“World Bühne” – 100 pages Thomas Bernhard for 48 cents

You should always see what exactly you get for your money. This is an old Swabian wisdom. If you order a “Negroni” in an average Berlin bar for twelve or 13 euros, you get a large glass in 90 percent of all cases, in which three giant ice cubes are located in a small puddle made of aqueous light red liquid that exudes a problematic smell. As a rule, what the host has bored in the background process has little to do with a “Negroni”: an orange peel, a thimble full of cheap gin, a dash of disgust, disgusted from the discounter and a little of the oily foul-smelling red stuff, that tastes like it is produced in underground laborator “Rosenthaler Kadarka” to be mixed – the paint is ready.

On the other hand, if you buy the ingredients required for the drink even in a spirits business-a Carpano Antica Formula, a reasonable gin and a literary bottle of Campari-and let it be mixed by your children at home (the preparation is very easy, and the little ones are even busy and even learn something about 80 euros, but the »Negroni« supply is generously provided: 20 to 23 Mixed cocktails that are not to be complained about will be able to manufacture from it, provided that your pupil uses enough care to make the drink and do not work hectic and sloppy. You then only pay the equivalent of 3.70 or 3.80 euros per glass and not four times for an inedible broth, which, apart from the color, does not remind anything of a “Negroni”.

It should also be the same with the reading, which you devote yourself on your terrace or balcony or garden while you sip on your “Homemade Negroni”: upscale reading pleasure at a reasonable price. A bundle of letters lined up clean and conscientiously, which can be obtained for comparatively narrow money.

Let us assume that you decide to acquire the first edition of the magazine “Weltbühne” newly launched in Holger Friedrichs Berliner Verlag, of which a lot was discussed in the media recently. In the “mirror” it was said: “If this” world stage “is to be a stage in the world, then only the very small and musty world of the makers of this booklet can be meant.” The texts contained therein are “läppisch” and “irritating insignificance”. (Of course, all of this applies just as a word for the “mirror” itself, but we don’t want to be petty, haha.)

The small -format printed product has 32 pages and costs eleven euros. That is 34.375 cents per pressure page. The savings commissioner in me already calculates: Eleven pages from the new “World Bühne” correspond to the value of a “homemade Negroni”. In fact, a briefly stained look at the table of contents of the new “Weltbühne” is enough to decide for three “Negronis” instead of buying the magazine within one second break.

The good column

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Thomas Blum In principle, it does not agree with the prevailing so -called reality. For the time being, he will not be able to change them, but he can use them to exhort them or, if necessary, also cover one. So that the bad withdraws. We are solidarity with his fight against reality. Therefore, “the good column” appears at this point on Mondays. Only the best quality for the best readers! The collected texts can be found at: dasnd.de/diegute

A traditional mail order company has a different reading offer, with which – with regard to what the customer receives for the paid purchase amount – Holger Friedrich’s “Weltbühne” cannot compete: the entire work of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, which negotiated numerous topics in his books, which are still up to date today, for example the home (»Provinczhölle«), the working life (“Gemen acquisition hell”) or the effect of school and university education (“spiritual murder”, “extermination institutions”). The work edition consists of 22 elegant paperbacks, has 10,300 pages and currently costs 49.95 euros. That is 0.48 cents per pressure side. Less than half a cent for one side of world literature! You get just 20 Läppische letters from Holger Friedrich and a few irritatingly irritating spaces! Converted into “Negronis” this means: for the amount of money that a “Negroni” prepared by you (or your children).

All 22 volumes correspond to the value of 13 homemade »Negronis«. In other words, if you let a slippery hundred, you can drink a very generously dimensioned half “Negroni” for every book of your work edition you read. After reading completed, all glasses may be drunk, but they still have the books!

The best thing is: the volumes are stowed away in a “foldable slippage with a handle”, so that they do not have to do without their work output in any place that they are visiting – be it the gym, the Munich Oktoberfest or the summit of the Großglockner. Let’s be honest. The quality-conscious savings scarf does not have to think long: Do I buy a (in numbers: 1) Print page Läppische Text of irritating triviality, produced by questionable remaining lamp authors? Or do I buy 70 (!) Pages quality text of an internationally valued poet (me) tested by literary scholars? Well, the decision should be easy.

I am not sure whether the school subject “enjoyment” should not be introduced in a better future: their children could not only learn essential cocktail recipes, but also the ability to distinguish musty and lively texts from modern and indispensable. In any case, it is certain: always see what exactly you get for your money.