In my conscious effort to become an American writer, I gave up my German literary models-Thomas Mann, Knut Hamsun, Karl Kraus. I read all the O. Henry Award-winning short-story collections of the past decade, Hemingway, Dos Passos and Faulkner. Richard Wright's work struck me with elemental force-he spoke from the gut in a way I wished I could speak, but that seemed utterly unobtainable to me at that time. Carl and I read Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay and Walt Whitman aloud to each other. The only German author I was not willing to give up was Bertolt Brecht, whose work on the emigration experience spoke to me directly and powerfully. I was determined that Carl must learn to appreciate Brecht as I did. I developed the ability to do simultaneous translation, reading in German and speaking in English, but I never did get Brecht's poetic quality right until much later, when I translated some of his work in earnest and with care, in writing...Brecht wrote eloquently about the cost paid by the writer forced to abandon his language.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "In my conscious effort to become an American writer, I gave up my German literary models-Thomas Mann, Knut Hamsun, Karl Kraus. I read all the O. Henry Award-winning short-story collections of the past decade, Hemingway, Dos Passos and Faulkner. Richard Wright's work struck me with elemental force-he spoke from the gut in a way I wished I could speak, but that seemed utterly unobtainable to me at that time. Carl and I read Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay and Walt Whitman aloud to each other. The only German author I was not willing to give up was Bertolt Brecht, whose work on the emigration experience spoke to me directly and powerfully. I was determined that Carl must learn to appreciate Brecht as I did. I developed the ability to do simultaneous translation, reading in German and speaking in English, but I never did get Brecht's poetic quality right until much later, when I translated some of his work in earnest and with care, in writing...Brecht wrote eloquently about the cost paid by the writer forced to abandon his language." in the context of "Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (2002)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.