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Erich Kästner
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Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – November 6, 2012

by Erich Kastner (Author), Cyrus Brooks (Translator), Rodney Livingstone (Introduction)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 97 ratings
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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.
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  1. Print length
    280 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    NYRB Classics
  4. Publication date
    November 6, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    5.05 x 0.48 x 7.95 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1590175840
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1590175842
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Kästner (1899-1974) had a message to convey about the crumbling of Berlin's moral standards, and he delivered it successfully….but it is Fabian himself who explains things best when he comments ironically, ‘We live in stirring times . . . and they get more stirring every day.'’” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Like his hero Fabian, Kästner was not a cynic as a saddened idealist; the two conditions look much the same, but the latter is more painful….Fabian is a "key novel" of the Weimar Republic in its last years. It is a notably efficient novel, with little of the metaphysical resonance of [Thomas Mann’s] Doctor Faustus or that book’s soul-searching, but offering instead a series of moral tableaux, rendered the cooler by the chapter titles, in the form of newspaper headings.” —The Times Literary Supplement
 
“Graceful, vivid and distinguished…a little masterpiece of pathos and calamity.” —Michael Sadleir
 
“Damned for its improper subject-matter, [Going to the Dogs] showed the crumbling Berlin of Christopher Isherwood’s stories with something of Isherwood’s sharp intelligence, but a far more tragic sense of implication.” —The Times Literary Supplement
 
“I am a great admirer of Fabian [original title] and have read it at least twice.” —Graham Greene

About the Author

Erich Kästner (1899–1974) was born in Dresden and after serving in World War I studied history and philosophy in Leipzig, completing a PhD. In 1927 he moved to Berlin and through his prolific journalism quickly became a major intellectual figure in the capital. His first book of poems was published in 1928, as was the children’s book Emil and the Detectives, which quickly achieved worldwide fame. Going to the Dogs appeared in 1931 and was followed by many other
works for adults and children, including Lottie and Lisa, the basis for the popular Disney film The Parent Trap. In 1933 the pacifist Kästner was banned from German publication and subsequently found employment as a film scriptwriter. After World War II, he worked as a literary editor and continued to write, mainly for children.

Cyrus Brooks translated works by Alfred Neumann, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and Leonhard Frank as well as Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives, Emil and the Three Twins, and Lottie and Lisa.

Rodney Livingstone is a professor emeritus in German studies at the University of Southampton and a translator of books by Theodor W. Adorno, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin, among others. In 2009 he was awarded the Ungar German Translation Prize of the American Translators Association.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Main edition (November 6, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590175840
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590175842
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.05 x 0.48 x 7.95 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 97 ratings

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Erich Kästner

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4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
97 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

robin friedman
5.0 out of 5 stars A Moralist In Weimar Berlin
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2021
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The German author Erich Kastner (1899 -- 1974) is primarily known for children's books and for poetry; but he deserves to be remembered as well for this short novel, "Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist" (1931), set primarily in Berlin during the Depression before the coming to power of the Nazis.

The novel tells the story of Jacob Fabian, 32, and with a weak heart, a college graduate from a poor family unhappily employed at an advertising agency promoting the sale of cigarettes. He is a loner, single, and lives in a cheap rooming house. After work, he wanders the streets of Weimar Berlin with his only friend, Labude, who has spent five years writing a dissertation on Lessing. The friends visit nightclubs, brothels, and questionable artsy establishments while exchanging their opinions on many things. Labude, from a wealthy family, argues that economic improvement will better the condition of humanity, particularly with the poverty he sees around him, while Fabian argues that improvement will come only when individuals learn to think for themselves and to improve themselves morally. As the story progresses, Fabian is discharged from his job while Labude discovers that his long term lady friend has been unfaithful.

The novel offers a highly atmospheric portrayal of a troubled city losing itself in the quest for pleasure and sex. Berlin and its streets and haunts are surrealistically portrayed with, as the author admits, satirical exaggeration and yet are convincing. The book has a thick texture as many characters come and go. The philosophers Descartes and Schopenhauer get discussed by the characters as does Lessing. Overall, the feeling of the book is of sadness and loneliness as Fabian walks the streets, a flaneur, seeing the degeneration around him while realizing he lacks the ability to change the situation beyond expressing the hope for rationality. Fabian describes himself as a spectator.

Upon its initial publication, the book was criticized for its many depictions of what Kastner termed "the anatomical differences between the sexes". The early versions of the book were bowlderized but the offending passages were restored in later editions and in this translation. The book offers much room for thought and interpretation. It is tempting to see the book politically as a tale of the conflict between communism and fascism in Weimar Germany resulting in the rise of Hitler. The broader and more accurate reading, I think, sees the book as showing how individuals tend to run away from themselves and from trying to live reasonably. There is a tendency to deny sexuality and "the anatomical differences" and yet to pursue sexuality blindly. A sense of purposelessness and loneliness pervades the book much more than the sense of a political tract. I think the novel takes a more traditional view of gender and of gender roles that the view which is held by many contemporary readers.

This book is a provocative, troubling masterwork. The New York Review of Books Classics series did a service by republishing the work in 2012. Kastner's 1950 Preface to the German edition and his original Epilogue to the novel are included. They are both eloquently written and helped me to think about this novel.

