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Frederick Kohner (1905–1986)

Autor von April entdeckt die Männer

22 Werke 377 Mitglieder 9 Rezensionen

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Beinhaltet den Namen: Frederick Kohner

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Werke von Frederick Kohner

April entdeckt die Männer (1957) 203 Exemplare
Hanna and Walter: A Love Story (1864) 64 Exemplare
Gidget [1959 film] (1993) — Original book — 17 Exemplare
April entdeckt die Ehe (1968) 14 Exemplare
April entdeckt Hawaii (1961) 12 Exemplare
April entdeckt Paris (1966) 10 Exemplare
April entdeckt die Liebe (1959) 9 Exemplare
April entdeckt Rom (1963) 7 Exemplare
April entdeckt sich selbst (1965) 7 Exemplare
Kiki of Montparnasse (1967) 6 Exemplare
April und ihre Affären (1963) 6 Exemplare
the one and only Gidget (1964) 3 Exemplare
Jungfernreise (1974) 2 Exemplare

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I'm amazed at how much I liked this book. The new edition's forward by Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, who was the real-life Gidget, puts the story in perspective.

Kathy Kohner was a petite (less than 5 feet tall) perky Jewish girl who became obsessed with surfing back in the days before the Beach Boys started singing about it, before most of America had even heard of the sport. Her actual photo was used on the original book cover and again on the new edition. In the novel, Gidget remains a petite brunette, but I can't recall any mention of being Jewish. (She became a blond in the movie as played by Sandra Dee.) Gidget is not interested in dating, at least not with her high school peers, and she is something of a tomboy. But she also wishes that her "bosom" was bigger. She's on the edge of discovering her sexuality at age 15 and is attracted to the college guys who spend the summer surfing at Malibu, especially one guy named Moondoggie. She also befriends the leader of the group, an older man called the great Kahoona who is a non-collegiate full-time beach bum, and quite proud of it.

With spunk and determination, Gidget ingratiates herself into the group of surfers, who reluctantly - but protectively - accept her as something of a mascot. There's a fascinating tug-of-war between Gidget's growing attraction for Moondoggie and the surfing group's determination to keep hands off.

Gidget is a rebel of the 1950s. She lies to her parents and sneaks out of the house. And what's weird is that all this little rebel wants to do is surf (which was considered a boy's sport) and get pinned (frat pin, that is) by Moondoggie. How it all plays out is well worth the very short read.

An interesting dimension of the story is that the author, Frederick Kohner, was writing the novel about his own daughter with her cooperation - and her actual diaries. Some people will get creeped out that a father was creating a character of his own daughter and writing about her sexuality and her attraction for an older guy. As a writer and father myself, I admit to some queasiness, or at least some curiosity, about the situation. Fred Kohner was a professional writer, a good one, who recognized that the sexuality was the essential part of the story. He also had a PhD from the University of Vienna, the training ground of Sigmund Freud. Kathy Kohner in later life seems to have had no problem with what her father wrote and is in fact quite proud of her role - and interestingly, she was always attracted to professors and eventually married one. Analyze that, if you wish.
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JoeCottonwood | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 31, 2013 |
A sequel to the innocently charming original surfer-girl novel Gidget. This one's mostly about Gidget's father, who isn't as interesting or endearing as his daughter. He's a befuddled 1950s-era dad on a ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho where his daughter Franzie (formerly known as Gidget) is a waitress. The great Kahoona, who was the elder surf-guru of Malibu in the previous novel, comes to the ski slopes as well and wins the heart of Franzie.

The original Gidget was based on true events, but this sequel is probably less so. The fictional Franzie is on leave from Oregon State College, which is where the actual Franzie started college. Beyond that, the story feels "made up" and not in a realistic way. Real life, of course, can seem utterly unrealistic; but this story involves a gangster dame with a million dollars in cash who is pursued by FBI agents while attempting to seduce both Franzie's father and the great Kahoona.

Franzie, a 17-year-old college kid, and the great Kahoona, a 30-something surf/ski bum dropout, would be an interesting love story with a commentary on 1950ish materialism and the straight culture (as in the original Gidget), but neither character is fleshed out here. Their story remains secondary to the bumbling father's desperate attempts to keep them apart.

