In the Spanish-tiled lobby of the Faust Hotel, a large portrait of a bearded man with a pronounced mustache, wearing 19th century military armor, hangs on the western wall. He’s holding a helmet in his right hand. Aside from the baby grand piano against the eastern wall, with a tiny sign warning that unless you’re Mozart, please refrain from playing, this is the most noticeable decoration greeting hotel visitors. No plaque indicates who this mustached man might be, though it’s admittedly unusual to see a European military man given prominence in a Central Texas spot rather than, say, a Texan.
I was first introduced to the Faust Hotel during the spring of 2019, before my debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, was released. One of the events on a little pre-publication tour was at a bookseller conference in a hotel I’d never heard of located in New Braunfels. When I learned of the ominously named Faust Hotel, I was immediately intrigued. Like other voracious readers, I have a running list of classic literary works I’ve always wanted to consume but haven’t found the time for. The tragic play in two parts commonly known in the Anglophone world as Faust, by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is one of them.
Faust. Every time I hear that name, which isn’t common where I live, in Austin, I think of what anybody else who hasn’t read his masterpiece but is familiar with the themes therein
