{"id":256253,"date":"2025-05-25T09:49:53","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T09:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/the-director-by-daniel-kehlmann-transl-ross-benjamin-in-a-bind\/"},"modified":"2025-05-25T09:49:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T09:49:53","slug":"the-director-by-daniel-kehlmann-transl-ross-benjamin-in-a-bind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=256253","title":{"rendered":"The Director by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. Ross Benjamin): In a bind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-34816\" src=\"https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/The-Director-195x300.webp\" alt=\"Cover image for The Director by Daniel Kehlmann\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/The-Director-195x300.webp 195w, https:\/\/t9z6e6y4.delivery.rocketcdn.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/The-Director.webp 325w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\"\/>I\u2019ve read all six of Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann\u2019s novels and reviewed four on here, each of them very different from the others. <em>The Director <\/em>tells the story of film director <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/G._W._Pabst\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">G. W. Pabst<\/a> who found himself trapped after the annexation of Austria, apparently with no choice but to produce films for Goebbels\u2019s Ministry of Public Enlightenment Propaganda.<\/p>\n<p><em>I see it differently, Pabst. It makes all the difference in the world which side one stands on.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Georg Pabst\u2019s career began before the talkies, discovering both Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks, but he made his directing name in the \u201830s. After a spell working in Paris, he took Trude and their son Jakob to Hollywood, far away from the trouble brewing in Europe, hoping to pitch an idea which falls flat thanks to his poor English and no one knowing who he is. After an odd encounter at a party and an alarming telegram from his mother, he and his family return to the dilapidated castle where Ericka is looked after by a couple straight out of an Austrian version of <em>Cold Comfort Farm<\/em>. Despite his determined refusal to work for the Nazis, he finds he has no choice, or perhaps he convinces himself of that. Pabst has already compromised himself working with Leni Riefenstahl in the late \u201920s, but this will be a much greater betrayal of his ideals, one which sees Trude take to drink. He begins to think of his work as art, fashioning his last film, <em>The Molander Case<\/em>, into a masterpiece in his own head despite the flimsy plot of the book on which it\u2019s based. The film is close to completion in Prague when the Uprising opens the doors for the Russians. Pabst and his assistant catch the last train to Vienna carrying seven reels of film with them.<\/p>\n<p><em>At first they lived up here, then they had to move down to the caretaker\u2019s quarters because Papa had been an emigrant, a Jew-lover, and made Communist films, but then Papa was suddenly a good German again, and so they were allowed to move back to the second floor, and the Jerzabeks almost disappeared in their humility and eagerness to serve.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Kehlmann\u2019s at pains to point out that while his book is based on Pabst\u2019s wartime years, it\u2019s a work of fiction with very little in the way of primary sources to draw on, underlined by the theme of memory\u2019s fallibility and a few almost hallucinatory episodes. The narrative shifts from Pabst to Trude to Jakob,\u00a0 punctuated with occasional flashes of humour amid the darkness. Pabst convinces himself that he\u2019s compelled to accept Goebbels\u2019s proposal but Trude begs to differ, disgusted with his talk of the pursuit of art regardless of the appalling crimes of his patrons. Pabst sank into obscurity after the war, his reputation destroyed, leaving little trace in cinema history. It\u2019s a fascinating story, executed well, but not my favourite Kehlmann which is a tossup between the doorstopping <a href=\"https:\/\/alifeinbooks.co.uk\/2020\/02\/tyll-by-daniel-kehlmann-transl-ross-benjamin-telling-truth-to-power\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Tyll<\/em><\/a>, set in the seventeenth century, and his debut,<em> Measuring the World.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Riverrun: London 9781529435115 352 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-52859811-35090-683242b20b574\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/?ver=14.6#blog_id=52859811&amp;post_id=35090&amp;origin=alifeinbooks.co.uk&amp;obj_id=52859811-35090-683242b20b574\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-52859811-35090-683242b20b574\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><a class=\"sd-link-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve read all six of Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann\u2019s novels and reviewed four on here, each of them very different from the others. The Director tells the story of film director G. W. Pabst who found himself trapped after the annexation of Austria, apparently with no choice but to produce films for Goebbels\u2019s Ministry of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[42284,47563,5645,47056,3917,73355,6034,92764,92766,92765,5390,73362,73365,47569],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-256253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-austrian-fiction","tag-austrian-fiction-in-translation","tag-benjamin","tag-bind","tag-daniel","tag-daniel-kehlmann","tag-director","tag-g-w-pabst","tag-kehlmann","tag-riverrun","tag-ross","tag-ross-benjamin","tag-the-director","tag-transl"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Director by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. 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