From Expat to Wahlberliner: Berlin as a Place of Work for English-Language Writers

Thursday, 11 May 2017, 8:30 pm

Kevin McAleer reads from his manuscript “Errol Flynn: A Life in Verse (1909-1959)”
Reading & Discussion - Moderation: Carey Harrison

Errol Flynn had everything – beauty, wit, charm, intelligence, talent, charisma, money, and a huge following of devoted fans and willing women. He was the classic image of a swashbuckling hero and romantic lover. But somewhere along the path to movie immortality he embarked on a destructive lifestyle that wrecked his career and ultimately killed him. Why did it happen? What were the forces at work in this complex man whose own father regarded him as an “enigma”?

Kevin McAleer is not the first author to wend his way through the maze of myth and falsehood that comprises Flynn’s legend, but no one has yet attempted a book-length narrative of his life in verse. Flynn’s amanuensis Earl Conrad called him “one of the most poetic men I have ever met,” and it is McAleer’s view that other accounts of Flynn have failed to capture his verve and essential spirit, which had greater affinity to an age of high-flown lyricism than to our own prosaic times. Flynn himself was fond of claiming that he’d been born into the wrong century, so McAleer is taking him at his word and recounting his saga in the same way as did English balladeers the tale of Robin Hood – Flynn’s most memorable screen incarnation.

Employing the mock-epic ottava rima stanza, Kevin McAleer reads from the manuscript of his finally completed decade-long project “Errol Flynn: A Life in Verse (1909-1959).”

Kevin McAleer was born in Santa Monica, California in 1961. He received his doctorate in history from the University of California and now lives in Berlin where he works as a writer and translator. His short stories have been published both in American magazines as well as in the German satire magazine Titanic, in the taz and in TIP magazine. He is co-author of the story collection ZWEI AMERIKANER IM DEUTSCHEN EXIL (Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1998; reissued by the KiWi Bibliothek 2016), author of the award-winning play BOMBAY BY THE SPREE (English Theatre Berlin 2010), the novels SURFERBOY (English by Wrecking Ball Press 2008; German by Mare Verlag 2015) and BERLIN TANGO (German by Klak Verlag 2016) as well as co-editor of the two-volume work EVERYMAN IN EUROPE: ESSAYS IN SOCIAL HISTORY (Prentice-Hall 1990) and author of the historical monograph DUELING: THE CULT OF HONOR IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE GERMANY (Princeton University Press 1994; reissued by the Princeton Legacy Library 2014) which was honored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as one of their “Books of the Year.”

Carey Harrison is an English novelist and dramatist. He was born in 1944 in London to actors Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer and raised in Los Angeles and New York where he attended the Lycée Français. He is the author of forty stage plays and sixteen novels. Harrison’s most recent novels Justice and Who Was That Lady? have been acclaimed by readers and both reached No.1 on the Amazon Contemporary Fiction downloads list. His latest novel How to Push Through was published in 2016. Harrison has received numerous grants from the UK Arts Council and his prizes include the Sony Radio Academy Award, the Giles Cooper Award, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Play, and the Best Play award from the Berlin Akademie der Künste as well as two nominations (2005 and 2007) for the Pushcart Prize for Journalism. His work has been translated into thirteen languages. He himself has published translations from French, Italian, German and Spanish authors, and there have been performances of his translations from the works of Pirandello, Goldoni, Feydeau and Gert Hofmann; most recently he published “20 Poems” from the Arabic of Firas Sulaiman, in Banipal, the UK magazine of contemporary Arabic writing. Harrison’s essays have appeared in magazines as diverse as New Politics, a journal of socialist thought, and Chronicles, a paleoconservative magazine of American culture; he has also been a book reviewer for numerous newspapers and journals. A new opera based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, set to music by Nolan Gasser and with a libretto by Harrison, was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera House and premiered in March 2013, playing to sold-out audiences; three further opera companies are currently planning productions of the opera. Harrison lives in upstate New York with his wife, the artist Claire Lambe, and is Professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is presently in the German capital as a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

From Expat to Wahlberliner: Berlin as a Place of Work for English-Language Writers

This series of readings in English, presented by the Literary Salon Britta Gansebohm, constitutes a bridge between the English-language and German literary scene in Berlin. The concept of a reading in a setting reminiscent of a spacious and comfortable living room where all are welcome, with the ensuing discussion also including the audience, was an absolutely new idea in May 1995 when Der Literarische Salon was established. This openness is being expanded through the series “From Expat to Wahlberliner.” The target audience of this series comprises Berliners who hail from a wide variety of countries but speak English and little or no German. The series seeks to make a contribution to international understanding and successful coexistence in Berlin by having resident authors present their colleagues to the public. In one instance the pairing is a reciprocal one: The L.A. writer and Berliner-by-choice Kevin McAleer will be moderating the reading of novelist/playwright Carey Harrison, and on another evening Kevin’s presentation of his mock-epic poem on the life of movie star Errol Flynn will be moderated by Mr. Harrison, whose parents were the actors Lilli Palmer and Rex Harrison and through whom Mr. Harrison, this scion of Hollywood’s Golden Age, once encountered the subject of Kevin’s book-length poem. It is through Lilli Palmer that Carey Harrison also has a special relationship to Berlin, his mother having spent her youth in the city before fleeing from the Nazis to Paris and eventually London. The discussions which follow the readings will treat of such questions as: What impact does life in the German capital have on an author’s writing? Does life in Berlin help to idealize or deflate an author’s view of their homeland? How do expats experience this city along with its inhabitants and Germany in general? What makes Berlin such a special place for writers? How has the city changed for the expats since their arrival? What is their relationship to the German language? Can language also be a kind of homeland? How do Berliners-by-choice define the very word “homeland”?

This series is sponsored by the Senate of Berlin (Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa).
Conceptual assistance and the series title from Julia Eve Föll.

PLACE: The Literary Salon in the Z-Bar, Bergstraße 2, 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Admission: 7 euros/ reduced rate 5 euros (for holders of Berlin identity cards & students)

Reservations can be made at [email protected] or by telephone at 0175 52 70 777.

Further information available at www.salonkultur.de und Facebook: Der Literarische Salon – das Original