THE HUMAN COMEDY
SWEET AND SOUR, by Joseph Wechsberg; Michael Joseph. English price, 10/6. "()H to have been twenty in Paris in the "Twenties" is a familiar enough plaint. Joseph Wechsberg may not have been exactly that age, but he was near enough to it and the atmosphere of this book is of that time. Wine and music, food, midinettes, mannequins, tourists, Sudeten-Germans (his béte noire), caricatures and sometimes characters, spas, boites, eccentrics, comics; the displaced, the exiled, the exotic. Life, or Joseph Wechsberg’s version of it, was hectic but not too serious, Except for the last story in the book there is a salutary lack of sentimentality. Readers of the New Yorker and of Esquire and of the first part of this fabulously probable autobiography Looking for a Bluebird, will be familiar enough with Joseph Wechsberg’s "style." All of the stories in this volume, more than twenty, have been published before. Their range, geographically, is all over Europe. The odd and the picturesque fill the pages:. a Spanish ‘accordionplayer who ‘chose that instrument because it was the only one he knew of ‘that could be played while lying flat on his back, a sixth generation descendant of Antonio Stradivarius (this, No Weeping Tonight, Baccketta! is one vf the best in the book), an operatic chemist who gives a daily performance of whole operas, a Monte Carlo gambler who lives on potatoes, a Czech bureaucrat in-love with his files. . .. they pass in humorous and human parade. After eighteen years the author returns, as a U.S. army sergeant, to the Place Pigalle. The story of this return is told in an Epilogue. . The stories are rapid and hectic. The humour does something more than amuse. To quote the author: "If you don’t think there are such people as I have written about, wait a while and watch the sweet and sour human comedy around you." Joseph Wechsberg’s humour has a "New-Yorker edge.’ Sweet and Sour is the anecdotal record of a fabulous time, a book of humour and something more, of one asp@ct of Europe "between the wars." €
M.
D.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19500120.2.23.2
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 13
Word count
Tapeke kupu
349THE HUMAN COMEDY New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 13
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Material in this publication is protected by copyright.
Are Media Limited has granted permission to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa to develop and maintain this content online. You can search, browse, print and download for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Are Media Limited for any other use.
Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
Log in