What do you think?
Rate this book
Collected Shorter Fiction of Joseph Roth
An artist responding to the madness of inter-war Europe with unsentimental humanism, Joseph Roth covers subjects such as violence, hatred, racism and personal loss.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published December 31, 2001
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 31, 2014
To say that I was bewildered by the time I’d finished the first eight stories in this collection by Joseph Roth is putting it mildly. While I didn’t exactly question whether the man could actually write clear and cogent prose, I began to think the translator, Michael Hofmann, had done him a disservice — not in his translation, but in exposing these pieces to an English-speaking public. I wondered: might they have something Kafkaesque in the original German that was simply untranslatable?
By way of example, I give you this snippet (on p. 86) from his story “April”:
“My friend Abel yearned for New York.
“Abel was a painter and caricaturist. Even before he could hold a pencil, he was already a caricaturist. He had a low opinion of beauty and he loved crippledom and distortion. He couldn’t draw a straight line.
“Abel had a low opinion of women. What men love in a woman is the perfection they think they see in her. Abel, though, had no use for perfection.
“He himself was ugly, so that women fell in love with him. Women suppose that male ugliness hides perfection or greatness.
“Once, he was able to travel to New York. On the boat he saw, for the first time in his life, a beautiful woman.
“When he reached port, the beautiful woman vanished from his sight. He took the next ship back to Europe.”
I read on, however — and am glad I did. When I entered his first novella-length story (even if not listed as a novella) in this collection, “The Blind Mirror,” I was pleasantly surprised to see that my initial misgivings were simply too hastily formed. Roth needed time and space to work out a story, and the following paragraph on p. 109 is a fair demonstration of his solid authorial skills:
“Night is full of feeling and surprise: out of the blue, longings come to us, when the distant whistle of a locomotive catches in the window, when a cat slinks along the pavement opposite hungry for love, and disappears into a basement window where the tom waits. There is a big starry sky above us, too remote to be kind, too beautiful not to harbor a God. There are the little things close at hand and there is a remote eternity, and some relation between them that escapes our understanding. Maybe we would understand it, if love were to visit us; love relates the stars and the slinking cat, the lonesome whistle and the vastness of the heavens.”
How this novella eventually plays out is, of course, another story – but whether well, badly or indifferently is for you, a potential reader, to decide, and not for me to say.
“Stationmaster Fallmerayer” (also not listed as a novella, even if of novella-length) is, alone, worth the ‘price’ of reading Roth’s entire opus.
The final three pieces in the collection, all of which are listed as novellas, demonstrate Roth’s immense skill as a story-teller and sometimes stylist. “The Triumph of Beauty” is as good a depiction of ‘the age of hysteria’ as any you’re ever likely to read. “The Bust of the Emperor” is an excellent — if somewhat sentimental — portrait of the passing of an era (following WWI and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). And the final contribution, “The Leviathan,” is about the slow corruption and quick end — sometimes clumsy and off-kilter in the telling — of a simple man in the early days of the Soviet Union. It shares with Roth’s other stories the prevailing theme of an old world order collapsing and succumbing to a new.
Take heart (and a stiff drink) before sitting down with The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth. They’re not everyman’s cup of tea — not by a long shot — but I dare say your time and keen attention will be amply rewarded.
RRB
09/03/14
Brooklyn, NY
By way of example, I give you this snippet (on p. 86) from his story “April”:
“My friend Abel yearned for New York.
“Abel was a painter and caricaturist. Even before he could hold a pencil, he was already a caricaturist. He had a low opinion of beauty and he loved crippledom and distortion. He couldn’t draw a straight line.
“Abel had a low opinion of women. What men love in a woman is the perfection they think they see in her. Abel, though, had no use for perfection.
“He himself was ugly, so that women fell in love with him. Women suppose that male ugliness hides perfection or greatness.
“Once, he was able to travel to New York. On the boat he saw, for the first time in his life, a beautiful woman.
“When he reached port, the beautiful woman vanished from his sight. He took the next ship back to Europe.”
I read on, however — and am glad I did. When I entered his first novella-length story (even if not listed as a novella) in this collection, “The Blind Mirror,” I was pleasantly surprised to see that my initial misgivings were simply too hastily formed. Roth needed time and space to work out a story, and the following paragraph on p. 109 is a fair demonstration of his solid authorial skills:
“Night is full of feeling and surprise: out of the blue, longings come to us, when the distant whistle of a locomotive catches in the window, when a cat slinks along the pavement opposite hungry for love, and disappears into a basement window where the tom waits. There is a big starry sky above us, too remote to be kind, too beautiful not to harbor a God. There are the little things close at hand and there is a remote eternity, and some relation between them that escapes our understanding. Maybe we would understand it, if love were to visit us; love relates the stars and the slinking cat, the lonesome whistle and the vastness of the heavens.”
