August 23, 2009
Yesterday I read Address Unknown by Kressman Taylor, a novel composed of a series of letters between partners in an art gallery, one a German Jew in San Francisco and one a German Gentile who has returned to Germany. The first letter is dated in the year 1932 and the last in 1934. The novel first came out in the magazine Story in the year 1938 and was published by Simon and Schuster in 1939. The dates are important: Taylor's novel exposes the invidious evil of Nazism when the world was still holding its breath -- and its judgment -- on Hitler and his National Socialist party.
Max Eisenstein stays in San Francisco to sell art while his close friend and partner Martin Schulse returns to German with his wife and children to find more art to sell. Their first letters are warm with remembrances and renewed vows of friendship; as Martin becomes enamored with the Nazi party, the friendship suffers. When Max's sister, an ex-lover of married Martin, is threatened in Germany, the friendship fails and vengeance begins.
This is a short work but gut-punching and back-chilling; it is also utterly mournful in its portrayal of not only friendship denied, but humanity forsaken and savagery triumphant.
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