Bye Bye Braverman called him "The Joyce of Brighton Beach," suggesting by analogy a comparison between Markfield and this quintessentially Jewish neighborhood and the essential literary synergy between James Joyce and his native Dublin, but also suggesting other connections. The structure of Markfield's "To an Early Grave", and therefore of the movie based upon it, is to some extent a comic parallel of Joyce's novel "Ulysses", specifically "Episode 6" (which is commonly known as the "Hades" chapter) where protagonist Leopold Bloom and three friends travel in a carriage to attend the funeral of Patrick "Paddy" Dignam who has died in a drunken stupor.
Mephisto (novel) Mephisto (novel) Mephisto – Novel of a Career is the sixth novel by Klaus Mann, which was published in 1936 whilst he was in exile in Amsterdam. It was published for the first time in Germany in the East Berlin Aufbau-Verlag in 1956. This novel (a thinly disguised portrait of the actor Gustaf Gründgens), the Tchaikovsky novel "Symphonie Pathétique", and the emigrant novel "Der Vulkan" are Klaus Mann's three most famous novels. An award-winning 1981 movie was based on Mann's novel. The novel adapts the Mephistopheles/Dr Faustus theme by having the main character Hendrik Höfgen abandon his conscience and continue