Ludwig Lewisohn is largely forgotten. He was a novelist, and an occasional writer of schlock when it came time to pay the bills. (hence the image) In this autobiographical work he cleaves the gap between the two. He was one of the founders of Brandeis University. This work Up Steam, feels somewhat dated with it's ornate Victorian language. But in certain places he compels his feelings with great clarity.Specifically, I like the way he breaks up the times of his work shift; spelling out his hours both before and after his lunch break. It just emphasizes his discomfort in just being there. It says that he is literally counting the hours without resorting to the idiom. Being there pains him, everything there is ugly to him, the job repulses him. Outstanding.
"I can, at least, see the sun and think my own thoughts. And there arises in me the memory of that large, scientifically clean building filled with the hum of the engine that drove the monotype machine and with the acrid odor of fresh print. A sharp electric light burned over my desk from eight-thirty to twelve-thirty and from one-thirty to five-thirty, and next to me stood all day a long, loose fellow whose small, pointed head seemed fairly to dangle and tremble, like an ugly and noxious flower, at the end of his scrawny neck."When he wanted to he could drop the flowery language. In 1933, he said that "...the entire Nazi movement is in fact and by certain aspects of its avowed ideology drenched through and through with homo-erotic feeling and practice."
