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Early Pleasures: Memoirs of a Sensual Youth
A fictionalization of the author's adolescent sexual adventures in Austria and Paris in the years following World War I, they are for the most part adventures in sexual frustration. The four women he encounters are as different from one another as they could be. One is his brother's governess; another a young countess and the sister of a proto-Nazi; the third a domestic with an emotional disorder; and the fourth a White Russian emigre. Through his relationships with these women, the protagonist experiences not only desire but also the tragedy of life and the humor inherent in life's ironies. Early Pleasures is a book to be savored. It takes us into the Europe of almost a century ago while it enhances us with elegance of its prose.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published January 20, 2011
5 people want to read
About the author
Frederick Kohner
20 books7 followersFrederick Kohner, born Friedrich Kohner, was an Austrian-born novelist and screen writer, both in Germany and the US.
He is best known for having created the "Gidget" novels, which inspired a series of movies, two television series, three telemovies and a feature length animated film. He based the title character on his own daughter, Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman.
He is best known for having created the "Gidget" novels, which inspired a series of movies, two television series, three telemovies and a feature length animated film. He based the title character on his own daughter, Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 18, 2012
This is pleasant: four stories, four women remembered by Frederick Kohner from his youth in Bohemia and then in Paris. Written in the 1970s, he is recalling events of the 1920s. It is fiction, but it is told as autobiography and matches many of the details of his actual life. With modesty and without much conquest, our writer was as he describes himself a "sensual" youth but mostly a frustrated one.
The reading is easy; the tales, engaging. The women were older, or at least more worldly, than the teenage author. Fraulein Hilde was his nanny, a simple country lass. Claudia was a fellow student but also a Countess with a treacherous older brother. Resi was a prostitute struggling in poverty and mental illness. Irina was a White Russian in Paris, mysterious, passionate, and as she said, "complicated."
He's a sweet kid. And very earnest. These are tales of discovery as young Kohner (or his fictional counterpart) falls in love with each woman in succession, struggling to understand the secrets that, it seems, every woman withholds. In the arc of each love affair he finds joy, sadness, and ultimately gains wisdom. He's growing up. My only complaint is that as each story ends, I understand how Kohner feels but lack a full picture of the woman.
The book reminds me of the rowdy paperbacks my father used to buy (and I used to read) in the 1950s. If Kohner had written it then, it would have been published as a 35-cent paperback with an eye-popping cover of four half-naked dames, and it would have sold a million copies. By the early 1970s when apparently this was written, we'd been through Henry Miller and a sexual revolution that must have made these memoirs seem tame and old-fashioned. They weren't published until 2011. Now, perhaps, people can enjoy them as a bit of history and - yes - a bit of sensual pleasure.
The reading is easy; the tales, engaging. The women were older, or at least more worldly, than the teenage author. Fraulein Hilde was his nanny, a simple country lass. Claudia was a fellow student but also a Countess with a treacherous older brother. Resi was a prostitute struggling in poverty and mental illness. Irina was a White Russian in Paris, mysterious, passionate, and as she said, "complicated."
He's a sweet kid. And very earnest. These are tales of discovery as young Kohner (or his fictional counterpart) falls in love with each woman in succession, struggling to understand the secrets that, it seems, every woman withholds. In the arc of each love affair he finds joy, sadness, and ultimately gains wisdom. He's growing up. My only complaint is that as each story ends, I understand how Kohner feels but lack a full picture of the woman.
The book reminds me of the rowdy paperbacks my father used to buy (and I used to read) in the 1950s. If Kohner had written it then, it would have been published as a 35-cent paperback with an eye-popping cover of four half-naked dames, and it would have sold a million copies. By the early 1970s when apparently this was written, we'd been through Henry Miller and a sexual revolution that must have made these memoirs seem tame and old-fashioned. They weren't published until 2011. Now, perhaps, people can enjoy them as a bit of history and - yes - a bit of sensual pleasure.
Displaying 1 of 1 review