Marianne Hauser
Marianne Hauser
Marianne Hauser (December 11, 1910-June 21,2006) was an American novelist, short story writer and journalist. She is best known for the novels Prince Ishmael(1963) about the legendary foundling Caspar Hauser and The Talking Room (1976), an experimental novel about a pregnant 13 year old being raised by lesbian parents. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Stories 1950 and The O'Henry Prize, 1948.
Biography
Marianne Hauser was born in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine.[1] Her mother and father ran a successful patent business. She had two older sisters, Dora and Eva. Dora died of meningitis in 1917. The Hausers lived in Strasbourg until the 1920s when they moved to Berlin. Hauser rebelled against the authoritarian German education system and wa s thrown out of high school. She eventually enrolled in classes at the University of Berlin law school, but didn't complete a degree. In 1932 she moved to Paris where she began writing. Hauser wrote short stories and celebrity interviews, small pieces she could place in Swiss newspapers. She wrote her first novel, Monique, in German. Monique, now lost, was published in 1934 in Vienna. Hauser became restless and wanted to travel. She decided that becoming a travel writer was the best way to see the world and contacted Otto Kleiber, the literary editor of the Swiss newspaper Basler National Zeitung, proposing that he send her Asia to write travel articles. Despite her young age he agreed to do so and in early 1934 she departed for Asia traveling through China, Taiwan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India, Japan and Hawaii, writing a weekly 1200 word feuilleton. She traveled cheaply, by third class rail, and met ordinary people, experiencing first hand colonial racism. It is during this period that she learned her craft, spending days revising a 3 or 4 page manuscript. In India she was the guest of the Maharaja of a small province located on the Kathiawar peninsula, which will be the setting of her second novel, Indisches Gaukelspiel (Shadow Play in India). She wrote the book in China, where she lived for a year, and completed it in Hawaii. Indisches Gaukelspiel was published in Austria by Zinnen Verlag. A French version was published in Paris by an underground press and is now lost. In 1937 she returned to Paris via the US and Kleiber, impressed by her American reporting sent her to New York. She soon severed ties with Europe and set about learning English. In the late thirties and early forties she made many connections in the New York publishing world and worked as a regular book reviewer for the New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, The Saturday Review of Literature and The New Republic, and wrote feature articles for Travel Magazine and Arts and Decoration. She also lectured about the threat of Nazism. Encouraged by her friend and Travel editor Coby Gilman she began work on her first English language novel, Dark Dominion (1947) based on her romantic relationship with a psychiatrist. She married Fred Kirchberger, a German émigré, concert pianist and music teacher in 1944. Their son, Michael Kirchberger, was born in Harlem in 1945.In 1948 they moved to North Carolina where Fred taught at Bennett College, an historically black women's college. [2] She published 9 novels (7 in English) and 2 collections of short stories, as well as book reviews for the New York Times, the Saturday Review of Literature, the New York Herald Tribune, the New Republic, the American Book Review and the Sewanee Review. Her short stories appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, the Carleton Miscellany, Botteghe Oscure, the Tiger's Eye and Fiction International. In 1951 they moved to Kirksville, Missouri, where Fred Kirchberger taught in the music department of the Northeast Missouri State College. In 1962 she and Fred Kirchberger divorced and she returned to live in New York City. From 1966-1978 she was a lecturer in the Department of English at Queens College in New York.[2] [1] She is best known for the novels Prince Ishmael (Stein and Day, 1963, Sun and Moon Classics, 1991) and The Talking Room (Fiction Collective, 1976).[3] She was known to her friends as Bear.[1] Her published works are:
Novels and Collections
Monique. Zurich: Ringier, 1934. (written in German, lost)
Indisches Gaukelspiel (Shadow Play in India). Vienna: Zinnen, 1937. (an edition was published by an underground press in French, but that is now lost. It has never been translated from German into English)
Dark Dominion. New York: Random House, 1947.
The Choir Invisible. New York: McDowel, Obolensky, 1958. Published in England under original title, The Living Shall Praise Thee. London: Gollancz, 1957.
A Lesson in Music. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.
Prince Ishmael. New York: Stein and Day, 1963. Reprinted, Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Classics Series, 1991.
The Talking Room. New York: Fiction Collective, 1976.
