Modernist Fiction, Its Origins and Beyond... and other stuff

Please join us for a discussion and read through of the memoirs of Anna Dostoevsky, the second wife of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Please read Chapters 7-9 for this Meetup.

“The story of Dostoevsky’s extraordinary second marriage during which he wrote his greatest novels is a novel in itself . . . It is a plain, straightforward, honest, and moving account of a happy if reckless marriage . . . The brave, simple young adorer has written the only really intimate portrait of him that we have.” ―V. S. Pritchett, New York Review of Books

Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Dostoevsky-Reminiscences-Anna/dp/0871401177

Please join us for a discussion and read through of Tolstoy's Letters as a companion piece to our War and Peace Seminar. Please read Letters for this Meetup.

Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Tolstoys-Letters-Volumes-I-II/dp/0684155966

Volume 1 Online Text Link:
https://archive.org/details/tolstoysletters0001tols/page/n4/mode/1up

Volume 2 Online Text Link:
https://archive.org/details/tolstoysletters0000tols/page/n4/mode/1up

Please join us in an Alfred Döblin seminar over the next two years where we will try to tackle and read all of Alfred Döblin's writings.

Chicago Alexanderplatz is a subgroup of Modernist Fiction that will inaugurate a new series of Meetups dedicated to German Literary Modernism and exploring the life and work of Alfred Döblin, author of the 1929 German Modernist Classic—Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Alfred Döblin is widely known for only this one novel, which has overshadowed all his prior and subsequent work. In recent years, there has been a renaissance of sorts in the reception of Döblin in English, thanks to the pioneering new translation of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Michael Hofmann published by NYRB Classics in 2018, and the launch of Beyond Alexanderplatz by the translator Chris Godwin, a website dedicated to exploring Döblin’s lesser known work and nonfiction.

In this meetup we will discuss his 1918 novel Wadzek's Fight Against the Steam Turbine in three meetings. Please read Pages 101-200 for this second Meetup.

Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine (Wadzek's Struggle with the Steam Turbine) is a 1918 comic novel by the German author Alfred Döblin. Set in Berlin, it narrates the futile and often delusional struggle of the eponymous industrialist Wadzek against Rommel, his more powerful competitor. In its narrative technique and its refusal to psychologize its characters, as well as in its vivid evocations of Berlin as a modern metropolis, Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine has been read as a precursor to Döblin's better-known 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz.

The novel, originally conceived by Döblin as a novel in "Kino-Stil" ("cinematic style"), is characterized by rapid shifts of perspective and the increasingly sophisticated use of montage. Döblin, having emphatically rejected the psychological novel in his 1913 essay "To novel writers and their critics," presents the reader of Wadzek with a depiction of characters from a perspective that, rather than offering psychological motivations for their actions, opts for a "psychiatric method" that records events and processes without commenting on them or attempting to explain them. Condemned by contemporary critics for its overly detailed and grotesque descriptive language, the novel's style has since received acknowledgment for its "radical naturalism".

Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Wadzeks-Fight-against-Steam-Turbine-ebook/dp/B08D7S8P12/ref=mp_s_a_1_34?qid=1684945984&refinements=p_27%3AAlfred+Doblin&s=books&sr=1-34

Please join us for a discussion and read through of William Shakespeare's King Lear to commemorate the 410th Anniversary of his death on April 23, 1616. We will live read a selection of key scenes and discuss the play.

The Tragedy of King Lear, often shortened to King Lear, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare in late 1605 or early 1606. Set in pre-Roman Britain, the play depicts the consequences of King Lear's love-test, in which he divides his power and land according to the praise of his daughters. The play is known for its dark tone, complex poetry, and prominent motifs concerning blindness and madness.

The earliest known performance was on Saint Stephen's Day in 1606. Modern editors derive their texts from three extant publications: the 1608 quarto (Q1), the 1619 quarto (Q2, unofficial and based on Q1), and the 1623 First Folio. The quarto versions differ significantly from the folio version.

In 1681, after the English Restoration, Nahum Tate produced a revised version with a romantic subplot and a less bleak ending. This version displaced Shakespeare's from the professional stage until 1838. However, since then, Shakespeare's original play has come to be regarded as one of his supreme achievements. In his A Defence of Poetry (1821), Percy Bysshe Shelley called King Lear "the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world", and the play is regularly cited as one of the greatest works of literature ever written.

Online Text Link:
https://shakespeare.mit.edu/lear/full.html

Arden 3 King Lear Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/King-Lear-Arden-Shakespeare-Third/dp/1903436591

New Variorum King Lear Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-King-Lear-Variorum-Shakespeare/dp/1603290915