Man blieb in Haar, bis man sich ausgetobt hatte, bis man ausgebrannt war, entleert von der Wut seines Innern. Dann konnte man gehen, erloschen und hohl; und ausgetrocknet wie man war, mußte man sich eines Tages erneut volltrinken. Sich wieder in den Hund verwandeln, der zu Gott heult...

Wolfgang Hilbig: Das Provisorium S. 49

habe ich mir beim Lesen des 12. Kapitels von Wolfgang Herrndorf's In Plüschgewittern gedacht. Da geht es um ein Besäufnis, das auf über 20 Seiten ausführlich beschrieben wird. Ok, das ist nur ein Roman, eine Fiktion. Aber wenn ich meine Abstürze so detailliert in Erinnerung behalten hätte und sie dann hätte so literarisch umsetzen können, dann wäre ich wahrscheinlich noch viel öfter abgestürzt.

Die Einleitung ist jetzt irgendwie etwas verunglückt. Eigentlich wollte ich nämlich mit Jochen aus Berlin und Andreas aus Frankfurt in den Jubelchor für dieses Buch einstimmen. Allein schon der Titel. In Stahlgewittern, Ernst Jünger's Verklärung des Krieges als Rausch wird in der Metaphorik ironisch überboten. Wie bereits angesprochen, geht es auch hier um Rausch. Der Alkohol ist gewissermaßen das Schmiermittel für eine road story zwischen Würzburg, Hamburg und Berlin, die angetrieben wird von verschiedenen Frauen, in die der Erzähler sich entweder verliebt oder nicht verliebt. Das Ganze wird locker-flockig erzählt, wobei es mir aufgefallen ist, dass der Autor (Baujahr 65) eher meiner Generation angehört als der der jüngeren Popliteraten wie Stuckrad-Barre und Illies. Moden und Zeitgeist sind nur das Dekor für eine Geschichte, die um essentiellere Dinge kreist. In einem Satz: es geht weniger um Artifizielles als um Authentisches.

In Plüschgewittern ist ein Buch, das ich selbst gerne geschrieben hätte. So leicht und flüssig dahinplätschernd und gleichzeitig so voller Witz und gelegentlich sogar tiefsinnig ohne allerdings je prätentiös zu sein. Ein kurzer Ausschnitt:

Today was the last day of the biggest book fair in the world for the general public and Catherine insisted in going there. So we went.

Actually I never really understood what the point of this book fair was. For the private visitor I mean. There are many books you can flick through like in a bookshop. The disadvantage though is that you usually can't buy them. OK, there are much more books than in probably any bookshop of the world, in all different languages ranging from German, English, French, Arabic, Chinese and God knows which exotic language. But why is this thing called a fair if the private visitor cannot exchange his cash against the books? I guess the more appropriate name for this event would be exhibition but probably out of traditional reasons and the fact that it actually is a market place but only for authors, booksellers and publishing houses it is still called a fair.

Anyways we spent about six hours there and I calculated that if I saw one book cover every ten seconds (which is a reasonable estimate) in total I would have looked at 2,000 of those covers. And I have to admit that I do not remember one of them.

In addition to the books there are readings of them (mostly by the authors), the authors sign their books and there are interviews. You also can get demo CD-ROMs, prospectus, gadgets etc. So in the end I left the fairground with a bag with a selection of those and the ticket price wasn't spend for nothing.

The people working at the stands are usually very helpful but not always competent. In a side alley of the enormous hall 8 which was mainly reserved for English books there was a Croatian stand selling maps for children (I am looking for a birthday present for my seven year old nephew). Rather nice maps with lots of pictures of the sights of the different cities and regions. Obviously there were no maps left to buy when I arrived. And when I asked the guy at the stand where those maps were published in Germany he couldn't tell me. All he knew was that the maps were translated in 24 languages and that the company was absolutely new and still hadn't got a website. Looking at one of those maps in detail I found out about the German publisher. Though the maps were quite original I fear that the company will not survive for very long with a similar marketing policy.

