DNF, but I'm logging it here so I remember. I couldn't get into this. Even while: I thought there were interesting things happening in the form of the writing. I thrilled in the lamest way when the character walked down my street in Berlin. I wanted to push through to read about weimar Berlin, which has its own unending appeal. Still, I have other stories of weimar that I love, other stories of Berlin I would happily relive, other stories of post-prison life or desperate cities or people struggling to find a way that I found moving and profound. So I'll be ok without this one.
Side note to self: your reading level in German and your reading level in English are not the same.

My 2nd attempt to read this alleged masterpiece, this time as hörbuch.Indigestible. Lots of shouting drunkenness, talk of petty crime and prison. coming and humourless . Brecht covered the ground with more wit and aplomb.Gave up. ( )

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin is one of those classic books that always seems to pop up on "must read classic" books lists on social media. I was therefore keen to read this book, but found it hard going. The book is well written, with a fine style of prose, but it is very long, and at times quite boring. The pace of the story is slow, and it focuses on the mundane aspects of every day life in 1920s Berlin. However, the book does provide a fascinating record of everyday life in a great city during a tumultuous period in its history. It is therefore an interesting classic, but hard work. ( )

I have a hard time with the stream-of-consciousness style. The translater, Michael Hofmann, argues that the random jumping around makes the novel evocative of 1920s Berlin, but I found it hard to imagine the setting, and the patter of Franz Biberkopf's thoughts were all surface level--he is just a big dumb violent guy who falls prey to even violent men. ( )

I read this after seeing Burhan Qurbani’s 2020 movie version, where he updates the story to contemporary Berlin and makes the hero an illegal migrant from Guinea-Bissau. I had some difficulty recognising any details from the movie’s plot in the novel, other than the protagonist’s arm situation, but am glad to have read it, in any event. A modernist masterpiece. Michael Hofmann’s Afterword to his translation very interesting in its own right.

A wonderful book, in a lovely translation; Hofmann has clearly read a bit of Joyce back into Doblin's prose, but that's just fine by me (trigger warning: if you get upset when characters in books use 'Anglicisms', you will be enraged by this book). The book has a great decline-and-fall plot, a cast of horribles, and a melancholic understanding of the human species, which is easy to understand given the species in question. Very enjoyable, nonetheless, and probably the easiest way into modernism that I can imagine for those more used to the nineteenth century novels that people are still, for some reason, so fond of. And still writing.
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There's not much to like about Franz Biberkopf: former transport worker, housebreaker, pimp, manslaughterer. However, rather than evil personified our protagonist is a kind of Everyman after the Fall.

Berlin in 1928 was not an easy place for such as he. Fresh out of prison when first we meet him, Franz was faced with making his way in a city where no one cared about him or for him. Berlin itself is such an overpowering force in the novel that it becomes a character in its own right: seedy, pushy, never sleeping, always on edge. That's not far from what Franz must become to make his way in such an environment. Initially full of resolve to go straight, bit by bit he slipped further into the quagmire. He knew this was the fate of people like him, just not how that fate would be dealt:

We can predict what a pig will do when it reaches the sty. Only, a pig is better off than a human being, because it's put together from meat and lard and not much more can happen to it as long as it gets enough to eat: at most it might throw another litter, and at the end of its life there's the knife, which isn't particularly bad or upsetting either: before it notices anything - and what does a pig notice anyway - it's already kaput. Whereas a man, he's got eyes, and there's a lot going on inside him, and all of it mixed together: he's capable of thinking God knows what and he will think (his head is terrible) about what will happen to him.

This is an unusual novel, jumping from place to place, thought to thought, much like life itself. In his Afterword, the translator Michael Hofmann calls it jazz, "... the real thing: weather reports, articles on nutrition, local news items, personal interest stories, letters from patients, all incorporated into the novel....The work-in-progress of the book matched the work- in- progress of the city... with its own duckboards and drillings and tunnellings and detours and demolitions and temporary closures and promised improvements.

Doblin was a psychiatrist with a working class caseload who knew Berliners well. His Berlin backdrop and its downtrodden citizens make it apparent that something must happen, that the city and by extension the country couldn't continue grinding its citizens up in the way his occasional abattoir reports reflected the fate of its four-legged animals. Franz and his friends may not have been able to articulate the political theories circulating at the time, but they knew each promised a better life. Where was it?

