Literature: Daniel Dubbe: Is he serious?

Daniel Dubbe actually completed his autofictional Hamburg tetralogy in 2014 with the slim volume “The Salon Fascist and Other Best Friends,” but apparently too much was left undone. And apparently there were still some bills outstanding.

In “Youth Friends,” the Hamburg writer, born in 1942, once again remembers former companions, and since he has already covered everything “that was big in my immediate vicinity,” the supposedly “little people” are now also given the honor to be portrayed by him. Herbert, for example, the recently deceased block attendant next door, who beat his wife when she didn’t want to go to bed with him, and who can still count on Dubbe’s understanding. »What was he supposed to do? He came from the time when guys were guys and not wimps. (I mean before the introduction of gynecocracy.)«

Dubbe also obviously comes from this completely different time. There are even more places like this where you simply wonder and ask yourself whether you have completely misunderstood Dubbe’s previous work. The moderate sexism and virility posturing of his previous memoir books seemed to be ironically cushioned, as if he wanted to include this macho nonsense because people might have once thought and spoken that way, but at the same time he wanted to mark it as something obsolete.

This balance is missing in “Jugendfreunde”. So if the book doesn’t have an ethical problem, then it at least has an aesthetic one. You don’t get the impression that the author is trying to distance himself from his first-person narrator, however tongue in cheek. Rather, it seems that a stubborn incel is once again arguing for his head and neck on the home stretch.

Elsewhere, Dubbe unleashes a resentment-soaked Islamophobic sermon that explodes into an absurd, misogynistic volte. »Women are particularly interested in immigration. And most of them are middle-aged. For them, the immigrants offer – how should I put it – a not-negligible refreshment of their intimate life. Most native men are taken or have become too unsightly. They just look like shit, like average Germans, a worn-out race… What’s more, and this is what counts, the immigrants are more sexually motivated than the locals, who are completely weak from being here for so long. When the beneficiaries of the welcoming culture, i.e. immigrants, lay down a local girl, they conquer a piece of territory. And the older women were certainly grateful for the kind of intimate land grab. The Greens and some leftists in particular almost fainted because of their love for migrants. Statistics on the number of love affairs of lobbyists and carers of all stripes with asylum seekers, i.e. illegal immigrants, would reveal astonishing things.

Is he serious? Dubbe’s migration-critical invectives are based on a lengthy retelling of the dystopia “Submission,” in which its author Michel Houellebecq imagines the gradual transformation of the French Republic into a dictatorial caliphate modeled on Iran. Dubbe may be presenting himself here as a kind of Teutonic Houellebecq 2.0, and these passages are satirical role-playing prose. One just wonders why one should take on such a role?

Things get really unsavory in the third chapter, “The Red Salon.” In a rather uncharming, unflattering way he portrays a formerly well-known and successful Hamburg writer who goes by the name Lena Lemaître and whose real name we would rather not know. Dubbe is obviously hoping for something amorous, invites her to dinner, which he is allowed to pay for, even though she is entitled to it as heir to millions, and in the end he doesn’t even get anything in return. You don’t know what to find more unpleasant, this small-minded, redundant complaint about always having to pay, or his barely concealed anger at the lack of “rewards” despite his investments.

Eventually there is an argument and the two insult each other in letters. Of course, Dubbe has the last word and shows it to the “female” once again. That’s exactly what this is about. And this also identifies the fundamental weakness of this book, which masks its undoubtedly existing strengths (not least the sensitive author portraits of Charles Bukowski, Carl Weissner and Jürgen Ploog). The author wants to really hit the spot again, mark a real guy and loses himself in self-righteousness, vanity and narrow-mindedness.

Some time ago there was a bonsai debate about how the tough guys Jörg Fauser and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, who died early, would probably write today. Some people thought they were exactly where Dubbe had now arrived.

Daniel Dubbe: childhood friends. This touch of freedom. Günther Emig’s literature business, 150 pages, br., 18 €.