What I call a chronicle, the Portuguese, Spanish and, I believe, Italians call a cronica and the French (along with many other Europeans) a feuilleton. And one of the great masters of the chronicle/cronica/feuilleton was Joseph Roth. In fact, translator Michael Hoffman has argued that Roth's masterpieces were not his novels (of which I am no fan) but his chronicles, which he took very seriously and are indeed excellent. They are collected in English translation under the titles "What I Saw" and "Report From a Parisian Paradise." In the subtitle of the latter his pieces are, typically, misnamed essays. But in a New York Times review of "What I Saw," the writer, who is none other than the novelist Jeffrey Eugenides, knows he is dealing with a different sort of animal. He writes: "A feuilleton is best described by what it isn't. It isn't news. It isn't the metro report. The opposite of an editorial, a feuilleton is descriptive, philosophical, meandering and poetically inclined. Though the word is French, the form reached its apogee in fin-de-siècle Vienna. An early master, Alfred Polgar, said, 'Life is too short for literature, too transitory for lingering description . . . too psychopathic for psychology, too fictitious for novels.' The feuilleton could never have prospered without the Viennese cafe, a place where the waiter brought over, along with your customary drink, your favorite newspaper. Roth wrote his first feuilletons in Vienna."
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