1979 (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1979 is the title of a 2001 novel by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht , whose novel Fiberland triggered a boom in so-called pop literature in 1995 .

Synopsis

The plot takes place, as the title suggests, in 1979. The first-person narrator travels with his ex-boyfriend Christopher to Tehran , which at that time is under the sign of the Islamic revolution in Khomeini . When Christopher dies after an excess of drugs, the narrator is encouraged by a mysterious Romanian to circumnavigate the sacred Mount Kailash in Tibet . There he is picked up by the Chinese army and interned in a penal camp in the Lop Nor desert .

analysis

In view of the political events, the first-person narrator remains remarkably unaffected for the reader; He names a few social and social events in the context of the Islamic revolution as well as in the communist camp, but immediately turns to insignificant details, such as B. the interior, art, food, music. This emphasizes the apolitical (which is more of an emphasis or reevaluation of the perception of the political and historical), which at first glance does not fit so much into 1979 as into the time of the turn of the millennium.

Ultimately, therefore, the reader has to reflect on the experiences for the first-person narrator; he seems unable to do so or refuses to talk about it. It is with this narrative position that "1979" tries to avoid potential pitfalls like an all too simple caricature of the dandy in the turmoil of history. The first-person narrator in no way steps confidently through this apocalyptically exaggerated scenario. Huber (2007) points out that the esthete (sensu Kracht) as a whole “is forced to individuation through his aestheticistic view of the world. Making contact with his fellow human beings cannot be a direct contact, because as an esthete he is used to sublimating feelings through an aesthetic code. "

Translations

The novel has been translated into Dutch, Estonian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Italian, Hebrew, Spanish, Danish, Romanian and French (alluding to Samuel Beckett's “Fin de Partie” as “Fin de Party”).

Literary reception

The novel and the author are the subject of a relatively large number of scientific (qualification) papers. It is increasingly assumed that the novel should be read within the framework of a post-modern understanding of literature , or that it was written from such a perspective. Examples of this are the work of Drügh, Roenneke, von der Heide, Schneider, Vilas-Boas and Weyand.

Theater and film

Since 2004 a stage version from 1979 has been running at various German-speaking theaters under the direction of Matthias Hartmann ; at the Schauspielhaus Zürich , the Schauspielhaus Bochum , the Lower Saxony State Theater in Hanover and the Burgtheater Vienna .

Trivia

  • The original hardcover edition of the novel was a. designed by Peter Saville , a graphic designer from Manchester, known for designing record covers and the like. a. from Joy Division , Suede , Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark , Pulp or New Order , especially from their 12 ″ covers from Blue Monday .
  • The novel is dedicated to the pop journalist Olaf Dante Marx , who died in 1993 .
  • The dtv paperback edition features a reproduction of a painting by the Norwegian (self-proclaimed kitsch ) painter Odd Nerdrum .
  • An audio book version, read by the author, on 3 CDs is also available. It bears a quote from Jean Baudrillard's The Symbolic Exchange and Death on the cover.
  • The above-mentioned original edition is also set in Bauer Bodoni , a mannered typeface from the Romantic era with provocative line width contrasts. As a result, the book differs considerably and also noticeably for the layman from the Garamond mainstream of most current book publications.

supporting documents

  1. ^ T. Huber (2007): Aestheticism in Fin de Siècle and Popliteratur: Hugo von Hofmannsthal's lyrical dramas and Christian Krachts Roman e. Scientific term paper to obtain the academic degree of a Magister Artium of the University of Hamburg, p. 82f.
  2. ↑ Drügh, H. (2007) '... and I was happy to finally lose weight seriously': Christian Kracht's novel 1979 as the end of pop literature? Effective word German language and literature in research and teaching: 1.
  3. ^ Roenneke, S. (2007) Camp and Prosa. Camp in literature using the example of prose excerpts by the authors Irving Rosenthal, Kirby Doyle and Hubert Selby as well as the novel 1979 by Christian Kracht . Master's thesis, Ruhr University Bochum.
  4. ↑ von der Heide, T. (2007) "A Buddhist Bildungsroman - Christian Krachts 1979 as Farewell to Pop", Master's thesis, University of Cologne, Institute for German Language and Literature.
  5. ↑ Schneider, M. (2006) "Destruction of the Self, Expectation of the Other: Sacrificial Figures in Imaginary Orient Travel Der Sandmann by Bodo Kirchhoff and 1979 by Christian Kracht," in When the rose skies dance. Oriental motifs in German-language literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London.
  6. ↑ Vilas-Boas, Gonçalo (2007) "Krachts 1979: a novel of demythizations". In: Mythizations, demythizations, remythizations. For the presentation of contemporary history in contemporary German literature. Munich: Iudicium, 2007, pp. 82-96.
  7. ↑ Björn Weyand: The infinite circulation: Christian Kracht's novel "1979" (2001) and the political economy of signs in pop modernism . In: The Poetics of the Brand. Consumer culture and literary practices 1900–2000. de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030117-5 .
  8. ↑ The painting ( Memento of October 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on nerdrum.com

Web links

Interesting

Reviews