all about the writing.
Fredl 'goes down'. Meaning he reports for service in the French Army. Friendly gendarmes accompany him. He stands before the counter, en tableau, as his parents and sister come to testify. They can't see him. They can't hear him. Their testimonies are disparate. His sister says this:
But it wasn't for money, it wasn't for that he stayed away! she cried out. She was feeling for her handkerchief again and when she found it she blew her nose, and she did not try to find the name. It was for something else he wanted and we didn't know how to give it to him, she said. All we did was to drive him off into his obstinacy and pride. She was standing with her back to her parents, drying the hot futile tears from her face and saying: It was for something we didn't know how to give him and his country didn't know how to give him, or else he wouldn't have had to go and he wouldn't have had to stay away.
The Goodreads squib (a Kirkus review), by the way, doesn't only incorrectly name the male protagonist, they get the gist wrong too. There is less to do with sex in the Alps than with individuality in the face of madness, of breathing. And what is War, after all, in the details? A reminder: Only one of you has to die at one o'clock; the other needn't go.
It's a pity that I have the only copy.
My way of saying: the book found me.
There is not so much a plot as a situation. And typing that, I know it would sound so much more poignant in French.
Corinne Audal, in the French Alps, leaves her husband for the Austrian ski instructor, Ferdindand Eder. But the War comes. What will Ferdl do?
The novel is in two parts, not so much by storylines as by indirect exposition. In Part 1, Corinne goes through the shopping district of town as if nothing has changed. But things have changed, now that there's war.
There is brilliant writing, a side story weaving in and out. There were two skiers, caught in an avalanche. It was Ferdl who found the one, a long time later, only one circumstantial wooden ski on his frozen corpse:
(Corinne's voice): I could have stopped them as I didn't, and as I never saved Ferdl from disaster; I could have saved them: Did you see in the paper the day after tomorrow that two German lads from Düsseldorf were caught in an avalanche (ruthless as love) on the Mont Bâtard at one o'clock today and one of them, just one of them, couldn't get his skis off? . . . Where are you going at such a tempo? Only one of you has to die at one o'clock; the other needn't go.
Part 2 is about Fredl trying, sort of, to enlist in the French Army. As you can imagine, it's complicated. But we're not doing plot here.
It's all about the writing.
Fredl 'goes down'. Meaning he reports for service in the French Army. Friendly gendarmes accompany him. He stands before the counter, en tableau, as his parents and sister come to testify. They can't see him. They can't hear him. Their testimonies are disparate. His sister says this:
But it wasn't for money, it wasn't for that he stayed away! she cried out. She was feeling for her handkerchief again and when she found it she blew her nose, and she did not try to find the name. It was for something else he wanted and we didn't know how to give it to him, she said. All we did was to drive him off into his obstinacy and pride. She was standing with her back to her parents, drying the hot futile tears from her face and saying: It was for something we didn't know how to give him and his country didn't know how to give him, or else he wouldn't have had to go and he wouldn't have had to stay away.
The Goodreads squib (a Kirkus review), by the way, doesn't only incorrectly name the male protagonist, they get the gist wrong too. There is less to do with sex in the Alps than with individuality in the face of madness, of breathing. And what is War, after all, in the details? A reminder: Only one of you has to die at one o'clock; the other needn't go.
It's a pity that I have the only copy.
July 4, 2015
Very good. Interesting exploration of self and nationhood - this aspect being much more significant than the rather trite and melodramatic love affair which makes up the blurb-friendly part of the plot...
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December 2, 2017Kay Boyle. Possibly one of the greatest of the BURIED Modernists. I dunno. There's lots of them. And soso nice to have Boyle to fall back on after a disappointing contemporary piece. She can put a novel together like nobody's business.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews