Weights and Measures

Starred review from November 1, 2024

Roth's 1937 novella reveals the evanescent beauty and mystery of a fallen world where nothing is quite on the level. Abruptly transported from his regimented military life to a loveless marriage and a civil service sinecure as Inspector of Weights and Measures in Zlotogrod, a rough and rowdy Austro-Hungarian outpost on the Russian border, upright Anselm Eibensch�tz is befuddled and ultimately overmastered by a flood tide of casual turpitude that swiftly invades his own home. Filled with misgivings as he navigates scheming underlings, a hostile citizenry, and the denizens who congregate at a sleazy tavern on the edge of town, the inspector's inevitable confrontation with the notorious criminal Jadlowker proves less problematic than his infatuation with the outlaw's sometime lover, the prepossessing Euphemia. Eibensch�tz is a figure of huge pathos, portrayed with wry insouciance by a disillusioned yet sympathetic narrator who humbly observes, "Most people depart this world without having acquired so much as a grain of truth about themselves. Possibly they acquire it in the next world." VERDICT Roth's psychological insight and complex moral vision, deftly captured in David Le Vay's graceful 1982 translation, are distilled in this pitiable, poetic tragedy, which proceeds with the grim logic and economy of a fairy tale.

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