Modern Jewish Literature - Class 1 - Austro-Jewish Reading List

(What I sent out)

Classmates,

Here, a bit belatedly, is a reading list for Austro-Jewish Literature. This is obviously a suggested reading list. The point of Adult Ed is that the teacher is not responsible for what you read or don't. He just makes the recommendations and suggestions, tries to increase your enthusiasm, and then it's up to you. 

I've linked either to amazon or to online texts. Any of these can be found for buying online, and just about all of them can be found at the Central Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Cathedral Street.

See you next Sunday!

Getting In:

Buchmendel & The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig

The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

Job by Joseph Roth

Half Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths by Karl Kraus

The Penal Colony by Franz Kafka

Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler

Telegrams of the Soul by Peter Altenberg

For The Enthusiastic: 

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (THE major novel by a Viennese Jew the period)

In These Great Times by Karl Kraus

Master Builders: A Typology of the Spirit by Stefan Zweig (brief biographies and perfect introductions to nine major authors who had enormous effects on his era)

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures by Stefan Zweig

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (I struggled about whether to put it under 'getting in' because Metamorphosis is honestly a lot easier than its reputation)

The Road to the Open by Arthur Schnitzler

Worth The Challenge:

A Cultural History of the Modern Age by Egon Friedell

Civilization and It's Discontents by Siegmund Freud - particularly Chapter 3

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein (it gets more abstract and mathematical toward the 2/3rds marker, but you will be stunned by how readable this is)

I-Thou by Martin Buber (You'll be stunned by how similar Buber is in style to Wittgenstein, and also to the writers we discussed.)

The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus (great, just really long)

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Degeneration by Max Nordau (like Friedell, it's a fascinating and very readable work of bad philosophy that shows the spirit and problems of its era)

Cassanova's Homecoming (I regret that we did not get to talk about Schnitzler, an Austrian-Jewish writer who was a generation older than most of the ones we spoke of and Freud thought of as his fictional equivalent)

Not For the Faint of Heart:

The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch

The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch

Moses and Monotheism by Siegmund Freud (I chose not to include Freud on most of this because it's a completely different can of worms that we shouldn't open...)