Roman »Fun« – almost a key novel by Bela B

The drummer and singer of the punk band The doctors did it again and wrote a new novel after his strange horror trash thriller “Scharnow”. “Fun” reads, even if the author recently decided in the interview, like fictionalized processing of the Rammstein scandal a year and a half ago.

The aging but extremely successful rock band navel/navel celebrates its misogynen even after over two decades at the top. They have “ass passages” distribute and celebrate orgiastic backstage parties. It is mainly about “fear and pleasure”. The “meat only has to be young enough,” reveals her charismatic singer painter in an interview, and reaps a shit storm. Society has apparently changed. The band, however, is not.

After a concert, the drummer and the bass player force one of their admirers to anal sex, but this time they don’t get it so easily, the young woman shows her. Shortly before a concert series in a Kaff Brandenburg, where her career started 23 years ago, the scandal is slowly rocking up. The police begin to investigate, an internal intrigue brings a stressful mobile phone video to the public. The facade crumbles.

Above all, you notice “Fun” that Felsenheimer only reinvented itself as a narrator late. The novel is plentiful, I was bursting with clichés, kitsch and stylistic wild growth, before which the editing office apparently surrendered. Here you eat, for example, “frozen fish fingers” …

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On the other hand, the author succeeds confidently to lead various action lines in parallel, not to let and act as small staff with and against each other and to create tension through many cuts and change of perspective. You just can’t expect literature. The book is more reminiscent of a Netflix series. The comparison also fits in that Felsenheim almost fully plays through the #metoo pattern on different levels. This is how series dramaturgy works.

“Fun” is not only about attacking rock idols, but also about use of power compared to a “trainee”, for tried rape in marriage, and if a female fan wants to provide itself with drugs liable for health, a corrupt pharmacist can also pay for this with sexual services. Anyone who points only on altockers with their fingers makes it far too easy, Felsenheimer sharpens the reader here. And always presents strong female figures who know how to defend themselves confidently against abuse and humiliation. That is at least pedagogically valuable.

His strangely undecided description of the rock business, not least of the obsessive erotomaniac painter, is problematic. The author leads him as lovable and at the same time diabolical demagogues, which it succeeds in manipulating people at any time, but at the same time he makes a Hanswurst out of him, whose charisma remains mere claim. In a scene, Master exhorts his drummer to moderate and initially increases into an absurd apology of the rock star, who throws his whole life into the balance for the fans and is finally supposed to get something back. But then he still succeeds and he recommends hard self -grinding to emancipate himself from his drives.

At the end of this obviously satirical scene, singers and drummer hit each other into the soft tissues. “Our tail is included with everything. Our cock texts, he composes and he also performs with us. But you have to show him who the boss is. ”Such burlesque silliness counteract the actual intention of the novel. These joke characters are no longer relieved of the sometimes drastically drawn border crossings to their fans.

The book begins with a “hint” on its own behalf: “Everything in this novel is invented – and much more is true in it. Because to say it with Mark Twain: Itʼs no Wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. ”Bela B stages a degoutant game with his own double role as an author and rock star. He was and is part of the music business, has already experienced a lot in his decades of career and therefore knows exactly what he is talking about. There is no better certification for the relevance and realistic content of the novel.

On the other hand, the question arises where he knows all of this exactly? Has he just observed this wild hustle and bustle? Or does he imagine his own rockʼnʼroll gomorrha solely from the contradictions that have reached the public in the Casus Rammstein? Such questions direct the reception of this at least potential key novel, they give it additional attention. Felsenheimer not only accepts it approvingly, he flalls with his own amorality and is still indirectly shown as a representative of that obsolete rock paradigm, which should actually expose the “fun”.

Bela B Felsenheimer: Fun. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 367 pages, born, 24 €.