Kohner's a likable writer, and the Gidget meme is enough to keep the reader interested. Three stars for that.
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JoeCottonwood | Mar 31, 2013 |
It's a memoir of Paris in the 1920's and a coming-of-age of Frederick Kohner, author of Gidget. Like all memoirs, you can't take everything as literal fact. Kohner admits: "While the events relating to Kiki are as true as memory will serve me, I have made some necessary changes in the description of persons other than Kiki and in the details of some events."

Fact or fiction, the book is a great description of bohemian Paris, and not a totally flattering one. It certainly has the ring of truth. The author is suitably self-deprecating. He was an outsider, a naive young man, a virgin, a student at the Sorbonne who says, "I was the product of a staid middle-class background, and my only claim to 'Bohemianism' was the ironic fact that Bohemia was my native land."

Kiki, otherwise known as Alice Prin, befriends him. He falls head over heels in love and follows her like a puppy through bars, cafes, bordellos and exotic parties until at last... Well, I won't spoil it.

I came to this book not out of interest in Paris or Kiki but because I'm strangely fascinated by the author Frederick Kohner, a Czechoslovakian Jew with a PhD from the University of Vienna who fled Europe before World War Two. He became a Hollywood screenwriter and the real-life father of the real-life Gidget. I'm simply drawn to the potential psychological train wreck of a father, educated in the heartland of Sigmund Freud, writing a series of novels about the blossoming sexuality of a character inspired by his own daughter. Apparently, the train never ran off the tracks.

This book of course is not about Gidget but is very much about the father's attraction to Kiki, a remarkably liberated woman who rose from poverty to relative fame on the warmth of her spirit, the beauty of her face, and the generosity of her body. I'm happy to have learned about her.

There are similarities between Kiki and Gidget. In a man's world, Kiki mastered the Parisian world of art (and certain artists) the way Gidget mastered the Malibu world of surf (and certain surfers). With 30 years separation Frederick Kohner watched them both — and wrote about their lives. Both Kiki and the fictional Gidget were prolific in their loves. Unlike Kiki, Gidget throughout the original novel and seven sequels comes close, again and again, but remains chaste.

In one of the sequels Kohler may have actually mixed Kiki and Gidget together. It's called Gidget Goes Parisienne. After the 1920's, Kiki's Paris — and Kiki's life — turned dark. I'm almost afraid to find out what happens to Gidget in the Paris of her father's imagination. But of course I'll check it out.
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JoeCottonwood | Mar 31, 2013 |
This is pleasant: four stories, four women remembered by Frederick Kohner from his youth in Bohemia and then in Paris. Written in the 1970s, he is recalling events of the 1920s. It is fiction, but it is told as autobiography and matches many of the details of his actual life. With modesty and without much conquest, our writer was as he describes himself a "sensual" youth but mostly a frustrated one.

The reading is easy; the tales, engaging. The women were older, or at least more worldly, than the teenage author. Fraulein Hilde was his nanny, a simple country lass. Claudia was a fellow student but also a Countess with a treacherous older brother. Resi was a prostitute struggling in poverty and mental illness. Irina was a White Russian in Paris, mysterious, passionate, and as she said, "complicated."

He's a sweet kid. And very earnest. These are tales of discovery as young Kohner (or his fictional counterpart) falls in love with each woman in succession, struggling to understand the secrets that, it seems, every woman withholds. In the arc of each love affair he finds joy, sadness, and ultimately gains wisdom. He's growing up. My only complaint is that as each story ends, I understand how Kohner feels but lack a full picture of the woman.

The book reminds me of the rowdy paperbacks my father used to buy (and I used to read) in the 1950s. If Kohner had written it then, it would have been published as a 35-cent paperback with an eye-popping cover of four half-naked dames, and it would have sold a million copies. By the early 1970s when apparently this was written, we'd been through Henry Miller and a sexual revolution that must have made these memoirs seem tame and old-fashioned. They weren't published until 2011. Now, perhaps, people can enjoy them as a bit of history and - yes - a bit of sensual pleasure.
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JoeCottonwood | Mar 31, 2013 |

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Werke
22
Mitglieder
377
Beliebtheit
#64,011
Bewertung
½ 3.7
Rezensionen
9
ISBNs
27
Sprachen
4

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