“The usual thing”

Erich Kästner, Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist. 1931. Trans. from the German by Cyrus Brooks (New York: New York Review Books, 2012).

Another NYRB rediscovery, highly recommended. The waning years of Weimar Germany: dance-halls, sex, political violence, unemployment, and a moment of crucial decision.

The Nazis were to burn Kästner’s books. A post-war work: Das doppelte Lottchen (1949), known in translation as Lottie and Lisa. It’s the basis for the 1961 movie The Parent Trap and later PT movies.