From here it still looks very peaceful.
Photo: Dirkek/Pixabay
Ken Kesey’s novel »Seemannslied« only comes out over 30 years after the first publication in German translation, but that actually fits quite well. Because the brick -sized novel about an earth that is looking for climate change, in which it is just bearable in Alaska, plays in the 2020s, so today.
With “one flew over the cuckoo nest” (1962), Kesey, born in 1935, became one of the most prominent figures in the American counterculture of the 1960s. He never saw the film adaptation of his success novel. He was annoyed that the main character and narrator of his novel, Chief Bromden, was degraded into a secondary figure in the film. Kesey wrote two more novels, but was above all performance artists and tour as a member of the “Merry Pranksters” group with the camera in hand in a colorful hippie bus, including Neal Cassidy and later musicians from Gratful Dead.
From today’s perspective, however, the novel looks almost prophetic, as it addresses climate change at a time when it was still literary pioneering work.
His voluminous, 700-side late work »Seemannslied« (1992) has many narrative lengths, which may be the reason, which is why it was probably not translated immediately. From today’s perspective, however, the novel looks almost prophetic, as it addresses climate change at a time when it was still literary pioneering work.
The small fictional fictional community of Kuinak in southern Alaska suddenly gets a visit from a film crew who wants to film a youth book classic of the indigenous literature there and immediately convert the whole small town into a amusement park. At the center of history are the fisherman and ex-ecoterrorist Ike Sallas (“who looks like a Greek god with the eyes of Elvis Presley.”) And the indigenous Alice Carmody, who has been married to a thick-tongue fisheries, never put up with anything and runs wildly through the small town cosmos.
In Kuinak, there are a lot of removed freaks in Kuinak, which are organized as “loyal order of the underdogs”, but there are also many indigenous residents and almost all lives from fishing. The snobistic filmmakers with luxury yacht and caviar snacks donate chaos, but bring a lot of money into the community. “Shoola and the sea lion” are to be filmed. This alleged indigenous classic is part of the Rome Corpus and could best be labeled as a Young Adult Fantasy amendment, but is actually not an indigenous literature, as Alice finds out, but comes from a white old lady from New Jersey. In reality, the multi-artist talent Ken Kesey in 1991 published the text as an illustrated “children’s book” under the title “The Sea Lion” (1991).
While an ion storm brings together on the horizon, which at some point paralyzes the entire electrical system and causes massive destruction, the relationship between film producers and the inhabitants, whose village will soon be converted into a historical pattern-Indian settlement, becomes more and more conflicting. First of all, Alt-Revoluzzer Ike Sallas marches against the interests of capital.
Ken Kesey writes in “Seemannlied” about climate change, cultural appropriation, racism, family abuse, the expropriation of indigenous communities, often far too detailed about the fishing trade, rarely about technology of the future (after all there are vertical aircraft), but there are also right Christian fanatics in this opus.
This book was far ahead of its time. It’s a bit like a crude mixture of Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon and Edward Abbey. Regardless of whether things go fishing again and again, with the propeller aircraft into the inaccessible pampa of Alaska or by trolley on a crazy mountain and descent towards the coast on the run from authoritarian religious spinners: This novel offers a colorful bouquet of comic-like action.
Ken Kesey should have had as much fun when writing as the reader reading. Kesey was apparently inspired during a job in Alaska when he was supposed to rewrite the script for a local film for Disney in 1982. In the end, the whole thing really picks up speed and flows into a wonderful final.
Ken Kesey: Seemannslied. With a foreword by Volker Weidermann. Ad America. Engl. V. Milena, March-Verlag, 703 pages, born, € 38.