How this novella eventually plays out is, of course, another story – but whether well, badly or indifferently is for you, a potential reader, to decide, and not for me to say.
“Stationmaster Fallmerayer” (also not listed as a novella, even if of novella-length) is, alone, worth the ‘price’ of reading Roth’s entire opus.
The final three pieces in the collection, all of which are listed as novellas, demonstrate Roth’s immense skill as a story-teller and sometimes stylist. “The Triumph of Beauty” is as good a depiction of ‘the age of hysteria’ as any you’re ever likely to read. “The Bust of the Emperor” is an excellent — if somewhat sentimental — portrait of the passing of an era (following WWI and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). And the final contribution, “The Leviathan,” is about the slow corruption and quick end — sometimes clumsy and off-kilter in the telling — of a simple man in the early days of the Soviet Union. It shares with Roth’s other stories the prevailing theme of an old world order collapsing and succumbing to a new.
Take heart (and a stiff drink) before sitting down with The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth. They’re not everyman’s cup of tea — not by a long shot — but I dare say your time and keen attention will be amply rewarded.
RRB
09/03/14
Brooklyn, NY
August 16, 2012
My mother purchased this book for me along with Roth's masterwork, the Radetzky March, after I read a review of his work in the New Yorker. My great-grandparents all immigrated to America from Austrian Galicia. They were Poles, living among Jews, Ukrainians and whatever nationalities that populated the borderlands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have long been a student of the history and politics of this region, and had the good ortune to visit one of my ancestral villages when I was posted to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. Of course, there are no longer Jews nor even Poles in these villages anymore, and their cultural monuments are decrepit and crumbling. But reading these stories brought that part of Europe - as it was before the war - vividly to life, and I felt I was seeing the world as my great-grandfather my have seen it.
April 27, 2010
My review published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002:
The Collected Stories
of Joseph Roth
By Joseph Roth;
translated by
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY; 281 PAGES; $27.95
It might not be immediately clear to some readers whether Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, author of the acclaimed "The Radetzky March," really deserves this clear-the-archives collection of nearly all his short fiction, gathered in English for the first time. The man died in Paris way back in 1939, after all, and has never been included among the greats of 20th century European literature.
But for anyone with a passion for great writing, it's well worth sorting through the uneven offerings presented here for a glimpse of a tremendous talent finding itself -- and also of a long-gone world of Jewish villages late in the Hapsburg Empire. Born in 1894 in Galicia (now western Ukraine), Roth served in World War I, studied in Vienna and made his name as a newspaper journalist for Germany's Frankfurter Zeitung.
What is amazing about Roth's short stories, though, is not their place in history, but his sense of fun and love of his characters. It takes love to craft someone as thoroughly awful as the thin-lipped, book-devouring, empty soul at the center of "The Honors Student," or as pathetic as the woman in "Barbara," whose dreary life of sacrifice for her only son ends up meaning nothing to the practical-minded son himself.
Roth writes with the powerfully descriptive vividness of Babel, as when he describes the "slim white hands" of a train-wreck survivor lying still, atop her mink coat, like "two beautiful corpses." But he also loves to hop from one good-naturedly absurd idea to another, pursuing a light satire that brings to mind Garcia Marquez or Heller. "Describe the sea to me!" a coral dealer demands in "The Leviathan."
" 'It's full of water,' said the sailor Komrower.' " Badda-badda-bing, we can almost hear. But as always, Roth uses his light touch to bring alive the inner longing of this coral dealer, one of many Roth characters who yearn to break out of the confines of their lives. Those longings are part of a human landscape that is anything but dated or dusty, but often haunting and always lively and moving.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article...
The Collected Stories
of Joseph Roth
By Joseph Roth;
translated by
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY; 281 PAGES; $27.95
It might not be immediately clear to some readers whether Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, author of the acclaimed "The Radetzky March," really deserves this clear-the-archives collection of nearly all his short fiction, gathered in English for the first time. The man died in Paris way back in 1939, after all, and has never been included among the greats of 20th century European literature.
But for anyone with a passion for great writing, it's well worth sorting through the uneven offerings presented here for a glimpse of a tremendous talent finding itself -- and also of a long-gone world of Jewish villages late in the Hapsburg Empire. Born in 1894 in Galicia (now western Ukraine), Roth served in World War I, studied in Vienna and made his name as a newspaper journalist for Germany's Frankfurter Zeitung.
