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Eine literarische Geschichte des Exils. Michael Lentz erzählt mit Humor, historischer Genauigkeit und der ihm eigenen Energie von dem Leben derer, die vor den Nationalsozialisten an die amerikanische Pazifikküste fliehen konnten: Bert Brecht, Franz Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas und Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schönberg. Dieser große Roman sammelt die Bilder der Realität und der Phantasie, die das Vergangene erfahrbar machen.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Does the book fair's happiness lie in the poets' pain?
Anyone who cannot find happiness on earth is unlikely to find it at the book fair either. If we imagine Heinrich von Kleist in one of the trade-fair halls, if only for a second, then that famous sentence comes to mind that Kleist wrote to his brother-in-law: "I ask God for death, and you I ask for money." There is no more concise and drastic a way of describing the drama of the artist twixt a wish for salvation and a fear of impoverishment, between transcendence and dull life in the here and now, the poet's soul tossed hither and thither. This book autumn, as many as three biographies attempt to shed light on the Kleist phenomenon. Brief, sound and with pointed quill, the effort by Herbert Kraft ("Kleist". Live and Works, Aschendoff Verlag), while Jens Bisky declares Kleist with great passion and stylistic verve to be the "greatest German political poet" and tries to show in what delicate constellations the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution found their way into Kleist's life and works. Gerhard Schulz is interested more in the life than the work ("Kleist". A Biography, C. H. Beck), treating this and that enigma in the poet's biography, such as the nebulous trip to Würzburg, as mere balloons: Easily he deflates them. For all the cold logic as regards the details of Kleist's life, Gerhard Schulz preserves his respect for the secrets of poet's life as a whole.
If Kleist had been able to endure a book fair at all, it would have been this one - assuming he had been ready to put up with even more writers' biographies: Helmuth Kiesel ("Ernst Jünger. The Biography",
Continued on Page 39
Siedler-Verlag) and Heimo Schwilk ("Ernst Jünger", Piper) have applied themselves to the centennial figure of Ernst Jünger; Holger Hof reports on the life of Gottfried Benn ("Gottfried Benn", Klett-Cotta); Thomas Karlauf's much-regarded biography of the charismatic character of Stefan George has set new standards ("Stefan George", Blessing). The most important publication of a classic work is dedicated to Stendhal: Hanser presents Elisabeth Edl's marvellous translation of "The Charterhouse of Parma" (Hanser).
Katja Lange-Müller offers an impressive account of the fact that you need not be a poet to fail when faced by life. With "Böse Schafe" (Kiepenheuer & Witsch) she has written a bitter-sweet love story of flippant sentimentality, with a truly suicidal lack of fear for clichés, highly credible and full of dignity. It takes place in Berlin, in a world inhabited by the unemployed and junkies before the Wall came down. Seldom has old West Berlin seemed so small, so trashed and so lacking in spark as in this slender novel. All the more astonishing the power with which Katja Lange-Müller manages to infuse this love story, and in which right until the end you do not know whether all that is at stake is the small illusion held by a big heart and defended tooth and claw.
Such verily realistic descriptions of social milieus are a rarity in contemporary German literature. Above all, the world of work beyond all chic ad agency folk and polished editorial desks at glossy magazines is as good as absent. The persons who populate contemporary German literature seem to go about their private lives as a full-time job, while their professions are performed at best in passing, at most in order to place the figures in a specific milieu. Annette Pehnt now makes up for this lacking, with an oppressive character cameo written with great virtuosity. Her novel, "Mobbing" (Piper), describes a case such as happens in everyday German office life countless times a day - with the intensity of studio theater: A member of the salaried staff is no longer able to get on, either with his boss or his female colleague. He feels set back, cut off, maltreated, debased, humbled, in a nutshell, mobbed. Annette Pehnt's key artifice is her choice of perspective. She restricts herself solely to the first-person narrative, who hears everything she knows from the victim. And she is not able to relativize or question anything without being suspected of denying her husband precisely what he needs most at present, namely the unconditional loyalty of his wife.
Annette Pehnt's book is one of those rare cases where a family story is firmly located in the present. In the current literary season many authors look back into factual history. Michael Lentz gives a voice to the German immigrants on the American Pacific coast ("Pacific Exile", S. Fischer); Erich Hackl traces the fate of Gisela Tenenbaum, who disappeared under the Argentinian military regime of 1977 ("As if an angel", Diogenes); and Julia Franck in her novel "Die Mittagsfrau" (The Midday Woman; S. Fischer) departs from the life of her own father who was left behind by his mother in 1945. At the center of her new novel stands, however, not that unfortunate child but the mother who lends the book its title "Mittagsfrau" (S. Fischer). Down across about four decades, the now 37-year-old author recounts the fate of her protagonist, lending us sense how such an unheard of act could have come about. Helene's feelings are extinguished, and Julia Franck carefully and tenderly explores, with much patience and great narrative skill, how they came to be extinguished. That said, Julia Franck is not focusing on painting some great historical panorama, as is Michael Köhlmeier, something indicated by the very title of his book ("Abendland", Occident, Hanser). Köhlmeier proves to be a great storyteller, but one who definitely does not believe in economic writing.
But all readers know that great books can have weaknesses and shortcomings and still remain great books. And anyone who does not know this can easily find help on earth and at this book fair. He or she should read "Day" (Wagenbach), a novel on an English soldier during the Second World War, written by Scottish author A. L. Kennedy, who first saw the light of day in 1965, 22 years after men such as Alfred Day bombed cities like Hamburg and burned a hole in the sky that like some incessant wound was never to close up afterwards.
HUBERT SPIEGEL.
Translation by Jeremy Gaines.
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. © F.A.Z. GmbH, Frankfurt am Main
Perlentaucher-Notiz zur Süddeutsche Zeitung-Rezension
Ein bisschen wundert sich Christoph Bartmann schon: Ist der Sprachartist Michael Lentz jetzt ins Romanfach gewechselt? Und wieso ausgerechnet mit einem Dokudrama über ein derart bekanntes Gebiet der Literaturhistorie? Tatsächlich entdeckt Bartmann hier nichts wirklich Neues über Brecht, Mann und die anderen unter der Sonne Kaliforniens. Doch halt: Da ist dies "emphatische Gegenwartsbewusstsein". Und das, findet Bartmann, macht Lentz zum Remixer des Stoffes, ja des Erzählens. Gut fürs Buch. Bartmann macht die Lektüre Spaß, weil in die "Spannweite denkbarer Exil-Dispositionen" bei Lentz schließlich doch so etwas wie "sprachlicher Überschuss" einfließt, "Witz und Energetik". Ein "Sprach-Ereignis", also doch.
© Perlentaucher Medien GmbH
© Perlentaucher Medien GmbH