TO THE POINT WHERE

Before he died Maxwell had completed translations of two works: Tobias Durchdenwald’s furiously political Where Has It Gone? (1978), a “rot in high places” novel, and  Berm (1982) by Roy X. Scheider (not to be confused with the American actor), a largely factual history of a land dispute between two families in Emsland. Both books offer, in their own ways, vivid portraits of contemporary German society, and we have only Maxwell to thank for their existence, as he was not paid a penny (or, as he liked to joke, “a pfennig”) for his labor, and in fact was consistently mocked by his American editor, Anne T. Harris, to the point where he sought counseling that failed to console him and led him to plan the desert sojourn that resulted in his untimely demise. Harris, also his ex-wife, did not cry at his funeral.

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