Wiener Schnitzel

TWILIGHT ON THE DANUBE--F. C. Weiskopf--Knopf ($3).

"Minnow, little Minnow, don't cry!" murmured Alexander Reither, whose "cream-colored pique vest . . . revealed . . . the odd attractiveness that. . . made him a notorious breaker of hearts." "Loneliness," he assured Minnow, "is something you need not be afraid of! Not with your figure!" Minnow pocketed faithless Lover Reither's generous parting check, and burst into tears. "Oh, Alexander. . . .Oh, my darling, my Only. . . . Life is like a railway platform.... Au revoir, my dear!"

Worldly, amorous, 56-year-old Publisher Reither is the principal character in Czech-born F. C. Weiskopf's novel about Prague on the eve of World War I. When Reither came home from parting with Minnow, he found his household just the way it always was. His sister, the Honorable Caroline von Wrbata-Treuenfels, was coldly examining a roast goose's wingbone through her lorgnette. Son Max Egon was at work on his great essay: Life, a Disease of Our Planet. Son-in-law Dr. Rankl, who looked like "a set of false teeth," was sipping coffee with whipped cream and reciting snatches of patriotic poetry to his wife. She dreamed of passion when not stuffing herself with lush pastry. Grandson Franz-Ferdinand was goggling at a peep show entitled: "For Men Only . . . Piquant Photographs." Granddaughters Wally and Adrienne were in the boudoir, shining up their eyes with belladonna. In short, the Austrian Empire was on its last legs.

Author Weiskopf packs into his novel a host of characters whose stumbling, often shady, approach to life neatly matches Austria's equally stumbling and shady progress into war. Twilight on the Danube glimmers romantically with bluebearded armament manufacturers, handsome intelligence officers, youthful idealists, and tea-party gargle about actresses and the disturbed condition of Balkan affairs. By the time the fatal shot has been fired at Sarajevo, Publisher Reither has found and lost his last and greatest love, and his entire family have fallen victims to their own dreams and to the Empire's infectious blend of sloppiness and pride. The setting is mostly Prague, but Twilight on the Danube is pretty much the same old wiener schnitzel so dear to Central European refugee writers.

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