The Memoirs of the Late Mr. Ashley: An American Comedy. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1986. Trans. In German, Suhrfkamp, 1992.
Me and My Mom. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Classics, 1993.
Shootout with Father. Normal [Ill.]: FC2, 2002.
The Collected Short Fiction of Marianne Hauser. Normal [Ill.]: FC2 She also wrote and published a story for her granddaughter, Nell Charley, Little Butter Cup, the Happiest Bear in the World, with pictures by artist Joel Fisher and music composed by Fred Kirchberger, in 2003.
Uncollected Stories
“The Colonel’s Daughter.” The Tiger’s Eye 3 (March 1948): 21-34
“The Rubber Doll.” Mademoiselle (1951).
“The Sun and the Colonel’s Button.” Botteghe Oscure 12 (Fall 1953): 255-72. This is an early version of chapter 1 of Prince Ishmael, written in the third person.
Nonfiction
“The Indomitable Spirit of Alsace.” Travel 70 (1938): 28 – .
“Swan Song of the Middle Ages.” Travel 72 (1939).
“Pantomime in Blue and Silver.” Travel 72 (1938): 18 – .
“Bamboo, Symbol of Old China.” Travel. 73 (July 1939): 30.
“Successful Small Home That Suits the Environment.” Arts and Decoration 49 (February 1939): 18 – .
“Home Industries of the Swiss Peasants.” Arts and Decoration 50 (April 1939): 22–40.
“Marrakesh: Descent into Spring.” Harper’s Bazaar, 3054 (May 1966): 188-203.
“Mimoun of the Mellah.” Harper’s Bazaar, 3061 (December 1966): 114-82.
She published an autobiographical entry About My Life So Far in the Contemporary Author’s Series, Volume 11, Gale (Detroit), 1990.
Her interview with Larry McCaffery is published in Some Other Frequency.
Hauser’s papers are housed at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Critical Studies
Caserio, Robert L. Supreme Court Versus Homosexual Fiction South Atlantic Quarterly, 88.1 (1989):269-99
Dillon, Steven. Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies: Female Desire in 1940s US Culture. Albany: State Univ of New York Pr, 2015.
Friedman, Ellen G. and Miriam Fuchs, eds Breaking the Sequence: Women’s Experimental Fiction Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1989
Gregory, Sinda. Contemporary Novelists. Sixth. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 1996.
Harris, Andrea L. Other Sexes: Rewriting Difference from Woolf to Winterson Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000
Punday, Daniel. “Narrative Order and Representing the Body in ‘The Talking Room.’” Narrative 6, no. 1 (January 1, 1998): 31–48.
Ziareck, Ewa ‘Taking Chances’: The Feminine Genealogy of Style in Marianne Hauser’s The Talking Room Contemporary Literature, 33 (1992): 480-501
Obituaries
Federman. Raymond: "Marianne Hauser has Changed Tense." at: Jdeshell. “Now What: Marianne Hauser Changed Tense.” Now What, June 23, 2006. http://nowwhatblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/marianne-hauser-changed-tense.html.
Messerli, Douglas Greenintegerblog. “American Cultural Treasures - ACT: A WAR AGAINST DEATH.” American Cultural Treasures - ACT, February 4, 2010. http://americanculturaltreasures.blogspot.com/2010/02/war-against-death.html.
“Marianne Hauser--1910-2006.” American Book Review 27, no. 6 (October 2006).
Interviews
McCaffery, Larry. Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors. Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Mifflin, Margot. “Dreams and the Writer.” DREAMWORKS 2, no. 4 (1982): 255–59.
References
- ^ a b c "Biographical/Historical Note". A Guide to the Marianne Hauser Papers. Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
- ^ a b Hauser, Marianne (1990). Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co.
- ^ Punday, Daniel (January 1, 1998). "Narrative Order and Representing the Body in 'The Talking Room". Narrative. 6 (1): 31–48.
Gregory, Sinda. Contemporary Novelists. Sixth. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 1996.
Hauser, Marianne. Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. Vol. 11. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co, 1990.
Marianne Hauser Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
McCaffery, Larry. Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors. Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Links
http://www.library.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/hauser.htm
http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4410/Hauser-Marianne.html
http://americanculturaltreasures.blogspot.com/2010/02/war-against-death.html