The name of the world

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The Name of the World (English original title: The Name of the World ) is a novel by the American writer Denis Johnson . He appeared in 2000 in the New York publishing house Harper Collins . The German translation by Thomas Überhoff was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 2007.

content

After being kicked out of Washington as a political advisor , Michael Reed is in his early 50s and assistant professor of history at a university in the Midwest . He does little to recommend himself for a full professorship, but he is surprised when his temporary position is cut at the end of the academic year. Half-heartedly, he applies to the Forum for Interpretive Science , but ultimately decides against the financially well-funded but completely superfluous bogus institute. In his private life, he has been living in seclusion since his wife and daughter died in a traffic accident. He still hasn't got over her loss.

On various occasions, Reed repeatedly meets a young art student named Flower Cannon, who reminds him of his wife and daughter with her idiosyncrasy and independence, but whose outstanding characteristic, as he later confesses to her, is her youth. She gets drunk at an academic reception, shaves her pubic hair in front of an audience at an artistic performance, performs as an amateur stripper in a nearby casino, and attends a singing evening at a Protestant free church with a deaf-mute boy. Reed, who has followed her, experiences for the first time in the midst of all the believers the complete absence of a god, which is a liberation for him, who has struggled with the injustice of God since the death of his family.

That evening, Reed accompanies the young woman to her studio, ready to get involved with her, even if he has the feeling that he is killing his wife and daughter for good. She asks him for a sample of manuscripts, which, like the samples of numerous other manuscripts before, she locks in the darkness of a box. Reed writes the words: "The name of the world". Before any physical intimacy occurs, Flower Cannon tells him the story of her name. As a little girl, she was kidnapped for one day by a man whose face she remembers Reed. That man gave her the name "Flower", which she officially adopted as the daughter of hippies . She has only vague, almost mystical memories of the kidnapping, as if a fairy tale had taken shape. She remembers the presence of another girl whom the man said was blind. But she herself had the feeling that the girl would see everything.

These words remind Reed of his daughter, who when she died was the same age as the kidnapped Flower. He leaves the studio in a rush, drifts aimlessly through the night and starts a fight with a group of college students who he feels provoked by. He demolishes her car and evades law enforcement by leaving town that night. Reed retreats to the solitude of Alaska , where he is seized by a violent fit of crying and bathes in tears. He reports as a war correspondent in the Gulf War and then works as a journalist, in which he sees a more immediate, livelier form of historical science. He continues his life undeterred and finds it "extremely remarkable".

reception

The narrow novel, which some reviewers simply referred to as a novella , was largely welcomed by the feature pages when it appeared late in the German language, although it does not come close to the author's earlier masterpieces. Lyrical scenes and religious symbolism were emphasized, but also literary poses and the explanations provided. The novel stayed on the SWR list of critics for three months .

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Review notes on The Name of the World at perlentaucher.de
  2. ↑ SWR best list from October 2007 , November 2007 , December 2007 (pdf).