
Going to the Dogs
The Story of a Moralist
Erich Kastner(Author)
NYRB Classics (Publisher)
Published on 6. November 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-1-59017-584-2 (ISBN)
Description
Going to the Dogs is set in Berlin after the crash of 1929 and before the Nazi takeover, years of rising unemployment and financial collapse. The moralist in question is Jakob Fabian, "aged thirty-two, profession variable, at present advertising copywriter . . . weak heart, brown hair," a young man with an excellent education but permanently condemned to a low-paid job without security in the short or the long run.
What's to be done? Fabian and friends make the best of it-they go to work though they may be laid off at any time, and in the evenings they go to the cabarets and try to make it with girls on the make, all the while making a lot of sharp-sighted and sharp-witted observations about politics, life, and love, or what may be. Not that it makes a difference. Workers keep losing work to new technologies while businessmen keep busy making money, and everyone who can goes out to dance clubs and sex clubs or engages in marathon bicycle events, since so long as there's hope of running into the right person or (even) doing the right thing, well-why stop?
Going to the Dogs, in the words of introducer Rodney Livingstone, "brilliantly renders with tangible immediacy the last frenetic years [in Germany] before 1933." It is a book for our time too.
What's to be done? Fabian and friends make the best of it-they go to work though they may be laid off at any time, and in the evenings they go to the cabarets and try to make it with girls on the make, all the while making a lot of sharp-sighted and sharp-witted observations about politics, life, and love, or what may be. Not that it makes a difference. Workers keep losing work to new technologies while businessmen keep busy making money, and everyone who can goes out to dance clubs and sex clubs or engages in marathon bicycle events, since so long as there's hope of running into the right person or (even) doing the right thing, well-why stop?
Going to the Dogs, in the words of introducer Rodney Livingstone, "brilliantly renders with tangible immediacy the last frenetic years [in Germany] before 1933." It is a book for our time too.
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
New York Review Books
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
222 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-59017-584-2 (9781590175842)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
NYRB Classics
€17.49
Available for download
Persons
Erich Kästner; Introduction by Rodney Livingstone; Translation by Cyrus Brooks