Why am I passionate about this?
Even the purest of artists thrive under tension. For some artists, politics has provided a crucial source of tension which has led to great achievement. Usually, it doesn’t. Why? Because artists, like critics, are often poor at gauging political realities. (Artists are usually better off not getting involved with “ideological confusion and violence,” as Greenberg put it.) Occasionally, though, problems become so acute that being unserious about the world is not an option—the 1930s was like this for some, and maybe a second Trump presidency will have a similar effect on artists and critics today, although there is real room for doubt.
Todd's book list on art and politics belong together
Why did Todd love this book?
Although I love all her novels, this one is the easiest to love and recommend (and it is beautifully translated).
Anna Seghers hated the idea of “art & politics,” as though they were separable entities to be glued together. Seghers—Jewish, Communist, especially the latter—wrote this book quite literally on the run from the Nazis, in cafés in France, on ships in the Atlantic, and in Mexico, where she lived in exile during the war. But you would never know it; it is as fluidly written as anything she ever wrote. In general, Seghers thrived in high tension situations.
It is a detective story, love story, wartime journalism, yet very little happens. Kafka’s Castle minus the parables and mysticism. It is also one of the deepest reflections on the nature of writing and narrative I know.
1 author picked Transit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
INTRODUCED BY STUART EVERS: 'A genuine, fully fledged masterpiece of the twentieth century; one that remains just as terrifyingly relevant and truthful in the twenty-first'
An existential, political, literary thriller first published in 1944, Transit explores the plight of the refugee with extraordinary compassion and insight.
Having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany and a work camp in Rouen, the nameless narrator finds himself in the dusty seaport of Marseille. Along the way he was asked to deliver a letter to Weidel, a writer in Paris whom he discovered had killed himself as the Nazis entered the city.…