A Viennese Fanny Hill

I just sent in book four in the Viennese Mysteries to my editor in London and began thinking about one of the main characters in this series installment, the famous Viennese courtesan, Josephine Mutzenbacher.

Well, perhaps famous is a bit too strong. This mythic prostitute was introduced to Viennese readers in the 1906 novel, Josefine Mutzenbacher – Die Lebensgeschichte Einer Wienerischen Dirne, Von Ihr Selbst Erzählt (Josephine Mutzenbacher – The Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself). This first-person pseudo-memoir was written–the experts finally concur–by Siegmund Salzmann, better known by his pen name of Felix Salten, and, if known at all to readers outside the German-speaking world, as the author of Bambi.

In the novel, Salten depicts a strong-spirited woman in her fifties–Pepi to her friends–looking back with candor and sometimes even humor on her sexual adventures.

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The “Place of Place” in the Viennese Mysteries of J. Sydney Jones

The Silence, the third novel in my Viennese Mysteries series, continues to earn kudos from reviewers. Library Journal, in a starred review, just called it an “intricately plotted, gracefully written, and totally immersive read,” while Kirkus Reviews, in its Februrary 1, 2012, edition, noted: “Jones’ measured, stately prose is perfectly in tune with his period setting and his hero’s intense intellectual curiosity. … His intricate plot unfolds with suspense and style.” My publishers have just contracted for the fourth in the series, due out next year.

Sorry for the horn-tooting, but to celebrate, I post here some of the unused portions of an extensive interview I did with Big Thrill contributor and author Gary Kriss:

Your novels can be seen as “place paradigms.” Can you explain the difference, if any, between setting and place? Further, could you explain the “place of place” in novels and, particularly, in thriller novels.

Well, the classic distinction is that setting is bigger than mere place or location; in addition,  it includes time in its broadest and narrowest senses, and even the weather. My Vienna novels are certainly heavily dependent on setting. It’s not just Vienna that is at the center of things, but that amazing, bubbling, schizophrenic place (at once revolutionary and stodgy) that is Vienna 1900. And the “place of place” or of setting in my fiction–absolutely central. From years of living in the city and from further years of researching the turn of the twentieth century in Vienna, I attempt a bit of time travel in each of the novels. I am in the time and place. I surround myself with visuals of Vienna 1900, listen to its music while I write, read the words of fiction and nonfiction writers of the time, keep a timeline of historical happenings handy. I personally like thrillers where the spirit of place is at work, as with Alan Furst. But the best of Le Carre depends on his pitch-perfect dialogue and very fallible characters. Lots of ways to skin that cat.

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Annus Mirabilis in a Mutable World

For those of you who may have missed this when it was posted at The Rap Sheet, I reprise here the “Story behind the Story” of my new novel, THE SILENCE, a “splendid third whodunit featuring attorney Karl Werthen and criminologist Hanns Gross,” according to Publishers Weekly. The novel was also picked by Kirkus Reviews in pre-pub for its “10 Thrillers to Watch for This Fall” list. Herewith, some of the backstory to the genesis of this work, third in the Viennese Mysteries series.

I turned twenty-one on Easter Sunday in Rome, squeezed amongst  the throngs of people gathered in  St. Peter’s Square as the pope gave us all a plenary indulgence. I am not Catholic or Christian or even particularly religious, but the fact that the slim speck of white far away on a balcony over the enormous piazza erased all previous sin in my life was emblematic of that annus mirabilis in my life.

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A “Splendid” Silence

The third installment in my Viennese Mysteries series, The Silence, will be out December 1, and Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, noting that “Jones vividly evokes 1900 Vienna under the leadership of its notorious anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger, in his splendid third whodunit featuring attorney Karl Werthen and criminologist Hanns Gross.” Kirkus Reviews earlier included it in its “10 Thrillers to Watch for This Fall” list. I also provide some background to the inspiration for this novel in a “Story behind the Story” entry at the Rap Sheet.

To celebrate the pub date, I am posting the first chapter here. Enjoy!

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Mahler in Vienna

Another offering of scene in my own fiction:

Vienna Court Opera

Gustav Mahler’s name has long been associated with Vienna. Most know the story of his turbulent years as director of the Court Opera from 1897 to 1907.

