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radiantfracture's post about Irmgard Keun's The Artificial Silk Girl intrigued me enough that I checked it out of the library pretty much immediately after reading it.

The book was written in Germany, 1932, and almost immediately banned when the Nazis rose to power in 1933 -- but for a year it was wildly popular, Irmgard Keun's effort at writing a Weimar German answer to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, just a witty story about a would-be-glamour girl who wants nice clothes and a nice boyfriend and ideally a nice film career in the middle of a Depression with fascism on the rise in the background.

But, you know, it was 1932. Irmgard Keun didn't know what was going to happen, and neither does Doris. There's a tension in the air, but it's background tension, thickening, and the foreground is Doris going on bad dates; Doris trying to help her friends, who've got no more money than she does; Doris landing rich men, temporarily, and being comfortable, for a while, before self-sabotaging. When Doris gets to Berlin for the first time (to escape from the police after stealing her neighbor's fur coat in a fit of temptation) she immediately gets swept up in a protest march, and in the spirit of camaraderie goes out for cake with a fellow rally-goer to try and learn about politics:

So I asked the navy-blue married man what the politicians had come here for. And in turn he told me that his wife was five years older than him. I asked why people were shouting for peace, since we have peace or at least no war. Him: "You have eyes like boysenberries." I hope he means ripe ones. And so I was beginning to become afraid of my own stupidity and asked carefully why it was that those French politicians on that balcony had moved us so much and if this means that everyone agrees, when there's so much enthusiasm, and whether there will never be another war. So the navy-blue married man tells me that he's from Northern Germany and that's why he's so introverted. But in my experience those who tell you immediately: "You know, I'm such an introvert," are anything but, and you can rest assured that they're going to tell you everything that's on their mind. And I noticed that that bell jar of fraternization was starting to lift off and float away. I made one more attempt, asking him if Frenchmen and Jews were one and the same thing, and why they were called a race and how come the nationalists didn't like them because of their blood - and whether it was risky to talk about that since this could be the beginning of my political assassination. So he tells me that he gave his mother a carpet for Christmas [...] So I said "Just a minute" and secretly disappeared through the back door. And I was sad about not having gotten any political education. But I did have three pieces of hazelnut torte - which took care of my lunch, which couldn't be said about a lesson in politics.

And, you know -- only some of the fascination here is hindsight. There's a feeling Keun captures, quite deliberately, that's deeply genuine and uncomfortably relatable. You know the world is changing around you, you know there are things that are going on that are important, but that doesn't mean you're not going to be stuck having the world's most banal conversation in a coffeeshop with a married man for whom a protest march is just a chance to pick up a girl.

As the book goes on, things get worse for Doris; she slides from being an office girl, to an aspiring actress, to someone who'd like to find a rich boyfriend but would never contemplate prostitution, to someone who might possibly contemplate prostitution. Her narration is still often bitingly funny, but the humor gets more and more mixed with desperation. Still, the ending isn't hopeless -- for Doris, at least. Some of the fascination is hindsight, but hindsight isn't everything.

Wikipedia, by the way, informs me that Irmgard Keun was deeply bitter against the Nazis for censoring her literary career, had an affair with a Jewish doctor who wanted to treat her for alcoholism, and fled to Belgium in 1936.

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Oooh! This sounds really interesting! And it sounds like Doris EARNED those three pieces of hazelnut torte, listening to the married man blather on about himself while he completely ignores everything she actually says.

Doris ABSOLUTELY earned those three pieces of hazelnut torte and honestly imo should have gotten more. She never does get her political education, either, though the socialist who hits on her makes a little more of an effort.

She 100% earned that torte, as far as I'm concerned, and I haven't heard of this book until today.

That sounds fascinating, and exactly suited to my present interests. I need to see if I can track it down.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was easily available in my local library, I hope the same may be true for you!

Sadly no, although this might be an instance where the (admittedly slight) hassle of ILL is worth it.

Wow, that sounds a bit like Jean Rhys, but much more political.

I've never actually read any books by Jean Rhys! I only know of Wide Sargasso Sea by reputation.

WSS is actually sort of untypical of her work, in its obvious literary background and historical setting. Her other novels are set in Europe and Britain between the wars, are exquisitely written, and supremely depressing.

Definitely sounds comparable! Are they also funny, or are they just depressing?

Wellll, she has a really good sense of black humour and satire....but a lot of it is depressing.

But I did have three pieces of hazelnut torte - which took care of my lunch, which couldn't be said about a lesson in politics.

Well, nothing about this anecdote has gone out of style.

There were a lot of quotes I ended up taking down because they remained so undeniably accurate, pointed, and well-phrased; kudos to the writer as well as to the translator, no kudos at all to the arc of history.

Uncomfortably relatable is indeed the phrase.

This particular historical moment is ... probably both the best and worst of times to read this book.

The cheerful innocence amid things being terrible reminds me of Barbara Comyns' Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and I want to read it.

Was it translated, and if so, who by and when?

Ah, sorry, should have read your link to

radiantfracture before commenting! Yes, by Kathie von Ankum, presumably recently since Google tells me she wrote Women in the Metropolis, gender and modernity in Weimar culture in 1997?

I've also never read any Barbara Comyns! I really need to expand my repertoire of midcentury women writers.

And yes, there have been several translations -- the first appeared in 1933, but the von Ankum one is indeed the most recent. I really like the translation, though I sort of made dubious faces at her intro analysis, in which she compares the book to Bridget Jones' Diary and Sex and the City -- not that there's no points of comparison but I do feel that Keuns' project is, uh, somewhat different.

I've also never read any Barbara Comyns! I really need to expand my repertoire of midcentury women writers.

Highly recommended. I loved Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954) and did not love the same way but enjoyed The Juniper Tree (1985). I have not in fact read Our Spoons etc., but I keep being told I'd like it.

I have read Sisters by a River which is apparently autobiographical, and if so, it explains a lot. It is also horrific and cheerfully deadpan funny. But horrific, as is Spoons.

Barbara Comyns is AWESOME. Who Was Changed is an amazing book.

Advice to translators for writing reader's reports for English-language publishers in the hope that they might publish translated fiction is to relate it to something successful that the publisher is familiar with so I can understand if a translator specialised in the history of Weimar Germany felt she had to talk about Bridget Jones to get the gig but not why she had to put it in the introduction.

Sounds like the female opposite of Isherwood in some ways--I read Berlin Stories recently and the oncoming doom just spills off the page at times. But partly that is me overreading it, from my position on this side of the wall that is history.

It's been a long long time since I read Berlin Stories and it's been almost entirely overwritten in my head by various iterations of Cabaret, but Isherwood was writing in the 1940s, right? I can imagine it would be almost impossible not to let the oncoming doom leak through from that vantage point.

Ohhhhh, this book sounds INTRIGUING, but also difficult to read right now for all the reasons you mention.

Yeah, it was ... a surprisingly quick read, and I laughed through a lot of it, but it was pretty bitter laughter.