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Portrait of a Danish conman : Otto Stein - framed within the life and novels of his creator, Jacob Paludan / Frantz Leander Hansen ; translated from Danish by Gaye Kynoch.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Hansen, Frantz Leander, 1956- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Swindlers and swindling.
- Paludan, Jacob, 1896-1975--Criticism and interpretation.
- Paludan, Jacob.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (158 pages)
- Place of Publication:
- Eastbourne : Sussex Academic Press, [2021]
- Summary:
- Frantz Leander Hansen has written a brilliant book about Otto Stein (Martin Zerlang, University of Copenhagen, reviewing the Danish edition in Scandinavian Studies, University of Illinois Press, Vol. 92, No. 2).Jacob Paludan's Danish classic novel Jørgen Stein (1933) includes the subordinate character Otto Stein, a man about town in the roaring 1920s and a promising barrister. Involvement in small-time crime leads to large-scale confidence trickery which ends in decline, fall and suicide. This literary portrait of an epoch of deceit and fraud as a cultural phenomenon brings to the fore the economics and criminal psychology of the period. Otto Stein is viewed as an ultra-topical figure of our time, someone whose impact on the modern world is important and felt within the spheres of literature, philosophy, jurisprudence, and criminal investigation of contemporary fraudulent behaviour. Inquiry focuses on the path that leads to his suicide. Literary sources of inspiration that contributed to the moulding of the character of Otto Stein are investigated, especially those of Herman Bang, Thomas Mann and Fjodor Dostojevskij. Relevant are Jacob Paludan's other five novels that were published prior to Jørgen Stein, where seeds to Otto's character are sown. Critical to understanding the novel and the character is the scam that deprived Paludan of a financial inheritance. Herewith a superb novelistic example of how a writer merges the historical with the contemporary to reveal a psychology of exploitation dangerously meaningful to us all.
- Contents:
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The Cover Illustration
- The Danish Author, Jacob Paludan
- Part I: Routes to the Marsh Pool
- Otto's final step
- Dinner and death
- Kinships
- Familial motivation
- The lost present day
- Boundless ambition
- Deceit at the core - Gatsby and Grünlich
- Fraternal choices
- Implicit faith
- Otto and the narrator
- Angel from the past
- Princess of poverty
- Otto's queen
- The future as guarantor
- The price of generosity
- Big spender
- The innocent conman
- The guilty client
- Full-blown swindle
- The screw tightens
- Advocate of darkness
- Destructiveness and joie de vivre
- Around the clock
- Self-preservation and self-image
- The mask drops
- King and bull
- The route to suicide
- The ambivalence of escape
- Sleuths
- The final night
- Death before normalisation and punishment
- Otto and Alberti
- Clarifications in the hinterland
- Transit
- Summing up
- Otto: Rival and role model
- Repercussions
- From fluff to world-class
- Part II: Genesis of Otto in JacobPaludan's Novels
- The parrot and the mites
- Suicide fish
- The end of winter life
- Face to face
- Enterprising women
- Rounding off
- Part III: Otto's Biographical Genesis
- Fatherly favouritism
- On the sidelines
- Freedom of thought en plein air
- A man of many talents
- The Royal Oak
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Back Cover.
- Notes:
- Description based on print version record.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 1-78284-711-1
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