Berlin has another incarnation in this novel: the temptress, the great Whore of Babylon, deceiving people again and again. It would take much stronger characters than Franz's crew to resist and go straight. Yet in the end, Franz offers hope for redemption, something so many would be denied. Doblin himself knew better that to trust her, and left Berlin after the 1933 Reichstag fire.

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A note on translation: Althought the back cover of this 2018 nyrb classics edition suggests this is the first translation into English ("In Michael Hofmann's extraordinary new translation, Alfred Doblin's masterpiece lives in English for the first time") there was in fact a 1931 translation by Eugene Jolas which Hofmann praises in his Afterword.

Implacable fate deals Franz Biberkopf three Mahlerian hammer-blows, but will it do him in? This is a novel that gathers confidence and momentum as it goes on; uncertain at first, the writing by the end is pummellingly intense and original. The collage effect works wonders; the biblical passages, the slaughterhouse section, the tram trivia, all stewing into a rich and confusing brew. With its cascades of lowlife dialect and algal blooms of period colour, Berlin Alexanderplatz is as close to untranslatable as novels get. But despite the inevitable compromises in the translation (and it seems to me that Hofmann chose his compromises well), there is a spine to this story which keeps it staggering proudly along. ( )

This novel was first published in October, 1929, two weeks before Black Friday and the Wall Street Crash. It put modern Berlin on the literary map and it remains a modernist classic favorably compared with the not too dissimilar novels like Dos Passos' USA Trilogy and Joyce's Ulysses. It tells the story of man who is as untied from any moorings as the world around him seemed to be. In fact, you might consider him the perfect anti-hero for the age.

The story opens as Franz Biberkopf is released from Tegel prison, where he served four years for killing his girlfriend in a drunken rage. Returning to Berlin, he decides to go straight. He begins to peddle bow ties on a street corner and drifts into selling other merchandise. At the same time, he starts an affair with Polish Lina and gets involved fleetingly with a bewildering series of political movements, ranging from homosexual rights to the Nazi Party. His wearing of the Nazi armband angers his worker friends, who expel him from his favorite pub. However, his real troubles begin after he enters into a partnership with Otto Lüders. After Lüders robs and assaults one of his customers, to whose apartment he gained access by using Franz’s name, Biberkopf is forced to flee to an obscure part of the city to avoid complications.

Much like a musical theme with variations, a few weeks later, Franz returns to his usual haunts taking a job as a newspaper vendor. He also begins to consort with a flashy miscreant named Reinhold who is adept at attracting women but cannot hold on to them. Each time Reinhold tires of a girlfriend, Franz throws off his current mistress and takes Reinhold’s latest castoff. When Franz becomes sincerely attached to Cissy, one of Reinhold’s rejects, he refuses to comply further. Indeed, he tells Reinhold’s girlfriend how things stand. This infuriates Reinhold, though he pretends to acquiesce in Franz’s attempt to reform him.

Yet another misadventure has Franz recruited by Fatty Pums, head of a criminal gang, which includes Reinhold. The gang is closely pursued as they drive away from a robbery, and Reinhold, given to psychotic rages and remembering Franz’s interference with his social life, pushes him from the speeding automobile. Franz is run over by the chasing car.

He awakens in a hospital, missing one arm. Bedridden, he is taken in by friends from his criminal days. Once Franz feels better further adventures ensue involving prostitutes and the usual suspect criminal element (you get the idea). At one point Franz ends up abetting his old friend Reinhold in a murder. Franz manages to continue his criminal enterprise alone, but is caught by the police. All of these events are told in a realistic and sometimes comic style.

Franz learns of Meize’s death and the hunt for him through the newspapers. Disguised with a false arm, he sets off to track down Reinhold. Eventually, tired and confused, Franz wanders into a nightclub that is in the process of being raided by the police. He is arrested. Reinhold, who got himself jailed under an assumed name, thinking prison is an ideal hiding place, is betrayed by a young man he befriended.

