I should be going for a leisurely 'Bummel' up the lane and across the bridge to meet the locals at the local market, but these last two weeks of solitude have made me enjoy it so much that I don't want to spoil it. It's just me and a cup of tea and the river.
And the occasional movie on TV, on DVD, on iview, or on YouTube, to say nothing of all my books. So many books and so little time. Why did I not discover Joseph Roth earlier? He died early, just forty-four years old, and just three months before the start of World War II, which he had already predicted in February 1933 in a prophetic letter to his friend, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig:
"You will have realized by now that we are drifting towards great catastrophes. Apart from the private—our literary and financial existence is destroyed—it all leads to a new war. I won't bet a penny on our lives. They have succeeded in establishing a reign of barbarity. Do not fool yourself. Hell reigns."
I mean, the movie was made from the book, not the other way round.
In his last few years, he moved from hotel to hotel, drinking heavily and becoming increasingly anxious about money and the future. Despite suffering from chronic alcoholism, he remained prolific until his death in Paris in 1939. The novella "The Legend of the Holy Drinker", his last major work, reads like an autobiography, as it chronicles the attempts made by an alcoholic vagrant to regain his dignity and honour a debt.
And there are so many more: "The Radetzky March", "The Emperor's Tomb", "Job", "Hotel Savoy", "The Silent Prophet", "Flight Without End", "Tarabas", "Confessions of a Murderer", and "The Spider's Web" are just some. It'll be some time before I can go to the Nelligen Markets again.
A quick search on ebay brought up several film adaptations but at staggering prices ranging from a "low" $40 to as much as $70. I guess there's no hope that they'll ever show up at Vinnies for a mere dollar.