I checked two books about music at the fair. The first one was brand-new and the translation was called Der Beatles Sound. A book by Andy Babiuk, an American musician and consultant of the Rockn & Roll Hall of Fame. A nicely layouted big format hardcover on the Beatles and the instruments and recording techniques they used throughout their career. There were some interesting facts in there. I recall that it was mentioned that Lennon learnt a special guitar picking technique from Donovan when they were in India with the Maharishi. A technique he later used on Across the Universe. For 50 € this book would be a rather nice Christmas present.

I also read a couple of pages of Johnny Rogan's book on The Smiths called Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance. The bits I read were rather underwhelming but I liked the story about Panic, the most popular Smiths song. Morrissey wrote the lyrics after he had heard a BBC radio 1 DJ pass a Wham! song on the radio right after the news on the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 which he found rather inappropriate. The funny thing is that the same DJ who didn't use to play The Smiths really liked the song and apparently passed the record several times on air. Remember the chorus goes Hang the DJ. Hang the DJ. Hang the DJ.

That might be a strange ending of this post but I can't think of a better one.

Le Livre des Illusions I got an interesting comment from Stuart Pilkington, a fan of the writings of Paul Auster who is responsible for the excellent Paul Auster (The Definitive Website) which is appropriately enough based in the UK: Here's something from my FAQ page for you: "I e-mailed Paul Auster's assistant and she said "Yes--The Book of Illusions is absolutely wonderful. But I have no idea why it came out earlier in those countries." So I e-mailed his French publishers, Actes-Sud, and they said "Indeed, "The Book of illusions" has been published in France before its coming out in USA and GB. In fact, Actes Sud has a very close contact to Paul Auster as the French echo of his work has highly contributed to his international success. Our editorial direction got the manuscript directly from the author without having to wait for its publication in English language. Therefore, the schedule of each publishing house, from one side or another of the Atlantic or the Channel, are completly independent - and we were so enthusiastic about this new novel that we were especially eager to offer it to our readers as soon as possible!"" Cheers Stuart

L'Amour Etre Le premier venu. René Char

Site of the day Fifty word fiction is a wonderful subpage of the excellent Tangents website ("The home of Un-Popular Culture on the World Wide Web.") which centers around indie and other pop music. The idea is simple. Write a story in fifty words. That is enough for a small plot and a surprise ending. Compact prose for short attention span people like me. I'd love to write one myself soon. The last mini story is Loop by Ben White: LOOP "You mean it goes around in a loop?" "Exactly right, a loop, yes." I looked around the room. It was very small and very bare. "There's no way out." "None at all. We're stuck doing the same thing over and over again." "You mean it goes around in a loop?"

Oh! Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it. We went to see Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde at the English Theater in Frankfurt (website not really up-to-date) last night. They had some financial problems recently which is not surprising considering that they solely live on sponsors and entrance fees and do not receive any public funding. Like Holzmann, the tumbling Frankfurt construction giant they somehow raised the funds but unlike Holzmann they used the money for something that pleased me a lot. A great performance of a great piece on a woman who succeeds in preventing her daughter from sharing the same unlucky fate as herself without telling her the truth.

The Best Meals of My Life (Joseph Duemer) "When I crack an egg I usually think of the French girl who lived downstairs in the boarding house where I endured the winter following my first marriage. She would never go to bed with me but showed me instead in her generosity how to slip my finger in a circle inside the two halves of a freshly broken egg shell to extract the last slick white to dribble it into the skillet. Her parents had lived through Nazi poverty & she lectured me—profligate & depraved—on thrift & virtue. Out of kindness she gave me instead of what I wanted meals of potatoes & eggs & that is the way, isn’t it, of virtue— to give not pleasure but what is necessary to sustain life: eggs & potatoes & salt over which it becomes possible to talk & even to think. Life of the body, life of the mind."

