Happiness in times far from happiness

The happiness in times far from happiness is a novel by the German writer Wilhelm Genazino , which was published in February 2009. At the center of the plot is a PhD philosopher who works in a laundry chain and is gradually alienating himself from life. His partner's desire to have children triggers a relationship crisis, the loss of his job is followed by admission to a psychiatry. Yet in his observations of the world he retains a claim to happiness.

The novel was well received in the German-language feature pages. He reached the SWR best list and won the Rinke Language Prize in 2010 .

content

After studying philosophy and completing his dissertation on Martin Heidegger , Gerhard Warlich only found a job as a driver in a large laundry . Today, 14 years later, he has risen to head of organization. His work includes the rationalization of operational processes including observation of the drivers on their routes. He has settled down with work, which does not challenge him intellectually, but gives him freedom, and looks at life with constant melancholy .

Warlich's partner, Traudel, on the other hand, is pretty and ambitious. Since the bank clerk was promoted to branch manager, she has been commuting to the provinces every day. Even their clothes reveal their different character: Traudel enjoys festive evening wear, Warlich always wears a torn undershirt under the correct clothes, and his pair of trousers, which he calls time trousers, have been weathering for days on the balcony, for Warlich a symbol of his own weathering. In order to cure his suffering in life, he plans to found a "school of appeasement" and would like to hold lectures on the subject of "building happiness in environments distant from happiness".

During a visit to the play One Long Day's Journey into the Night by Eugene O'Neill , Warlich realizes how much Traudels and his life are heading towards the life of his parents, whose marriage put the happy young people into daily stress and unhappiness. When he feels constrained by Traudel’s desire to have children, their relationship falls into a crisis.

Warlich tries again and again to keep things in his life that contradict the expectations placed on him. But when he watches a demonstration during working hours as a spectator, he loses his position. When he held out a slice of bread instead of his hand to a childhood friend when they met, it was only she who became disturbed by this, and after a crying fit , Traudel took him to a psychiatric clinic.

Even when immobilized by medication, Warlich remains an attentive and precise observer of the environment; again and again he sinks into his contemplations and he discovers details that others have not noticed. When he returns to the clinic at the end of an exit and asks himself which of his collected observations he should report to the doctor, he recognizes that it is fortunate that he will continue to have choices about his life in the future.

reception

The novel was well received in the German-language feature pages. Marked Otto A. Böhmer it in the TIME as "a smart and cheerful, sometimes pleasantly sad book, maybe even the best of the author," Burghard Schlicht calls on the websites of the Hessian Radio "complex and intelligent composed". In the online portal Der Westen , Gudrun Norbisrath emphasizes that the novel reflects "wonderfully clear everyday life and its complex effect on the individual". Jörg Plath also points out clear parallels to earlier works by Genazino on the website of the TV broadcaster ARTE . The novel is told "as usual, tightly and casually, and the mixture of everydayness and resignation, rebellion and bizarre is just as well known as the almost complete absence of a plot".

In February and March 2009 the book reached the SWR best list . In 2010 it won the Rinke Language Prize , with the jury emphasizing that it represented "the human condition as a bitter tragic comedy of disturbance and disappearance, in which the supposedly normal becomes strange again".

expenditure

• Wilhelm Genazino: Happiness in times far from happiness . Hanser, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-4462-3265-5 .
• Wilhelm Genazino: Happiness in times far from happiness . Reading by Sylvester Groth . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-30658-3 .

Web links

• Audio sample read in by Genazino from The luck in times unlucky at Literaturport

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Happiness in times far from happiness at perlentaucher .
2. ↑ Otto A. Böhmer: Review in the ZEIT from April 23, 2009
3. ↑ Burghard Schlicht: Review at hr-online,  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. seen November 19, 2011  
4. ↑ Gudrun Norbisrath: Review in the online portal of the WAZ media group. Published on March 20, 2009, viewed on November 19, 2011
5. ↑ Jörg Plath: Review on arte.tv from March 10, 2009 ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , as seen on November 19, 2011 
6. ↑ SWR best list February 2009 (PDF; 110 kB), March 2009 (pdf; 93 kB).
7. ↑ Information on the Rinke Language Prize 2010 on the Guntram and Irene Rinke Foundation website .