How Was the Artificial Silk Girl Reviewed in Its Time?
"I tin feel that bang-up things are in store for me. But at this betoken, I'g sitting here with fourscore marks and without a new source of income and I ask you, Where is my man for this emergency? Times are horrible. Nobody has any coin and there is an immoral spirit in the air – just every bit you're getting prepare to hit on someone for some cash, they're already hitting on you!" – Doris
Author Irmgard Keun
In The Bogus Silk Girl, main graphic symbol Doris, similar the author herself, starts out in a small-scale city (like the author's Cologne), where she wants to exist an extra, while supporting herself every bit a stenographer. Like Lorelei Lee in the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Doris eventually decides to write a commentary about her life which becomes the bespeak of view of the novel. Author Irmgard Keun refused, throughout her own life, to write an official autobiography, simply her characterizations and insightful commentary nearly the times, both in this novel and in Gilgi, Ane of Us (1931), suggest that she was intimately, if not personally, aware of the social tightrope immature women like Doris walked every bit they tried, and frequently failed, to improve their lives. The regime in Germany were not pleased, nevertheless, with her published depiction of Berlin life every bit Hitler and the Nazis, preparing to have power, envisioned it. Within a yr, Keun's books were confiscated and all known copies were destroyed. In 1936, Keun, firmly opposed to Nazism, escaped Germany for Kingdom of belgium, Holland, and later New York, not returning to Federal republic of germany until 1940, when imitation reports of her suicide fabricated it possible for her to enter and live in Germany under an assumed proper name. Though she continued writing later Earth War Ii, it is this novel, rediscovered and republished in 1979, for which she is best known.
Doris: "I await like Colleen Moore, if she had a perm and her nose were a picayune more fashionable, like pointing upwards."
Doris, the "artificial silk girl," has no politics, focusing well-nigh completely on her own ambitions – finding wealthy men who will improve her life by financing a better lifestyle for her. She cadges a desired wristwatch from i potential suitor, extols the virtues of chocolates and fine vesture to others (and is sometimes rewarded), just she likewise fastens her clothing with rusty prophylactic pins in case someone unattractive gets too carried away. Past the historic period of seventeen, she has already had a yr-long affair with Hubert, her kickoff and most lasting love, but when he ignores her altogether afterwards she'due south saved upwardly for a new dress, and fails to produce a present, she gets angry. "All he ever gave me was a little plastic frog that I would float down the river just for fun." And when he becomes patronizing and "wallows in his own morality," she retaliates by embarrassing him in public.
Doris: "There's a homo with fabulously clean-cut features, like Conrad Veidt when he was at the summit of his career, wearing a diamond ring on his pinky, who's looking at me from the other end of the room."
The novel that follows from this introduction is both fun and very funny, based entirely on the persona of Doris – totally goal oriented, unafraid to take chances, willing to do annihilation to get what she wants, and very clever. Her vox – honest, bawdy, and surprisingly guileless – also shows her intelligence, while her pointed observations and insights into those around her give the author unlimited opportunities for unique descriptions: She comments that her father is "lazy every bit a expressionless torso." One restaurant is "a beer abdomen all lit up," and dancing the tango "when you're drunk…is similar going down a slide." There are no limits to Doris's imagination and her self-interest, and when she seizes the opportunity to exist an extra in a theatrical production, she quickly drops hints virtually her ain background to impress people equally she plots her manner to success. Her feverish excitement beguiles the reader, and when her outrageous behavior forces her to escape not only the theater but the city itself, the reader cannot help but root for her eventual success.
Goldwasser, a Smoothen liqueur made with flakes of real aureate, excites Doris: "It's sugariness and makes yous drunk – it's like a violin and tango in a glass."
The author divides the novel into three parts, reflecting the seasons and the symbolism associated with them. The wild, spontaneous, free-for-all of action in Role I takes place at the end of summertime. Function Ii begins in Belatedly Autumn in Berlin, a much larger city, and the reader expects that this will exist a darker and probably more than contemplative fourth dimension. The gradual change of mood here, a true testament to the talent of Keun, increases the reader's identification with Doris and her goals. As Doris arrives in Berlin at Friederichstrasse Station, "the politicians [both German language and French] arrived on the balcony like soft black spots," and the crowd erupted, rushing the balcony and screaming for peace every bit the naïve Doris asks a café patron "if Frenchmen and Jews were ane and the same." A moving scene in which Doris takes her blind neighbor for a terminal walk through the city earlier he goes to a nursing abode, highlights this section and reflects Doris's (and the author's) ability to describe images of 1933 Berlin in ways that could only have been done by someone who was there at the time. As the old bullheaded man says, "The city isn't practiced and the city isn't happy and the city is sick…but you lot are skillful and I give thanks yous for that," an astonishing annotate for whatever writer to make publicly as the Nazis were coming to power.
In Berlin Doris comments that "The Gloria Palast is shimmering – it'due south a castle, a castle – but really it's a picture palace and a buffet…"
Role Three, "A Lot of Wintertime and a Waiting Room," introduces iii men, each of whom affects Doris'south life and future, bringing virtually new recognitions by Doris and a realistic conclusion to the novel. A tiny section in Part III carries the novel up to the Bound, suggesting new growth and, perhaps, new hope. The author'due south efficient and effectively presented structure allows her to describe all manner of Berlin life during this fraught catamenia, at the same time that information technology allows Doris to grow and develop naturally for the reader. The book's timeless themes regarding women and how they encounter themselves, combine with history in a unique mode, giving life to a less publicized period of history and new insights into some of the women who lived through it.
ALSOby Keun: FERDINAND: The Man with the Kind Heart
Note: Another, very different, novel about this same flow is BLOOD BROTHERS by Ernst Haffner, likewise highly recommended, also banned past the Nazis in 1933, also rediscovered in the late 1970s, and as well translated into English and republished by Other Press in the past two years.
Photos, in society: The writer's photo, taken when she was twenty-five, is from http://world wide web.themillions.com/
Colleen Moore, to whom Doris compares herself, was an American extra who began in silent films and who popularized the bobbed haircut. https://www.pinterest.com/
Conrad Veidt, a popular actor in Deutschland, left the state for England and eventually the United states, in 1933, bringing his Jewish wife with him. His career is fascinating and is summarized on Wiki. His photograph is from https://conradveidt.files.wordpress.com/
Goldwasser, a Smoothen vodka and herbal liqueur which features flakes of real gold, was invented in Danzig in 1598 and is still available for auction. Doris enjoyed this considering "It'due south sweet and makes yous drunkard – it's like a violin and tango in a glass." http://galeri.uludagsozluk.com/
The Gloria Palast in Berlin "is shimmering – it's a castle, a castle – fleck actually it's a movie theatre and a cafe…" http://allekinos.pytalhost.com/
ARC: Other Press
THE ARTIFICIAL SILK Daughter
Review. Fiction. Book Club Suggestions, Archetype Novel, Germany, Historical, Social and Political Issues
Written by: Irmgard Keun
Published past: Other Printing
Edition: Reprint
ISBN: 978-1590514542
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Source: http://marywhipplereviews.com/irmgard-keun-the-artificial-silk-girl-germany-pre-nazi/
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