Above all else, the work’s narrative evokes the crowded and chaotic nature of Berlin in the Jazz age. Something of the rhythm and melodies of jazz music is conveyed through the frequent interspersing of the narrative with newspaper clippings, weather reports and political slogans, not to mention through its various diversions on topics as varied as astronomy, theology, and cooking. Döblin’s inclusion of the work’s principle setting as part of its title necessitates that the setting adopt a central role. There are a few fantastic episodes, meetings with angels and ultimately, after Frans has been confined in a mental asylum, a confrontation with Death, who recalls to Franz his misdeeds and charges him to start a new life. When he comes out of his stupor, he is changed. After he is released, he quietly becomes a gatekeeper, refuses to incriminate Reinhold at the killer’s trial, and avoids any bad associations. From then on, he is known by the new name Franz Karl Biberkopf, for he is a remade man. ( )

1997 was a rushing tide of hefty novels sweeping under to revel in their wake: most of Pynchon and the Grass Danzig troika are dated here. Doblin's feat is an episodic steamroller, the estranged reader is as tethered as anyone by the mechanized operations of the strange, new Berlin. (Brave New Bono, Beware)

I returned to the novel a few years ago after viewing the Fassbinder film. Doblin's novel remains a formidable feat. A few of my friends have recently made mediocre efforts. Looking aghast, I shook my head with the resignation of Arsene Wenger: even while Nietzsche was taking swings at folks at the asylum, he still valued a mazurka. ( )

I read Berlin Alexanderplatz through a number of mediators: in the new English translation by Hofmann made nearly 100 years after the fact, and as an audiobook. I also watched the 15hr movie from the 1970s which is useful for character, setting and plot details. It was basically all I read/watched/listened for over two weeks. The audiobook made it particularly challenging as the words march robotically without pause for paragraph or section break, the narrator was not kind this way. This made a demanding stream of consciousness novel even more so, though it enhanced the bewildering storm of information effect. I'm glad to be exposed to this kind of novel. The mix of documentary fact and fiction make it seem more real, but it isn't realism, something more vital than a copy of reality. This was a followup to a book I read about Nietzsche, another deep dive into European high modernism. Doblin would have been a teenager in the 1890s when Nietzsche became all the rage, and one can see the influence of Nietzsche, the quest for moral direction in an age without personal moral authority; Doblin sees the role of fate as significant. It's also a great documentary view of 1920s Berlin, a libertine zoo the country watched with fascination and horror. ( )

The translation by Michael Hoffman brings refreshment to this tale of low life Weimar Berlin. I compared it to dos Passos’ U.S.A. but it deserves to be hailed in its own right as a study of the individual embattled in the war to make good one’s place in an indifferent twentieth century.

I have to admit, it was actually the part where the main dude comes back from the dead and turns out to be a kind of grace-lobotomized angel or bodhisattva that made me fully embrace this gritty, hilarious (I love when Germans are funny because no one else's humour has that manic edge of malice) story of human damage in 1920s Berlin. Let me say again: the part that makes the book is where the protagonist turns out to be an angel. How fucking good a writer do you have to be to pull that off? Also, the gusto with which the dialogue is Englished and Twentiesed by Jolas is a major accomplishment on its own, good job Jolas. ( )

I made the mistake of reading the book in english, whereas it would have been much more lively in german trough the use of Berlin dialect.

You need to survive to approx. page 150 to have the book get traction.

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The story of a small time criminal in the Weimar Republic is fairly interesting, but the slog through the many pages is not too rewarding. Still, it can be read in its historical context. I wonder if Hitler had it burned because it was outside the mainstream of literature at the time. ( )

Read this book in German for my literature list. Liked it, and that's where the 4 stars came from.
That is so many years ago now, that I've gotten a Dutch translation a few years back. Since then it is waiting to be read again. ( )

_-_-_-_ IN LETTURA _-_-_-_ L'ho iniziato perchè sapevo di potergli, finalmente, dedicare la dovuta attenzione e concentrazione; se non c'è la predisposizione e la calma di affrontarlo credo che questo libro finisca facilmente tra gli "abbandonati", con la sua struttura che ricorda molto uno schizofrenico zapping tra diversi contenuti, in cui non si distingue se si sta leggendo un pensiero del protagonista, una voce di un passante, un manifesto politico, un'insegna... _-_-_-_ FINITO _-_-_-_ Confusione... una vita di confusione... Franz voleva essere un brav'uomo, ma non c'è riuscito... il mondo è troppo confuso per Franz... solo la Alex plaz è sempre lì ad aspettarlo, lacerata dai lavori della metro, con qualche pezzo in meno, proprio come Franz che si è perso un braccio... ( )

This was a surprise: I was a bit scared to start Berlin Alexanderplatz because of its reputation for bleakness, but it turns out to be remarkably full of life, energy, even comedy. Franz Biberkopf's depression and failure is set against the hectic pace of Berlin life around him: the noise, bustle, confusion and randomness of the city, full of trams, advertisements, songs, slogans, official notices, chunks of Genesis, Job and Revelation, Aeschylus, building-site noises and all the rest of it. The Berlin dialect adds a lot to the mixture as well. Quite something!

