Literature – “cannibals and love”: where ears dance trembling

The man is particularly known from Germany’s cabaret: “With the guitar in his hand / he travels through the whole country.” As a comic artist, comedian, songwriter and singer, Fil, with a bourgeois name Philip Täger, has completed at least three careers so far. And not everyone knows that the confessing West Berlin has long since made a fourth: he is also a writer.

His newly published new band with stories (“Ultra-groovy horror stories”) means “cannibal and love”, and the title holds what he promises. Of course, it is of course not a question of “horror stories”, but about satirical stories, whereby the satirical flails must also be understood as a homage to the genre. “I slipped down on him, bit him off his tail what had kinked in the middle, and when he was lying on the ground, I broke his skull and ate his face.” As it exists, there are some, and whoever has his pleasure is served. And not just with splatter, but also with vivid gore scenes: “His limestone white meat was littered with feathering ulcers and pustules and now, since no clothing, it was more so that I could involuntarily think of the fairy tale of the sweet porridge.”

A lack of psychopaths or, let’s say better: there are no questionable characters in these stories, and there is also everything you need if there is to be escalation every now and then: there is a Swabian family of cannibal, witches, wolf women, crazy scientists (“Mad Scientists”), heavy criminal, vampire, zombies, Nazis and Nazi zombies. And beyond that, all sorts of unappealing figures (Empathyos, selfish, stupid) are opened.

The stories await and there with hair -raising turns and twists, which would be “bizarre” the understatement of the century. Fil looted a lot here for his purposes: Hitchcocks “Psycho”, motifs and scaffolding of the jail films of the 1970s, the B-Pictures of the “Hammer” studios (“Blood for Dracula”), Lucio Fulcis Giallos and exploitation artworks (“A zombie hung on the Glockens rope”).

A lack of psychopaths or, let’s say better: there are no questionable characters in these stories.

And because he consciously takes bonds from the trash and trivial literature and is obviously created as a parody of so-called treasure novels and grosche magazines (“I want to feel it in me. I want this thin short tube. Now and here”), the inevitable standard formulations do not fail to do: “Gerne’s grabbing” and “soaked by fear sweat”. “Hairs of neck are set up” and “Krause ears dance trembling”.

This worn language, even if it is occasionally used in parodistic intentions (“Your voice was clear and fresh as the murmur of a mountain stream in the morning fog”), but what should you do, Fils juicy nonsense still reads about thousand times more original and funny than that of a poorly programmed AI together. “What else was there to do for you? She furred dry into the afternoon. It was as it was. “

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Whenever Fil in the meantime, the fact that he is a comic talent of the present come, the Fil sentences come: »As a brunette and I, stowed with blood from top to bottom, panted above the huge mass of bone chips, brain and fat, dawned for both of us. Something like that can plunge into a deep hole if you don’t immediately open a new chapter. «

There are also thoughts about numerous other objects in the book, for example those about Christianity: »Jesus actually only says: I am good, you are bad, but I forgive you and my father is God. So, people could worship Ben Becker right away. “Or about Bruce Springsteen’s music:” This smoky, rancid celebration of their own slippery “.

And by the way, when reading this, in contrast to Martin Walsers or July Zeh’s writing work, you also learn something honest literature in a robust way. About humans, for example: “Meat bags filled with sheer disgusting stuff”. Or about the differences between young and old: »Young people were so breathtakingly empty, basically they were nothing more than brain -washed zombies, trend soldiers who went to battle for stupid external appearances in the fight against the germ of their own self, an individual emotion. Until they got old (…) Then they either made yoga or became bitter cynics. «

Fil: cannibals and love. Ultra-groovy horror stories. Ullstein, 330 pages, Br., € 13.99.