PD Smith

Science & the city

28 June 2007 | Reviewing, Science & literature, Writing & Poetry | 4 comments

BahrI’ve just been review­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing new book on Ger­man-speak­ing exiles in Los Ange­les dur­ing the 1940s and 50s — Erhard Bahr’s Weimar on the Pacif­ic. (Only Thomas Mann could look as mis­er­able as that in Cal­i­for­nia.) As many as 15,000 refugees from fas­cism made their way to Cal­i­for­nia, most end­ing up in the city of the angels — although Brecht rather ungrate­ful­ly likened the city to hell. They includ­ed Arnold Schoen­berg, Fritz Lang, Franz Wer­fel, and Alfred Döblin.

Some, like Brecht, were hard-boiled for­mer res­i­dents of the sin city that was Berlin in the 1920s and they felt alien­at­ed (for want of a bet­ter word) in this ver­dant, Arca­di­an city. Döblin for one com­plained about the lush green­ness that he saw every­where. Read­ing this remind­ed me of an arti­cle I did a while back on Döblin’s won­der­ful mod­ernist nov­el, Berlin Alexan­der­platz (1929), for Alan Ross’s Lon­don Mag­a­zine. As I don’t sup­pose it’s avail­able online, I thought I’d post it on my own site. It explores the sci­en­tif­ic themes in the nov­el and shows how these are root­ed in Döblin’s own train­ing in psy­chi­a­try. He was one of many Ger­man-speak­ing writ­ers in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry who had a sci­en­tif­ic back­ground and who often brought sci­ence into their work. If you’ve not read Döblin’s nov­el, I’d cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend it. And to get you in the mood, you can read my arti­cle here.

4 comments so far:

  1. shannon | 29 June 2007

    Inter­est­ing arti­cle. I find that I learn more about a piece some­times by a thought­ful review of it, rather than read­ing it. Or is that just me being lazy? Although I should prob­a­bly add this one to my read­ing list. I’m a big believ­er in life being one big pat­tern, the large mir­ror­ing the small in…how did you say it… a micro­cos­mic reflec­tion? I have a short sto­ry called “Demon in the Bell Jar” that shows how our lives mir­ror Maxwell’s thought exper­i­ment. Fate being the demon in the bell jar—the one who opens and clos­es the door, allow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to speed up one person’s suc­cess and slow down the other’s.

    “It remains the ‘unknown quan­ti­ty’ that offers indi­vid­u­als the poten­tial to rise above the law-gov­erned mate­ri­al­i­ty of their lives and to take con­trol of their des­tiny.”

    Per­haps this is what seper­ates us from nature? Evolved human­i­ty, a seper­a­tion from the phys­i­cal laws which I sup­pose some would call a soul.

    Thanks for shar­ing this.

  2. Paul Halpern | 02 July 2007

    Mann does look very seri­ous in that pho­to. But he seems to have had an indeli­ble influ­ence on the cul­ture of the City of Angels, name­ly Man­n’s Chi­nese The­atre and Mag­ic Moun­tain amuse­ment park:

    http://www.manntheatres.com/chinese/
    http://www.sixflags.com/magicmountain/index.aspx

    Brecht does­n’t seem to have fared as well in the LA enter­tain­ment busi­ness, but per­haps an investor read­ing this blog might think about open­ing a Pirate Jen­ny Land and a Mac the Knife Carvery some­where in town.

  3. PD Smith | 02 July 2007

    Thanks for those tru­ly sur­re­al links, Paul. I’m sure they would have made even Thomas Mann smile… (or on reflec­tion, maybe not!)

  4. PD Smith | 10 July 2007

    Thanks Shan­non — I think a lot of peo­ple read reviews for this reason…there are sim­ply too many books pub­lished to read them all, unfor­tu­nate­ly! Noth­ing to be ashamed of…

    Do you know the nov­el ‘Hope­ful Mon­sters’ by N Mosley? It explores some of those ideas you raise. You might want to add that to your list too…!