Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink (Dark Master Series)
I would have to say that book is pretty good. Obviously it was good enough that I devoured it in under 24 hours, not loosing my interest at any point.
The early life of Meyrink there is very little to go on so we only get some brief facts about that part of his life. It is unfortunate that Meyrink didn’t keep many of his personal letters he may have received. Despite how social he was he was still very private.
The one major problem I did see in this biography was more of a missed opportunity. Meyrink was heavily into the occult, and the organizations that were practicing it. Although the author did touch on a fair bit of things he could of done so much more in this area. Considering that letters from these groups were one of the few things Meyrink did preserve, there has to be a great deal of information then to be mined from them. I personally would of loved to have seen more of this aspect of his life than some other things in the book.
I did enjoy the amount of the book dedicated to talking about his short stories and novels. Since we didn’t get enough on his occult subjects I will take this instead.
I would like, hope, that one day soon one of the few biographies that are extant in other languages will be one day translated to compare with this one. But until that time we will simply have to be satisfied with this. To be honest it is far more information than we can find on the internet at the current time.
I know I will refer back to this volume many times in the future. There are several quotes of his in there that have peaked my interest. Also while I am reading more of his novels it will be interesting to go back and compare some of what Mr. Mitchell had to say about them. So if you enjoy his works definitely go and check it out, Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink (Dark Master Series)
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