What is amazing about Roth's short stories, though, is not their place in history, but his sense of fun and love of his characters. It takes love to craft someone as thoroughly awful as the thin-lipped, book-devouring, empty soul at the center of "The Honors Student," or as pathetic as the woman in "Barbara," whose dreary life of sacrifice for her only son ends up meaning nothing to the practical-minded son himself.
Roth writes with the powerfully descriptive vividness of Babel, as when he describes the "slim white hands" of a train-wreck survivor lying still, atop her mink coat, like "two beautiful corpses." But he also loves to hop from one good-naturedly absurd idea to another, pursuing a light satire that brings to mind Garcia Marquez or Heller. "Describe the sea to me!" a coral dealer demands in "The Leviathan."
" 'It's full of water,' said the sailor Komrower.' " Badda-badda-bing, we can almost hear. But as always, Roth uses his light touch to bring alive the inner longing of this coral dealer, one of many Roth characters who yearn to break out of the confines of their lives. Those longings are part of a human landscape that is anything but dated or dusty, but often haunting and always lively and moving.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article...
December 6, 2019
I was only familiar with Roth’s novels, which I love, and it was joy to come across this collection in one of my local charity shops. The stories cover a variety of settings, themes, voices - he is nothing if not eclectic. They are not easy reads (in the best possible way) and reward, indeed require, re-reading.
October 31, 2010
really 3.5 stars, I think. The novel is Roth's great strength, and some of those strengths are on evidence here, but there is inevitably some unevenness in an assemblage of writing created over 20+ years. The real charmer, for me, is "April", funny, sweet, well-done. Fine fine work. In some of the stories there is a sense of humor and the absurd which recalls Kafka, who had begun to publish about the time Roth began writing.
November 6, 2024
Mother wasn't back yet. It's a good thing when our Mothers aren't there, our Mothers with their probing, unbelieving eyes that are sad and must cry, terrifying and stern but still sad, our poor Mothers who don't understand anything and scold and make us lie to them. Then we don't need to report to anyone, and there is no fear in us of the consequences of what we say, no fear of the need to lie and none of its discovery. Slowly Fini undressed; she felt a warm trickle down her thigh, it had to be blood, she was alarmed. Something had happened to her, and she racked her forgetful brain for some sin that she had committed, gray days ago.
It's nice to be able to undress alone in our room in front of the mirror -- all alone, the door locked, as if we had a room of our own, like Tilly, our older friend -- and see how our breasts are growing, round and white and crowned by pink tips, though they're still not as big and well defined under our clothes as Tilly's, who has a boyfriend and is allowed to kiss.
Entranced as though petting a small animal, Fini felt her body, stroked the aspiring curve of her hips and the coolly rounded knee, and saw the blood marking its narrow red path down her bare leg.
Little girls are afraid when they see the red blood and they don't know where it's coming from, and they are all alone and naked, without the protective covering of a dress, in a locked room with a living mirror, and when they see the mysterious blood, flowing for mysterious reasons, then their fear is three times as great. Wonders have their cause and their being in our selves, and we are frightened to find them so near when we had supposed them to be distant things, and remote from our bodies. Fini held her breath and suddenly heard the great emptiness in the room, felt the deadness of all the dead things, saw the lamp burning in a fog, a white fog that took on the likeness of a face, a ghostly face with a core of light. An infinity away, Fini heard voices on the street and the squealing of a tram, the melody of an everlasting violin, and a consoling hiss of silence as from a large seashell. The endless silence flooded in cool and soft, an ocean rising from her ankles -- already it was round her knees, and the blue stillness washed around her hips and rose menacingly toward her heart.
A merciful darkness came and covered her up. She lapsed into unconsciousness, a soft, welcoming cloak of tender velvet.
It's nice to be able to undress alone in our room in front of the mirror -- all alone, the door locked, as if we had a room of our own, like Tilly, our older friend -- and see how our breasts are growing, round and white and crowned by pink tips, though they're still not as big and well defined under our clothes as Tilly's, who has a boyfriend and is allowed to kiss.
Entranced as though petting a small animal, Fini felt her body, stroked the aspiring curve of her hips and the coolly rounded knee, and saw the blood marking its narrow red path down her bare leg.
Little girls are afraid when they see the red blood and they don't know where it's coming from, and they are all alone and naked, without the protective covering of a dress, in a locked room with a living mirror, and when they see the mysterious blood, flowing for mysterious reasons, then their fear is three times as great. Wonders have their cause and their being in our selves, and we are frightened to find them so near when we had supposed them to be distant things, and remote from our bodies. Fini held her breath and suddenly heard the great emptiness in the room, felt the deadness of all the dead things, saw the lamp burning in a fog, a white fog that took on the likeness of a face, a ghostly face with a core of light. An infinity away, Fini heard voices on the street and the squealing of a tram, the melody of an everlasting violin, and a consoling hiss of silence as from a large seashell. The endless silence flooded in cool and soft, an ocean rising from her ankles -- already it was round her knees, and the blue stillness washed around her hips and rose menacingly toward her heart.
