Wonder Years Never Cease...

Vienna is full of American ex-pats, and they all seem to love it here. The city has been a melting pot for generations, and there is more diversity in this city than any other central European capital, I'd wager - even Berlin. This is good and bad.

There are several wonderful influences from the eastern European cultures and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Palatschinken is one - despite its name, the dish is vegetarian friendly (they're basically pancakes. The name is derived from Latin): 

Palatschinken

Other culinary delicacies, not unique to the Wiener Küche, have come to symbolize Austria - grace à empirical conquest (Schnitzel, for example, has Venetian origins) - and for those who insist all things Austrian are indeed Austrian, I suggest taking a look at contemporary Austria's charming yet less well-to-do neighbors. They most certainly would have a different story to tell.

Herein lies the problem: though Austria has been a melting pot since Habsburg times, it seems that, after a generation or two, no Serbian or Slovakian wishes to remember they had ever been anything other than Austrian. This reinforces the unfortunate aspects of of a closed society that still permeate the Austrian mentality: Austrian, good; Other, bad. This is oversimplification for effect, but I don't seen anything wrong with that.

The coolest thing about Austria is not its culture, which is not all that unique when considering the German-speaking world as a whole, but its topography and climate: the Alps. It's a well-known criticism that mountain people are a little kooky, with the reputation of being hicks, but, still, lovable - how else can you explain my 15-year-old students' love for John Denver? (Outside of Vienna, what part of Austria isn't  "Country Roads"?)

This brings me to an Austro-American comparison: we North Americans, too, have a melting pot - many would say the USA is the original melting pot...I don't know about that. (May I, for instance, bring up Ancient Rome?) We, too, seem to promote integration or segregation  - or did, up until the 1960s and the Civil Rights movements. 

In many ways, the United States lives in a fantasy world of past glories and triumphs, i.e. the end of World War II, the 1950s, when we helped Europe rebuild, we gained the reputation of being the world's policemen, and America was - in one way or another - the greatest country on Earth. Despite blatant evidence to the contrary, I'm afraid plenty of Americans still feel this way.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like it's a lot of hype over nothing to remember the glory days of yore. I would rather live in the present. What's past is past, and now more than ever, the world is changing at a fantastically rapid pace, practically from day to day. For the sake of each nation's collective psychic well-being, I hope my host country and home country both come to their senses, and stop playing the "Remember When?" game, like a couple of nursing home dandies.

A Single Man

I saw the film by Tom Ford when it came out in 2010, and was impressed by Colin Firth preparing a role that was, in essence, a one-man-show with props of other actors (he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor but did not win). Mr. Firth, unfortunately, was all that could be recommended for this film. I thought it was a little too something - ostentatiously gay? Visual? Superficial? Self-promotional? I'm not sure.

So, I liked the movie, but not as much as I thought I would. I saw a spot for it on Sunday Morning With Charles Osgood and various commercial spots...it seemed a lot deeper and artier than it actually was. In fact, I thought it was actually complete crap, and Colin Firth's character was a sleazy and maladjusted type for attempting an affair with a student.

Nonetheless, I have been looking for some Christopher Isherwood stuff, specifically the Berlin Stories or Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, as they were published in Europe. I'm planning to write my own "Vienna Stories" and would like some inspiration as to how to format my collection. Since these stories are more famously known (and set to music) as Cabaret, and in that form likely Isherwood's most famous works, I figure they're a good place to start.

However, when I went to the library, I didn't find what I wanted. They did have A Single Man on the shelf, however, and I decided, well, any Isherwood is better than no Isherwood.

What I love about A Single Man is that George is overtly and unapologetically gay in 1960's California (before the hippies, mind you - circa 1961). Isherwood's writing style, choice of scene and structure, never let the reader forget George's sexuality. In fact, Isherwood's style is pretty sparse, borrowing a page from Hemmingway's book in that it has very little physical description of characters or place; though it is better (i.e. not as bare bones) as The Sun Also Rises, for example. In concentrating on  the sensual aspects of live, the novella is charmingly and grippingly sensory - not erotic, not bogged down in details or description, just sensual. The ocean scene, where George goes for a dip (naked midnight romp?) with Kenny in the Pacific is one of the few exceptions to this, but in its description, continues to center on emotions George feels, rather than the temperature of the water, as an example. And it is critically important to George's psyche - the ocean, the young man, symbolize George's rebirth after Jim's death.


I was pleasantly surprised that the novella far exceeds the film. Isherwood's character George, far from being the superficial, self-conscious and self-promoting type of gay man Tom Ford made him out to be, is down-to-earth, sarcastic and outrageous as only a gay man can be, and though wounded by the loss of the love of his life (Jim, who passed away in a car crash visiting his folks in Ohio), George perseveres, does not assault himself by minimizing his love, like society is wont to do, or falling into an almost-affair with a student - he more or less fantasizes about sex, but does not delude himself into grander emotions, or actually committing any acts. Besides, Kenny (the student) doesn't have much to offer George beyond a nice body. Aside from scratching an itch, Kenny's not much of a catch. He's pretty dopey.


The one thing I hate about A Single Man (which was ambiguous in the book, but more ambiguous in the film) is that George dies at the end. Why does he die, when the book is about persevering despite obstacles?! It was so annoying, because it implied that a person cannot be total, complete, without another person to live with, love, and more importantly, have sex with. Most of the time protagonists in such situations are women falling all over themselves for a man, but obviously anyone can fall victim to the mentality - the sex part almost always shrouded in innuendo in anything pre-Woolfe (or pre-Anais Nin) for the woman. Gotta keep those Victorian double standards in working order...

Anyway, I think it's ridiculous that anyone should ever want to be defined by another, in any way. Yes, love is powerful, and I think true love does exist, but it is not the be-all and end-all of an existence to get married (or move in together) and "become" that other person, or have that other person become you. Sure, people need relationships, another to guide them, help them and give them the chance to become the best they can be through love and support and faith in their love. And it is painful to lose someone so dear and necessary to you. But that does not mean when you lose someone, you should not go on living! You are still you, not the other person and you deserve to continue your life, perhaps diminished, but hopefully not for long!

Losing love and losing faith are not one in the same, and though losing both can be devastating, no one says you have to.