Robin Friedman
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Curious
4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint of heart
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2013
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A unique voice calls back to us from the pages of this work. The novel is rather short, which is a good thing here. The flavor of the time being brought forth with vinegar. Many would say that the work was 'a downer', but this is to a great extent the general aura of much of Central Europe in the period between the World Wars. The situation of Vienna may have been more somber, as reflected by such works as Stephen Zweig's Postal Girl. Berlin had a bit more rebellious spirit, with futile attempts at exultation. Such attempts make the situation ultimately that much more gloomy as seen in works of Doblin and Kastner here and are seen from without in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories.
Not everybody wants to take the trip through such lugubrious environs.
For those who do, this work will be rewarding.
8 people found this helpful
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private55
5.0 out of 5 stars A Chilling View of Weimar Berlin
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2012
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Erich Kastner (1899-1974) is perhaps best known for his children's books, especially the much translated, `Emil and The Detectives'; and through film adaptations of `Lottie and Lisa', the source of Walt Disney's, `The Parent Trap'.

However in `Going to the Dogs' (published as `Fabian', in 1931), Kastner probes the hopelessness, intrigue, and degeneration of Weimar Germany.

Most vivid here is that particular Weimar sense of purposelessness and restlessness which generated (in many) an intense, desperate, seeking. The German concept `sehnsucht' (lit. yearning-addiction), comes to mind. One clearly feels the frustrated longing for what isn't, and perhaps what can not be.

After defeat in 1918, Germany plunged into turmoil which didn't end until Hitler. People were adrift: authority, institutions, and cultural norms lost their force. Dire economic circumstances contributed to a breakdown of structures, engendering vast social and cultural disintegration.

Setting aside its disastrous ending, some very fine art, music, and literature arose (Kurt Weil comes to mind), of which Kastner's work is an important part. Although this novel is little known, it is very much worth reading, especially with (and for) an historical awareness.

One could argue `Going to the Dogs' is not truly a novel, but a series of set pieces, episodes tied together by its protagonist, Jacob Fabian, (likely, in part, Kastner himself), and the city of Berlin. Its best read not for plot, or even character, but for the vital sense of time, place, and milieu it conveys - along with its timeless depictions of flawed human nature.

We meet hypocritical newspaper editors, prostitutes (male and female), naive activists, opportunists, politically enraged drunks shooting pistols, a detached father and absent mother, a depraved husband, a malignantly jealous academic - all in an atmosphere of abundant alcohol and hyper-charged sexuality.

Yet Fabian is not as unaware, or lost (or detached) as he may first seem. Largely, he's a sympathetic character: decent, and oddly enough, a somewhat conservative moralist whom we understand even better now, knowing what was to come.

No, Kastner is not as charming as Zweig, or as polished as Joseph Roth, or as psychologically astute as Schnitzler, but he does provide a unique and invaluable insight, conveyed with a Viennese intensity: a significant of-the-period view of Weimar Berlin, a place where, "Life is a chance, death is a certainty."

*********

Three final points:

The cover art (Christian Schad's `Self Portrait With Model', 1927) is intriguing (note the title block obscures the woman's breast - an unintentional allusion to the censorship of the original edition?) And although we might visualize Fabian as looking like Schad, the grittier art of either Otto Dix of George Grosz might have been more fitting.

Also, a book this important could use a fresh translation as this British-English rendition is at times clumsy. Anthea Bell`s recent translations of Stefan Zweig are light, engaging, and models of clarity: NYRB should have used her talents here as well.

Finally, Rodney Livingstone's introduction is thoughtful and informative, but as is all too common in NYRB titles, its too revealing and should be read as an afterward.
16 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

ron Hoogland
5.0 out of 5 stars na
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2023
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Dr. R. Brandon
4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Depiction of the Last Weimar Years in Berlin
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 1, 2021
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This book was written by Erich Kastner, best known for his children’s books, especially, “Emil and the Detectives”. Published in 1931 this work is set against the last years of the Weimar Republic in which poverty, social exploitation and regular street fighting between the forces of right and left were commonplace and yet were set against a background of fantastic innovation in the arts.
The story centres on an advertising copywriter, Fabian, who loses his job and spends time with his friends visiting brothels, dubious cabarets and taking up with sexual partners on the make. It is suggested that this book provides a good insight into the final frenetic years of the Weimar Republic, but I beg to differ. It overwhelmingly deals with sexual exploitation and largely fails to illustrate the vast chasm between rich and poor and the epidemic of street violence, political parades and society on the brink of collapse. These latter aspects are referred to, but the author fails to capture the febrile atmosphere or desperation facing those out of work in a way which is better dealt with by an author such as say, Hans Fallada or an artist such as George Grosz. The reference in the book to political violence is almost comical rather than serious.
The book is not “a little masterpiece” as suggested on the cover but it is interesting and worth reading for its different perspective on the last fascinating years of the doomed Berlin of the Weimar Republic and certainly more frank in its approach than the Berlin novels of Isherwood. It reminded me in some ways to the 1969 film, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” which depicts a marathon depression era dance competition in which all the participants are never going to actually receive the promised prize.
The introduction is best read after you have read the book. However, it was interesting to learn how many biographical references there are in the character Fabian to the life of the author.
2 people found this helpful
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