A merciful darkness came and covered her up. She lapsed into unconsciousness, a soft, welcoming cloak of tender velvet.
December 16, 2017
I love Joseph Roth. He was a wonderful storyteller. His novel Radetzky March is one of my top five. The stories in this collection are a bit of a hodge-podge. "Stationmaster Fallmerayer" and "The Bust of the Emperor" are brilliant. The Galician stories, "Strawberries" and "This morning, a letter arrived . . ." are also terrific. Some of the others are not as accomplished. But this translation by Michael Hofmann is a wonderful addition to your Roth library. And again, Roth's prose is marvelous, which is not surprising given he was the premier journalist of Weimar Germany.
September 9, 2022
My two favorite stories were "Stationmaster Fallmerayer" and "The Bust of the Emperor." The pieces that verged into memoir about the world of the author's native eastern Galicia before World War I were less engaging for me.
April 27, 2018
These were lovely and sad.
January 10, 2019
***2.5 stars***
Some of these clearly should never have been published.
Some of these clearly should never have been published.
September 30, 2022
By far my favourite writer. Each sentence written by Roth could hold a book by itself. The man couldn't write badly even if he tried hard I think.
October 28, 2024
Many wonderful stories; some funny, some sad, but all very interesting and entertaining.
July 14, 2026
An invocation of pre WW1 austro-hungarian society and empire. Roth creates wonderful female characters. Full of joy, wisdom and pathos.
January 10, 2024
Ein sehr lesenswerter Band aller Erzählungen des "wahrscheinlich größten Dichters unter den anständigen Menschen" (André Heller)
Selbstverständlich divergieren die Texte hinsichtlich ihrer Qualität, was aber bei einem Sammelband, der eben alle Erzählungen aus allen Schaffensphasen zugänglich machen möchte unvermeidlich ist.
Besonders aus Roths Werken stechen die frühen lapidar erzählten Kurzgeschichten und die späten, langen Novellen hervor die sich oft der Erzählform des Märchens oder der Legende bedienen und gerade deshalb mit höchst unwahrscheinlichen Plots aufwarten.
Ein persönliches Highlight:
Die Büste des Kaisers
Eine Geschichte über Bewältigung und Verarbeitung von Trauer über den Verlust eines meta-nationalen Europas.
Selbstverständlich divergieren die Texte hinsichtlich ihrer Qualität, was aber bei einem Sammelband, der eben alle Erzählungen aus allen Schaffensphasen zugänglich machen möchte unvermeidlich ist.
Besonders aus Roths Werken stechen die frühen lapidar erzählten Kurzgeschichten und die späten, langen Novellen hervor die sich oft der Erzählform des Märchens oder der Legende bedienen und gerade deshalb mit höchst unwahrscheinlichen Plots aufwarten.
Ein persönliches Highlight:
Die Büste des Kaisers
Eine Geschichte über Bewältigung und Verarbeitung von Trauer über den Verlust eines meta-nationalen Europas.
January 11, 2012
I read only the story "Stationmaster Fallmerayer, which the translator called out as the finest. It's certainly an interesting story, well told and full of detail, but I found it to be utterly passionless. I find Stephan Zweig, Roth's contemporary, to be much moree penetrating, and his characters to be morre lively. Roth's characters are deadened, or at least his expression is, and I wonder to what extent that reflects his alcoholism. Or maybe it's depression, or perhaps both. Either way, if Stationmaster is his masterpiece, I have no need to read further.
October 1, 2022
Joseph Roth is by far my favourite author. Anything he writes is with precision and clarity as if it comes natural and easy, which probably it did. One sentence written Roth can hold an entire story, an entire book sometimes. Joseph Roth never just writes something. He always has something to say and it is always interesting.
May 6, 2010
The stories and Novellen in this collection are a bit more accessible than HOTEL SAVOY, although many of them still deal with the fall of the Habsburg empire. Particularly fine are "Stationmaster Fallmerayer" and "The Bust of the Emperor."
April 3, 2016
I don't normally read short stories, but I was reading all the Roth I found in the Athenaeum. I like the Austro-Hungarian time period and was interested in his look back as he wrote many of these after the Empire collapsed after World War I.
December 3, 2009
Why did it take me so long to discover this guy?!!! BRILLIANT!
January 20, 2015
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13130252
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13130252
August 5, 2016
Read the book in German. Excellent storytelling, beautiful descriptive language, nailing the characters.
November 8, 2009
You can read my review of this title at http://greeninteger.blogspot.com
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews