On a day like this

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On a day like this there is a novel by the Swiss writer Peter Stamm . It is about a middle-aged man who, in the face of the threatened diagnosis of a serious illness, tries to change his hitherto passive life and sets off to meet the unforgettable love of his youth. The novel was published by S. Fischer Verlag in July 2006 and was received with interest by both readers and the feature pages . The judgment of the literary critic remained inconsistent. Some praised Stamm's restrained style and construction of the novel, others criticized the linguistic monotony and the lack of persuasiveness of the main character.

action

Andreas is in his early forties, a bachelor and comes from Switzerland. There he grew up in a village. He has lived in Paris for eighteen years and teaches German at a grammar school.

His job appeals to him. Yet his personal life is empty, without ties and aimless. “Andreas believed in nothing but chance. He loved the strange coincidences and repetitions of life ”. This earns him the charge of nihilism . "He himself called it humility".

His two lovers visit him at a set rhythm. Nadja, who sleeps next to and behind his back with her divorced husband, comes every two weeks in the evening; Sylvia, a married woman and mother of three, comes on Wednesday afternoons. In Paris he feels like a stranger, "like a tourist who has been walking through this city for almost twenty years without ever arriving completely".

One day he is leafing through a simple romance novel, a small volume entitled “Love without Limits”. The plot reminds him of his childhood sweetheart, which he suppressed at best, but - this now shows - has not mastered. He never fell in love again with the same intensity. He hadn't dared to confess his love to Fabienne. Fabienne finally married his boyfriend.

Andreas loses the joy of his job. He finds the students difficult and no longer has any illusions that he has any influence on them. He feels tired and burned out. Because of a persistent cough that does not go away in him, the heavy smoker, his doctor orders a computed tomography. It shows a compression between the lungs, which requires tissue removal for further clarification. In the best case scenario, a scarred tuberculosis would be found. Cancer would be the alternative without the doctor or Andreas uttering this fateful word. When Andreas asked about his chances, the doctor replied that there was no point in talking about chances. “There is only one either-or. You either have it or you don't. "

As a result, Andreas eludes the information about what the microscopic examination has shown and sets a turning point. “He had to start a new life. [...] He would heal himself from this life that wasn't one. "Andreas quits his job, sells his apartment and says goodbye to his two lovers. “He never thought that they too could have taken advantage of him.” He leaves Paris. He only takes Fabienne's letter with him and a statuette, a bronze Diana . He drives back in an old 2 CV , the car of his youth. The purchase of this old model was associated with a waiting period of two weeks.

During the last day at school, Delphine falls in love with him, a young intern. It accompanies Andreas on the journey to his origins in Switzerland. There Andreas seeks the meeting with Fabienne, which she grants him behind the back of her husband. The childhood love experiences a late fulfillment and its conciliatory end. Andreas leaves his village, goes to Delphine (she left him after she realized what Fabienne Andreas means). He finds her again on the beach in Aquitaine . Andreas has also found himself.

style

According to Felicitas von Lovenberg , “an unconditional will to form and a sense of style [...] that are unparalleled in the younger contemporary German-language literature” characterize the novel. The tone of the narrative is laconic and simple, the renunciation of any interpretation of the event by the protagonist does not allow any drama to arise. Nevertheless, Andreas' inner standstill is opposed to a constant external dynamic of the action. Volker Denkel recognized "short, clear sentences, a strangely floating mood, non-binding in the descriptions of the places and people."

For Klaus Zeyringer, Peter Stamm told the story from a personal narrative situation on the surface of the narrator's perception and thoughts. It is characterized by the simple, monotonous tone, the “additive sentence structure - and, and, and -, the many 'was'”. Julia Kospach even felt herself reminded of the style of “student experience essays” by lining up the passages with “Then”.

Texts mounted in the novel reflect the thoughts of the protagonist: the monotonous dialogues of a language course repeat Andreas' own thoughts, with which he previously described the uniformity of his life, in a cheesy romance novel, Andreas thinks he recognizes the story of his own childhood love, which for Gustav Seibt bring an element of self-irony to the novel.

interpretation

Influences

Not only the title On a day like this refers to Georges Perec's novel A Man Who Sleeps , in which the protagonist refuses to live, never leaves his apartment until he finally finds his way back to life. Peter Stamm prefixed his novel with a quote from this moment in life:

"It's a day like this, a little later, a little earlier, on which everything starts anew, on which everything begins, on which everything continues."

- Georges Perec : a man who sleeps

The protagonist's indifference reminded many reviewers of Albert Camus ' story The Stranger . Lovenberg also referred to Gustave Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale as well as to François Ozone's film portrait of a dying man, The Time That Remains . Even from the setting in Paris , Ursula März felt like she was in a film by Éric Rohmer . As in The Green Shine , Andreas caught a glimpse of the lucky symbol of green light at the end of the novel by the sea .

The protagonist: midlife crisis, stranger, generation or type of person?

Ulrike Baureithel saw a day like this as a novel of a midlife crisis . From the loss of meaning, a burnout syndrome to the urge to make up for the unlived life through an outbreak, all the clichés of this crisis are lined up. In the protagonist, this mixes with the “tendency of fearful men to keep women at a distance”.

For Hage, Andreas remained an indifferent person "who is so completely indifferent to himself, who is neither interested in his own past nor in the future - and who walks through the present like a dreamer, a passerby." He was like Meursault from Camus' The stranger . Even if he does not develop into a murderer like him, his actions remain strange to the reader.

Lovenberg recognized in Andreas the representative of a generation "with an emotional total loss" who had lost the meaning of existence without drastic changes in life. Roman Bucheli, on the other hand, saw Andreas less as a representative of a generation than as a type of person who lived in the Ennui and had his literary forerunners in works by Chekhov , Thomas Mann or Robert Musil .

The departure into the past

According to Felicitas von Lovenberg, Peter Stamm draws the "portrait of a life avoider" who leads his life with the feeling of having missed the decisive moment. He never confessed his love to his youthful crush Fabienne. As a substitute, he was now looking for proximity to her French homeland and leading an indefinite life there. Only the existential threat of a medical diagnosis pulls him out of his lethargy. With a Citroën 2CV , the car of his youth, he set off back in time to “find something again that he lost a long time ago.” According to Bucheli, a Diana statue is the pledge of his unfulfilled love.

But after Rainer Moritz, Andreas' longing does not apply to Fabienne, it is the feeling of childhood love that he longs for. In the meeting with Fabienne it becomes apparent that the old story is not yet over for both of them. But after the unique act of love, the reunion leads to the realization that a return to the past is impossible, frees Andreas from his wistful memories and enables the departure into a new future with Delphine.

In Andreas' departure, Claus Lüpkes recognized “the old dialectic of death and life”. Only in the face of death did he recognize the finiteness of his life, which was to be lived in the given period. According to Andreas Isenschmid, it remains unclear for a long time whether the protagonist's departure is aimed at a new life or in preparation for his own extinction. Only after meeting Fabienne again do the ambiguities resolve, Andreas becomes active and faces life.

reception

On a day like this , 90,000 copies were sold for less than two years after its publication. The novel reached number 2 on the NZZ's bestseller list , on which it was from June to October 2006. He was included on the long list of the German Book Prize 2006. In August 2006 he reached the top position of the SWR best list .

The ratings of the literary criticism, in which the novel was lively discussed, remained inconsistent. Volker Hage read an “exciting novel” with “great elegance” in which the “highly refined art of the narrator Stamm” arouses curiosity about the protagonist: “How Stamm plays with the hero's longing for the great love he has missed, how he - with all the wit and a good deal of irony - knows how to build tension, that can only be admired. ”On the other hand, for Julia Kospach, the novel“ didn't get going ”. Even the happy ending remains “as cool as Delphine's body is wet from sea water”. How Andreas felt in the end far from all things, she felt far from the novel.

Above all, the assessment of the laconic style typical of Stamm remained controversial. Claus Lüpkes read about “[great] feelings, told in a minimalist and cool tone.” On the other hand, from Gustav Seibt's point of view, Stamm sent “a trivialized Camus hero towards a Rosamunde-Pilcher conclusion”. He recognized the “reader-friendly lack of resistance” and came to the conclusion: “We are dealing with a well-polished copy of the airport literature that distracts us so much that we cannot ignore the announcements about the connecting flights.” Andreas Isenschmid praised, “how thoughtful , imaginative and discreet [...] this novel is constructed. ”Nonetheless, it is“ told in a pleasantly reserved but, in the long run, rather arid language of dried flowers ”.

Various reviewers compared On a day like this with previous works by Stamm. For Klaus Zeyringer, the novel could not connect to Approximate Landscape . He criticized: “A simple story, quite predictable. But one would like to be surprised - also - by literature. "For Ulrike Baureithel, Andreas remained" a pale variant of the first-person narrator from Agnes ". The novel lacks “the literary flesh that needs to be dissected.” In contrast, Roman Bucheli found “sensual fullness and narrative conciseness” in the novel, and he judged: “Peter Stamm has never been so exciting from the midst of the Existence told out. "

From Ursula März's point of view, one could "object to pretty much everything to this novel that was regularly objected to Stamm's literature": the redundancy of lacony, a slow plot structure, routine and a pinch of sentimentality. Nevertheless, she came to the conclusion: “Peter Stamm has attempted to let a story that began in gloomy monotony end with the lightness of a Rohmer film. He succeeded. ”Volker Denkel described the novel as a success, but he wished the author“ a new topic ”so that he wouldn't have to discard it in the attic at the end.

Felicitas von Lovenberg reacted with annoyance to the "not very sympathetic protagonist" and his inexplicable success with women. Nevertheless, she showed herself taken with Peter Stamm's writing style: “The blurred, diffuse, approximate […] is masterfully conjured up.” So she concluded with a recommendation: “ On a day like this , a novel that is easy to read, but difficult to cope with. It should be read. Still today."

expenditure

Reviews

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Felicitas von Lovenberg: The big shrug .
  2. ↑ a b Volker Denkel: Longing in a new edition .
  3. ^ A b Klaus Zeyringer: Escape movements .
  4. ↑ a b Julia Kospach: Atlantic beach in backlight .
  5. ^ A b Rainer Moritz: The fleeting feeling of happiness .
  6. ↑ a b Gustav Seibt: Sylvie, Fabienne, Delphine .
  7. ↑ Georges Perec: A man who sleeps . dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-12981-6 , p. 141.
  8. ↑ a b Ursula March: Because Delphine is waiting for him .
  9. ↑ a b Ulrike Baureithel: The emptiness of the moment .
  10. ↑ a b Volker Hage: A stranger in Paris .
  11. ↑ a b c Roman Bucheli: Im Gegenlicht .
  12. ^ A b Claus Lüpkes: Book tip. Peter Stamm: On a day like this .
  13. ↑ a b Andreas Isenschmid: weak drive and hungry for life .
  14. ↑ Peer Teuwsen: Peter Stamm: "Writing channels my drives" . In: The World Week of April 2, 2008.
  15. ↑ Bestseller fiction in NZZ on Sunday July 16, 2006.
  16. ^ Longlist 2006 ( memento of November 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) of the German Book Prize .
  17. ↑ SWR best list August 2006 (PDF; 9 kB) at Südwestrundfunk .