Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas Book

I just read a collection of short stories and novellas by a man who kept track of every orgasm he had. Well, at least for a while. I do not know when he started and do not know when he stopped (recording). How do you like them apples? 😮
• In addition to his plays and fiction, Schnitzler meticulously kept a diary from the age of 17 until two days before his death. The manuscript, which runs to almost 8,000 pages, is most notable for Schnitzler's casual descriptions of sexual conquests; he was often in relationships with several women at once, and for a period of some years he kept a record of every orgasm.

I first became acquainted with this author when I came across this book, "Five Great German Short Stories"….I think I had gotten it to read a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sandman, but before reading that wonderful story I came across Arthur Schnitzler's story, "Lieutenant Gustl". The editor who presented the five stories said this about Lieutenant Gustl:
• This work "is outstanding as perhaps the first important interior-monologue, or stream-of-consciousness, story in European literature, preceding precedes Ulysses by some 2 decades".

"Lieutenant Gustl"blew me away so I wanted to read more of this author's oeuvre. The first piece in this collection, "Night Games", did not disappoint. I almost felt like I started up again where I left off with "Lieutenant Gustl". But then the stories started to become a bit "same old, same old". My assertion seems to receive some justification from Schnitzler's own lips: In response to an interviewer who asked Schnitzler what he thought about the critical view that his works all seemed to treat the same subjects, he replied "I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?"

He and Sigmund Freud were friends'according to John Simon who wrote the foreword for this collection; "…Sigmund Freud, who subsequently stopped associating with him for fear'supreme compliment!'of falling too much under his influence."

Here are the pieces from this collection of his works:

Night Games
• 4.5 stars'One evening a man gets snookered into gambling and ends up owing an exorbitant sum to a shady character and must get the money to pay him back by a certain time the next day or he will be exposed to the military and will be shamed and that is not good and in such circumstances it is not uncommon for one to blow one's brains out….it's the only honorable thing to do. So what happens? Who does he ask for money? He asks his uncle who recently got married to a young woman who as it happens, he knows too in the Biblical sense and she was a poor wretch when they had sex but now she is not, and he gave her essentially a few coins for having sex which was a humiliation because she thought he loved her, and now she can/has the chance to exact her revenge. Does she? I shan't tell. But we learn all of his thoughts while he is gambling and thereafter until the end of the story. It's stream-of-consciousness (much like this review) where we are privy to all of his crazy thoughts and I love it…just like in Lieutenant Gustl! Every time somebody looks at him he comes to all sorts of crazy conclusions. Very funny…very enjoyable read.

The Dead Are Silent
• 3 stars'Franz and Frau Emma are carrying on an affair. One night while they are together they get in an accident on the road and he ends up dead. She leaves the scene of the accident and arrives back at her house. Her husband is none the wiser. But she feels super-guilty and in a nightmare cries out something she should not have cried out. Her husband wakes her up and asks what was that all about. Now what does she do?

Blind Geronimo and His Brother
• 3 stars'A blind man plays a guitar at the side of a road for coins from passer-bys and a passer-by gives the brother of the blind man a franc and then when the brother leaves, the passer-by goes back to the blind guitarist and tells him he shouldn't trust his brother because he gave the brother a 20-franc gold coin. The brother had previously told his blind brother the passer-by had given him a franc. Sewing the seeds of discord between the blind man and his brother.

A Farewell
• 3 stars'Albert is having an affair with a married woman Anna and she does not come at a regularly scheduled time for their assignation. She is indisposed'she has typhoid fever. 😮

The Second
• 4 stars'The second refers to dueling. The job of the seconds was to choose a place to duel and to decide whether or not the weapons were equal. The second witnesses one of the duelers being shot and subsequently dying, and has the unpleasant task of telling the dueller's wife that her husband, who was a philanderer, is dead. He does not get around to telling her because they end up making passionate love (sometimes such things happen you know)… Does he ever get around to telling her?

Baron von Leisenbohg's Destiny
• 3.5 stars'If you want to start a romantic relationship with Person A who is recently widowed because her husband, Person B, has died, and you know somebody, Person C, has already made love to Person A, tell Person C that before the husband (Person B) died, he laid down a curse that whoever makes love to his widowed wife will die a horrible death. Then just sit back and observe.😐

The Widower
• 3 stars'A man's wife was having an affair with his best friend. The wife dies. The best friend does not tell the grieving husband that he had an affair although the husband knows. What he does tell the husband is that he has been engaged to another women while he was having that affair. The husband defends the wife's honor by calling him a bastard. What a chivalrous thing to do!

Death of a Bachelor
• 2.5 stars'Three men come to the house of a bachelor who recently died because a servant of the deceased bachelor asked them to come. He gives them a letter the bachelor wrote before he died, in which he discloses that he had affairs with all three of their wives. Well! 😮

Dream Story
• 2 stars'80 page novella, involves a husband, Fridolin, who appears to have a fantastical night out on the town after his wife, Albertine, tells him she before their marriage would have had sex with him or any other man for that matter on a particular day, and he got pissed off I guess, and the same time he was having his fantastical night out on the town she was having a very long dream which ended in her watching him being nailed to a cross and she let it happen, and upon hearing this he got even more pissed off at her, and did I tell you how much I hate hearing other people's dreams'either in my life listening to others or reading in books about people having dreams. Warning: do not tell me about your dreams! Dreams are word salad…your brain retooling for the long day ahead. Damn I had to endure over 4 pages of this wife's dream!