The other unexpected thing, which should have been trivially obvious, but only really registered for me when I was about halfway through the book, is that this is different from practically everything you've read about Weimar Germany (with the possible exception of Emil and the detectives) because it's written without a drop of hindsight. Döblin didn't know if it would be the Sozis or the Nazis or the Anarchists who would end up on top. We do, of course, but that's different. When Franz is selling the Völkischer Beobachter, we are the ones who have to supply all the irony... ( )

This is a weird little book-- an enjoyable read, along with some unexpected/interestingly delivered social commentary. I've not seen the Fassbinder film, but for good or ill, I could picture how he'd do it as I was reading. ( )

This is a remarkable book. On the surface, the story of an "ordinary" man and his descent into petty crime and madness, it is really a portrait of Berlin in 1928, in the midst of economic problems, political stirrings, the aftermath of the first world war, growing modernity, etc. Döblin mixes narrative with headlines, a somewhat gruesome description of how animals are butchered, weather reports, mythological/religious reflections, and popular/military ditties worked into the text so it takes a while to realize what they are (amazingly translated so that they retain the meter and rhyme that must have been present in the original German). Although it was written in 1929, it is clear to a contemporary reader that the seeds of Nazism were already planted; reading this book, I could also see the connections with the world and writing of Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone. This book will stay with me.

An absolute masterpiece of writing! ( )

A book I really had to get used to at the beginning. What did I need 500 pages about a just released criminal who killed his wife for? But the story is good, Franz (the criminal) wants to be good, but is too naive. The sidelines with stories about things happening in the streets show something about life in Berlin at the end of the 1920s. Interesting and recommended read.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2009/08/berlijn-alexanderplatz.html ( )

When I decided to read this book I did not have any info about it. I decided just because of the title – “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. Usually, in 99% of cases I check the books before I’m taking my decision about reading them (especially those, which I can’t earlier open and at least look through it). But those, who know me, know that I’m crazy about Berlin, and this square and its’ surroundings is one of my favorite places there. That’s why I decided on spec. First I could not find it anywhere, but one of my internet-bookworm-friends helped me and she borrow it for me :)

And that’s how my adventure with this book started. Honestly, I had a hard time during reading it! The story itself – the story of Frank Biberkopf – is compelling. We’re meeting him in the gate of the Tegel prison, from where (after spending there a few years for the murder) he is right now starting a new chapter of his life. Frank promises himself to live and to work honestly, avoid troubles and old companions. How will he manage? How the whole story will finish? What will the life bring to Frank during Just one year since this moment? I don’t want to tell much about the story line, but I will just mention that he will open and close a few more chapters of his life. Frank will be surrounded by more or less interesting characters, friends and enemies – how it’s usually in life. He will have a great deal of bad luck and quite much luck as well. But, at the end he will find out still that it’s better to live with other people, together, for each other. Then we know better what is good and what is bad. Will it be like that? I don’t know, but I’m willing to believe to Frank. That’s about the plot.

I had a hard time during reading because of the language and the style used in this book. In the foreword we are warned that this author like to “destroy the forms of the novels”. But I did not expect what I’ve got ;) Many times (especially during first 200 pages) I felt as I’m reading 10 different books in one + the newspaper with announcements. The plot is interrupted many times with small fragments, which doesn’t have any logical background and relation with the whole story. For example during one walk of Frank we’re getting to know how different plants are reacting for a cold weather. I need to admit that those fragments dishearten me often.

Berlin is very much settled in the plot of this book. We’re getting to know quite well many streets, squares, districts; we know how they looked like in the twenties of the last century. We get to know as well different information about architecture, transportation, economy, social relations etc. For me those descriptions of Berlin were an “added value”, because I could compare the look of the places which I know :)

To sum up – the story itself it’s interesting, but because of the style used I could not relish those 600 pages of reading. ( )

A book about a very ordinary and not particularly bright man, and no doubt a book disparaged by Hermann Broch as being part of the trend of "asphalt literature" he spoke against in his essays. For those who love Berlin and 30's European literature, a must. ( )

Great novel from which Fassbinder made a great movie. ( )