Indeed, the early years of his directorship are, in part, the subject of my novel, Requiem in Vienna. Court intrigues, recalcitrant singers who balked at Mahler’s perfectionism, the omnipresent anti-Semitism in Central Europe of the day, musical prejudices, and professional jealousies–all these deviled Mahler’s years in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But there were compensations, as well: Mahler wrote some of his most significant works in the summers of these years; he married the volatile Viennese, Alma Schindler, daughter of landscape painter Emil Schindler and stepdaughter to Secessionist painter Carl Moll and began a family; he rose internationally in stature as a conductor of note.

What is less well known is that this was actually Mahler’s second sojourn in Vienna.

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Karl Kraus: Vienna 1900’s Intellectual Pitbull

This post continues a series of  personal reflections on Vienna, a city that is my very own Scene of the Crime–setting for my Viennese Mystery series and for much of my other published work.  That this article appears on Mothers Day is purely fortuitous and more than somewhat ironic. Read on to discover why.

For those of you who love to play butterflies or six degrees of separation, the world of Vienna 1900 is no stranger. Going forward or backward in time, you’re pretty likely to hit on a link in fin de siècle Vienna if you’re dealing with someone in the arts, literature, science, or world affairs. From Freud to Mahler, Klimt, and Hitler, the city was an amazing cauldron of cultural innovation (and, yes, in Hitler’s case, destruction) around the turn of the previous century.

At the epicenter of all was the young polymath, Karl Kraus, cultural critic, grammar policeman, and word maven of Vienna 1900. Kraus, a frail-looking man, beavered away for over three decades, single-handedly publishing his magazine, Die Fackel (The Torch). In this journal he took on the hypocrisies of the day, stood up to the rich and the powerful when need be, fought crime and societal stupidity, and generally pissed off everybody. The ultimate aphorist, Kraus termed Vienna 1900 a “laboratory for world destruction.”

In my novel, Requiem in Vienna, I describe Kraus thusly:

“A slight man with a curly head of hair and tiny oval wire-rim glasses that reflected the overhead lights, Kraus dressed like a banker. One of nine children of a Bohemian Jew who had made his money in paper bags, Kraus lived on a family allowance that allowed him to poke fun at everyone in the pages of his journal.”

Kraus frankly did not care who he angered. And sometimes he paid the price for his outspoken views. Once part of the Jung Wien group of writers, including, among others, Arthur Schnitzler–whom Freud termed his double–and the young Felix Salten–later author of Bambi– Kraus soon turned against them. In a famous article, he ridiculed the group’s coffee-house culture and earned a bitch slap from Salten at the Café Central for his words. On another occasion, he took a punch on the nose from an irate cabaret performer who did not care for Kraus’s reviews.

Kraus was most definitely a man of contradictions. On the one hand, he could defend the right of prostitutes to carry on their trade unmolested by the authorities:

“Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.”

At the same time, however, he could write this about women in general:

“Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.”

No one ever said Kraus was likable.

Something of the H.L. Mencken of Vienna, Kraus enjoyed a turn of phrase, enjoyed shocking people. But most of all he enjoyed being at the center of the rippling pool of Vienna 1900’s artists and intellectuals. He was the ultimate filter of gossip in fin-de-siècle Vienna; he knew where all the bodies were buried.

Kraus was also a major celebrity in his day. “I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am,” he liked to say. Besides the regular publication of his journal, Kraus was also a performer. Again from Requiem in Vienna:

“Despite his slightness of bearing, Kraus had a fine speaking voice. He had tried for a career as an actor as a younger man, but stage fright had intervened. He was said to be experimenting with a new form of entertainment, however, much like the American, Mark Twain and his famous one-person shows. At fashionable salons, Kraus was already entertaining the cognoscenti with his interpretations of Shakespeare and with readings from his own writings. Another of his aphorisms Werthen [my investigator protagonist] had heard: ‘When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.’”

And oh my but he makes one hell of a fictional character. So acerbic, so full of self-contradictions, so full of himself. I am not sure I would have liked to sit down over a cup of coffee or glass of wine with the man–nor he with me, I am sure–but anybody who could quip that “psychoanalysis is that disease of which it purports to be the cure” would have been worth knowing.

(For those who read German, the entire edition of Kraus’s Die Fackel is available free online)

(This post originally appeared on the blog, Murder Is Everywhere.)

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