Literature: Read – been there

Gerhard Henschel to collect

An issue of “Text + Criticism” was dedicated to Gerhard Henschel. Born in Hanover in 1962, he is one of the most productive German writers, others write texts or books, he does both, as the filmmaker and publicist Wenzel Storch suggests: “If you are a greenhorn, a newcomer or a career changer, you want a presentable, reasonably representative Henschel collection If you want to build something, you shouldn’t shy away from going to the bookseller and antiquarian. If he really gets into it, he will soon be able to own around 50 books and wallow in hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles (…) This combines what has been piled up to date (and has long since filled more than a bathtub) The oeuvre includes not only diaries and question books, encyclopedias and balance sheets, collections of glosses, reviews and reports, football books, hiking books and dictionaries, panoramas of media history, portraits and picture books, children’s and young people’s book parodies created in collaboration, studies and volumes of poetry – as a representative of the beautiful literature that is so popular with the public – key and picaresque, science fiction and crime novels.” Inspired by Eckhard Henscheid and Walter Kempowski, friends of Wiglaf Droste and Max Goldt, among others, this owner invented all editions of “Spiegel « and a consistent opponent of »Bild« »no new genres, but he reinterprets the existing ones«, notes the German scholar Lutz Hagestedt, whereby »language criticism as parody« is one of his »supreme disciplines«, as the literary scholar Laura Schütz states.

Michael Ringel, editor of the “Truth” page of the “Taz” recalls the scandals that Henschel triggered: The Iranian embassy protested against the fictional report “What the Ayatollah Khomeini was doing in Paris” and against a penis operation attributed to him by Henschel complained the then “Bild” editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann. Henschel regularly provides evidence of his career in his Martin Schlosser novels. Everything in them is correct, except the name of the main character, says Henschel, who has created a work “which critics have long since said has Proustian proportions and eternal value beyond the current shelf meter” (Storch).

»Text + Criticism«, No. 240, 28 €.

Sadness im Taunus

“Cheyenne” – is that a crime thriller? Probably not, even if it’s a crime film, so to speak. Is it perhaps a development novel then? Rather, but that’s not entirely true either. Or is it just trash? And why “only”? In Daniel Borgeldt’s captivating novel, the first-person narrator reports that she leads a “quiet life.” But: »It took long enough. What I am writing here was centuries ago. That’s how it feels. But it actually happened less than ten years ago. I’ve been out of all this shit for a long time. But when I sit down and write it down, I see the girl I was back then.”

This youthful everyday jargon sounds timeless and doesn’t pander. The story takes place in a migrant poor environment, although Daniel Borgeldt does not presume to judge the characters he has created. Rather, he skilfully plays with clichés and creates a meta level that allows him to observe Cheyenne with her own eyes. It is not a social or even class study, because Borgeldt wants to entertain above all. The fact that the novel has an underlying melancholic mood is in no way contradictory to this. The genre of “pop literature” is somewhat out of fashion today (at least the terminology), but perhaps it is worth picking up the term again here, because in addition to the everyday descriptions and contemporary historical echoes, there are pop culture reminiscences of the great films by Quentin Tarantino , Martin Scorsese and David Lynch are more than clear – and are also explicitly mentioned. Cheyenne loves these gangster films. And lives it. And she likes the music of Kimya Dawson and Slayer too.Axel Klingenberg

Daniel Borgeldt: Cheyenne. Ventil Verlag, 181 pages, €16.

East-West Wales philosophy

In East Westphalia (the region around Bielefeld, Paderborn, Minden, also called East Westphalia-Lippe) you don’t ask: “Where are you from?” but: “Where are you from?” People come here like Jürgen von der Lippe, Bernadette La Hengst, Hannes Wader, Luigi Colani, Henning Venske, Ingolf Lück, Hans Wollschläger and the “Bielefeld School” that shaped the magazine “Titanic”: Christian Y. Schmidt, Hans Zippert, Fritz Tietz, Wiglaf Droste, Ella Carina Werner, Til Mette – and also the cabaret artist and author Bernd Gieseking, who is now presenting “The Curious Ostwestfalen Book”. In this region, which has twice as many inhabitants as Saarland, there is not only Miele, Dr. Oetker and Bertelsmann, but also an apple variety called Extertaler Katzenkopf and a brown cabbage called Lippische Palme. What else you eat: Pickert (a mixture of potato pancakes and pancakes) and Anballersse (buttermilk stew). And the superstructure? According to Gieseking, it goes like this: “When two East Westphalians meet, one says: ‘And?’ to which the other answers, slightly delayed: ‘Must!’ This first questioning ‘And?’ is the greatest possible interest in the other person, the question according to his being and will. This is philosophy and pastoral care at the same time. ‘And?’ is the question about the original reason. And then the answer comes from the other person: ‘Must!’ This ‘Must!’ is on the one hand an honest response and on the other hand an ironic game in one.” Variant: “It’s terrible, but it works.”

Bernd Gieseking: The curious East Westphalia book, Satyr, 360 pages, hardcover, €24

Brutal science

The biologist Anne Christine Schmidt reports on the “nightmare of science”: how she went through hideously precarious employment conditions in the university for a total of 15 years, ruining her physical and mental health and being so humiliated in absurd hierarchies that she abandoned her habilitation at the very last moment . Ultimately, her “Habil-Papa” catapulted her out of the academic world because it took him 24 months, beyond all deadlines, to write a report for her habilitation thesis, which he then worded very negatively. Was it disappointed love? No, just disappointed self-love. It was enough that Schmidt correctly refused the harassing tasks given to her because they did not fall within her area of ​​responsibility.

Anne Christine Schmidt: “Nightmare Science” – an experience report. Text, 158 pages, €16.

Brutal writing

Trying to make a living from writing is extremely strenuous; Not only because it is usually very poorly paid, but because you also have to do various care tasks that no one is interested in. This is what the shockingly funny and scary collection “other writers need to concentrate” is about, in which various authors report on this daily, unwinnable war on two fronts. Kirsten Fuchs writes: »For me, free time means having time to work. Crazy, right? Because I want to work. I want, I want to have my own thoughts. Mom, it calls me from my thoughts. (…) I sometimes ask my daughter who she is talking to when I’m not in the room.” Martina Hefter remembers: “My ‘serious’ writing began during the time of pregnancy and babies. I wrote my first novel when I was pregnant with my second child and my daughter was just over a year old.” Florian Wacker dreams of “just sitting there and letting my thoughts wander.” Unfortunately he doesn’t have time.

Katharina Bendixen, David Blum, Barbara Peveling, Sibylla Vričić (Hg.): other writers need to concentrate. Sukultur, 191 S., br., 24 €.