The Brothel in Rosenstrasse

[manmiles]

Hi Mike

I just finished reading this book. Great read, but I was just curious about something. Was there any kind of moral outrage on the books release or demands on you to edit the book to rid it of extreme sexual content and underage sex?

regards

manmiles (Miles Reid)

[Michael Moorcock]

None at all. The book's been published in a number of languages and I've never received a single letter of complaint. It could be because, as I often say, context defines content, or it could be that most readers are not actually that puritanical. It's fair to note that it's the non-readers who are largely puritanical, whether they be fish-worshippers in Texas or Moslems making a fuss about The Satanic Verses in Iran.

[L'Etranger]

Spoke to the chap at the local travel agency recently and he indicated that he keeps getting calls from American wanting to book trips to Mirenburg.

Mike, terrific book, I loved it. Read it years ago under strange circumstances in Cartagena, Colombia.
Would make a great movie, but French or Czechs should make it.

[zakt]

I thought I had a reasonable grasp of European history and geography, but I did look for traces of Mirenburg in old encyclopaedias after reading the book. :oops: Extremely authentic then. Doh!

[Michael Moorcock]

Thanks, pards.
I guess Prague would be the nearest destination a travel agent could offer...

[Jagged]

I guess Prague would be the nearest destination a travel agent could offer...

Hehe... I always thought that Mirenburg was, more or less, Prague...

[Doc]

Brothel is one of my favorites. I first read it on an airplane, and the person next to me kept reading bits of it over my shoulder. I felt a real need to tell him that the book wasn't really about about cocaine-fueled sex with an underage woman, even though I only felt him reading when I was on those passages.

He said he was going to track it down. I always wonder if he wanted to read it for the sex or for something else. Being honest, I also wonder what he thought of me. Hmmm.... if only I'd been reading Lolita instead :D

[L'Etranger]

One of the great qualities of Michael's books, or many of them, is that you find very different things on different levels that appeal to you. And a book like BROTHEL IN ROSENSTRASSE quite obviously is remembered for very different reasons.
I for instance (albeit the title) who read the book early 1987 wouldn't think of the sex and underage females and stuff at all, when remembering the pleasure of reading BROTHEL. For me Michael captured the "fin de siecle" athmosphere of a world gone by, which has has much to do with the "melancholy of loss". Europe lost the last bits of innocence at around that time (probably earler, but it didn't dawn on people and their literature, their music, their manners etc so clearly yet) when conflicts became really gigantic and armies and warfare became industrial (... the invention of the machine gun changed the world!). So Mirenburg was to me a mixture of Prague, peaceful Salzburg, Weimar and some small German princedom of which there were dozens in the 19th century. Modern times were just around the corner, but people emotionally clung to the futile hope this wasn't true and locked themselves in - at Mirenburg. Ahead lay unrest and social revolutions , the old order - the old codices would no longer be valid. And at such a moment we found many people (in Brothel in Rosenstrasse) unable to react with a an adequate concept to face the new challenges just indulging in decadence. Very melancholic, very funny, very sensous at the hand of one master story-teller (wasn't this a word I read on the forum recently?)

[Doc]

You describe it perfectly, LE.

I find it quietly beautiful.

[Michael Moorcock]

Nice of you both. It is also about how people escape into erotomania, or let it take them over, in spite of the morality we believe we've established.

[L'Etranger]

Yes, in particular when you're under a state of siege, when all threatens to fall apart. You wrote it so beautifully that one could nearly wish for such circumstances!

[Michael Moorcock]

Could be we've been in them since the turn of the 20th century... :)

[L'Etranger]

I think they shot Wes Anderson's new movie "Grand Budapest Hotel" in Mirenburg. Watched it today and not only was I reminded of that creation of Mike's, but also enjoyed the movie a lot.

[Michael Moorcock]

Movie sounds great. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[Nathaniel]

I wonder if the lack of outrage is in part due to the title. Seems that the ones that get the most grief are books for kids/Y.A. that have questionable content that isn't spelled out up front. I can sort of see how a conservative parent could see a book called "Golden Compass" and think is was o.k. for their kid to read, then be upset when it turns out to be about athiesm/anti church. You read a book called "The Brothel in Rosenstrasse" and you should have a good idea what you are in for.