Here Is Not Our Home
From roughly 1880 to 1938, Vienna, Austria, became the home away from home for many composers, painters, writers and thinkers. Some profoundly influenced future generations. Moviemaker Fritz Lang, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt (with paintings now selling for over $100 million), and composers Schoenberg, Mahler and Zemlinsky studied and worked in this close-knit group. Even lazy and incompetent young Adolph Hitler tried to make it as an artist in Vienna, and Leon Trotsky hung out there.
Author Mallett employs immigrant art dealer Otto Kallir to narrate this story. One day in 1931, a gallery visitor begins to tell Kallir about real-life painter Richard Gerstl and offers access to what’s left of Gerstl’s work. Gerstl was not among the stars of that time, but his art and tumultuous life obsess Kallir. He finds and interviews Gerstl’s old friends and portrait clients, digs up letters to and from Gerstl, and reconstructs the fateful weeks that ended with Gerstl’s suicide at age 25 in 1908.
In the introduction, Mallett explains he initially wanted to include only existing texts and archival materials but found that too many parts of Gerstl’s life and his Vienna world would remain missing. Instead, Mallet strings together verbatim quotes from letters and Kallir’s imagined long conversations with those who knew Gerstl, along with Kallir’s straight narration about places, people and events. Hence this novel feels more like a series of in-depth fact-based newspaper articles than an Irving Stone-style historical. Nevertheless, the interesting times and struggling artists, many of whom are now household names, make for an engaging read.