[Spud Songs, Helicon 9 Editions, 1999]

Joseph Duemer is also responsible for the excellent reflective weblog reading & writing and blogs about reading the Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein together with Christopher Robinson (via douze lunes). P.S. I feel a little guilty of posting a long poem which is not by myself but it could have been. Or to be less presumptuous it spoke of things I can relate to. About the preciousness of small things. I do the same with the white of the egg but I don't exactly remember from whom I learnt this. Probably from my parents I guess.

Literatur-Archiv Gutenberg-DE ab sofort bei Spiegel Online Der Spiegel hat die Gebete der Weblogger und anderer surffreudiger Literaturfreunde erhört. Ab sofort findet man Gutenberg-DE im Kulturressort des Onlineangebots des renommierten deutschen Nachrichtenmagazins. 250.000 Seiten große deutsche Literatur vor dem Verlöschen im digitalen Nirvana gerettet. Bravo Herr Augstein, so sie denn für diese literarische publizistische Glanztat verantwortlich zeichnen. Die neue Internetseite ist momentan vom Farbeinsatz noch nicht so ganz das ästhetisch Optimale, aber das wird sich bestimmt noch ändern.

Deutsche Literatur Ende von Project Gutenberg. Hauptsponsor AOL zieht den Stecker. Noch ein weiterer Grund AOL alle CD-ROMs zurückzuschicken. Die knapp 10.000 Texte (Romane, Märchen, Gedichte) von 350 deutschsprachigen Autoren jetzt nur noch für 25,46€ auf CD-ROM (via netbib).

Neuer deutscher Literaturkanon (Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung) Von den 25 ausgewählten Büchern der letzten 20 Jahre leider nur zwei online besprochen (Erscheinungsjahr, Auflage):

• Jakob Arjouni: Happy Birthday, Türke! (1987, ?)
• Feridun Zaimoglu: Abschaum (1997, 10.000) Die anderen 23 modernen Klassiker:
• Marcel Beyer: Flughunde (1995, 40.000)
• Maxim Biller: Wenn ich einmal reich und tot bin (1990, 14.000)
• Jenny Erpenbeck: Geschichte vom alten Kind (1999, 20.000)
• Jörg Fauser: Rohstoff (1984, 7.000)
• Wilhelm Genazino: Der Fleck, die Jacke, die Zimmer, der Schmerz (1989, 5.000)
• Gabriele Goettle: Deutsche Sitten (1991, 30.000)
• Rainald Goetz: Irre (1983, 65.000)
• Max Goldt: Okay Mutter, ich nehme die Mittagsmaschine (1999, ?)
• Judith Hermann: Sommerhaus, später (1998, 250.000)
• Wolfgang Hilbig: "Ich" (1993, 50.000)
• Elfriede Jelinek: Lust (1989, 30.000)
• Michael Kleeberg: Der saubere Tod (1987, 3.000)
• Christian Kracht: Faserland (1996, 30.000)
• Helmut Krausser: Fette Welt (1992, 15.000 nur TB)
• Thor Kunkel: Das Schwarzlicht-Terrarium (2000, 15.000)
• Joachim Lottmann: Mai, Juni, Juli (1987, 3.000)
• Thomas Meinecke: The Church of John F. Kennedy (1996, 10.000)
• Sten Nadolny: Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit (1983, 1.500.000)
• Ingo Schulze: Simple Storys (1998, 200.000)
• W. G. Sebald: Die Ausgewanderten (1992, 35.000)
• Peter Stamm: Blitzeis (1999, 30.000)
• Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre: Livealbum (1999, 75.000)
• Patrick Süskind: Das Parfüm (1985, 3.000.000)

Muss zu meiner Schande gestehen, dass ich nur den Kracht (mit Vergnügen) und den Nadolny (etwas enttäuschend, Netzkarte hat mich mehr angesprochen) gelesen habe. Den Schulze und den Süskind habe ich angefangen, aber nie zu Ende gelesen. Wäre dankbar für Tips, mit welchem Buch der Liste ich nun weitermachen sollte.