Going to the Dogs

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By Erich Kastner & Rodney Livingstone &

Publisher Description

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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8 Reviews

3.5

Laura

Created 6 months ago

RaoulDuke613

Created 6 months ago

Booksandquilts

Created almost 2 years ago

“3.5 stars Kastner’s books were publicly burned no May 10, 1933 in Germany because of their affront to “discipline and morality in the family and the state.””

Drifterontherun

Created almost 2 years ago

“The Weimar Republic. Germany between two world wars. It's a fascinating setting, one often used in books and films for obvious reasons. It's a period when the complete degradation of a society was on full display. But "Going to the Dogs" isn't one of the finer examples of Weimar centered storytelling. Erich Kästner's novel comes off as too trite, too moralistic — ironically for a book subtitled "The Story of a Moralist." Our protagonist, Jakob Fabian, isn't very compelling as protagonists go. He isn't even really likable. The people around him are almost all more interesting that he is, and you'll find yourself wishing that you were following one of them around instead. For a book set in such fascinating times, "Going to the Dogs" is mostly quite boring. The chapter titles — if one can call them that — are ridiculous, serving really to summarize the various chapters, and none of the characters ever feels particularly deserving of sympathy. That said, what intrigue the story has rests in the strength of its bizarre and quite fantastical characters. Otherwise, there are a few interesting set pieces scattered here and there, but were it not for the setting, this "story" would have largely been forgotten.”

Vikash Goyal

Created over 2 years ago

“Erich Kästner's - GOING TO THE DOGS Rating -5/5 The air with which GOING TO THE DOGS is written carries the essence I found in one of my previous reads - Stoner. In both the novels, the protagonist suffers from the ailment of being misplaced in time and thought. Going to the Dogs takes place just a couple of years before the Nazi's takeover of Germany. Germany is a witch's cauldron where unemployment, virtues, class conflict, capitalism and socialism, righteousness and morality boil and cook, hence, rendering the country into the image of hellish pathos. Kästner's protagonist is immediately detestable and lovable at the same time. One cannot help but feel pity for the character. His morality at times can be studied as stupidity, but then, that is the idea of the whole book. Morality is painted in different hues. Kästner makes his characters trudge on the thin line between morality and immorality; between pragmatism and stupidity. In a world that is collapsing each moment - values, principles, virtues and vices lose meaning and depth. Going to the Dogs- the story of a moralist is an important book. Instagram - @readingscars Instagram - @kashivology”

About Erich Kastner

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.