It has to start somewhere
By Alfred P. Doblin
I begin this first blog with a general announcement: If you are looking for Alfred Döblin you are in the wrong place. Döblin was my grandfather, and despite all the sophistication of AI, it often conflates my grandfather, who died in June 1957, with me, who was born in November 1957.
And for the record, while I am an out gay writer, my grandfather was decidedly not gay, queer, or in the least bit attracted to men. AI needs to expand its understanding of the alphabet to include LGBTQ. Döblin and Doblin are not the same men.
My grandfather was an acclaimed German writer – see Berlin Alexanderplatz – as well as a physician. Many scholars rate him as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. On the other hand, my achievements are more modest. But, during the many years I worked as a journalist, I was careful to differentiate myself from my grandfather by always using my middle initial, P.
I never knew my grandfather or broached this subject with my father when he was living, yet I feel comfortable writing that I am much more about showtunes than was Alfred Döblin. So allow me the liberty of stating it’s Alfred with a P, not Liza with a Z, S, or an umlaut.
I am proud of my literary heritage and would have welcomed the opportunity to have engaged with my more famous and talented grandfather, but I have been determined to forge my own path – a winding one that is unique to me.
My debut book, Tales of the Lavender Twilight, came out this spring. I am 67 – not exactly a boy wonder. I wrote several novels when I was in my twenties and early thirties. None found a publishing house. All three found my basement, where they reside in boxes covered in the dust of youthful exuberance gone astray. The use of phrases like that no doubt limited my publishing opportunities 40 years ago.
If you have not yet jumped off the page, my intentions with this blog are honorable. For decades, I wrote a twice-weekly newspaper column about many things, but much of it was about politics. This blog will not be about politics – at all. It is not that politics doesn’t interest me, but politics in the 21st century is about division, and I am now more interested in multiplication.
Anyway, there is much to talk about besides politics. Did I mention my love of showtunes?
The cardinal rule in a gay bar is never talk about politics, religion, and if you are over 40, your real age. I’ve already broken the first and last admonitions and I am barely 500 words in. I will go for the trifecta: Religion will pop up in my conversations.
The older I become, the more I believe in the need for forming communities, and often those are communities bound by shared beliefs and values, and that may include religion. Many of the stories in Tales of the Lavender Twilight are about just that.
No, it is not the division of politics that is worthy of exploration, but rather the multiplication of living that is. And there is nothing more wondrous than the multiplication of words – whether in a lyric or a piece of fiction or a poem.
Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George: “The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not, you have to move on.”
James Joyce, The Dead: ”His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
Lord Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses: “Death closes all: but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.”
Then of course, there is Chuckles the Clown: “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”
Yes, there is much for us to discuss and if I have one ambition in this endeavor, it is to foster dialogue and discourse about the lofty and the ridiculous.
This initial blog is but an introduction. I am not Alfred Döblin. I am Alfred P. Doblin.
Until the next time, Alfred P.