The stars tennis balls

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The stars tennis balls (original title: The Stars' Tennis Balls ) is a satirical novel by the British actor and writer Stephen Fry , which was published for the first time in 2000 and published in a German translation by Ulrich Blumenbach in 2001 by Aufbau Verlag .

Stephen Fry signing books, 2009

title

Fry uses a partial quote from John Webster about the powerlessness of the individual against fate , "We are only the stars tennis balls, played, changed as it suits you" , from his play The Duchess of Malfi as the proposed motto and eponymous phrase. In the book itself he puts the quote in the mouth of Ned's fatherly friend, Babe, in the insane asylum .

content

The plot, which in a sense pays homage and updates the subject matter of The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas the Elder. Ä. first set in 1980 in the UK .

The hero of the story, Ned Maddstone , who is about to go to college and the epitome of the youthful future dreams of the British upper class , seems to be favored by fate all around. He looks good, is charming, funny and witty, has the right upper class accent , is a true sportsman in cricket and apparently popular with everyone. Added to this is the right background with a father in the House of Commons near the Ministry and the love of his beautiful and intelligent friend Portia Fendeman. But Ned fails to recognize that such happiness also brings irreconcilable envious people: “As a lover you belonged to a group favored by fate. Ned would never have dreamed that he would ever develop such a desire to just be himself. His sportiness, his attractiveness, his good-naturedness, his popularity - none of these had ever given him any particular satisfaction, if at all he was embarrassed. As a lover [...] he was so bursting with pride that he hardly recognized himself ”.

A dangerous trio has conspired against him. The spiritual leader is the complex social climber Ashley Barson-Garland, who hates the jovial good nature of Ned and the fact that he happened to be able to look behind the facade by reading Barson-Garland's diary. He also envies Ned for having everything Ashley ever wanted - even though Ned got him an assistant professor with his father. With Rufus Cade, a drug addict bon vivant , whom Ned once took from the senior cricket team as team captain, the second conspirator in the league emerges. Gordon Fendeman, Portia's cousin, rounds off the trio, as he is in love with his cousin himself. When Ned takes one last letter from the dying sailing instructor on a school sailing trip in the Irish Sea , he and the readers have no idea that it will mean even worse disaster for him. But shortly after the trip home from Scotland , the three classmates already set their trap: They secretly put marijuana in his jacket. Just as he is about to deliver the letter to the address given, he is arrested by drug investigators - and disappears without a trace. So without a trace and irretrievable that even the trio must be amazed. What nobody suspects for a long time is the doubly fateful coincidence of fate that Ned's father, with a special government representative to cover up such affairs from the ranks of the secret service , turned the buck into a gardener.

Because Oliver Delft literally has corpses himself in the basement and the letter found turns out to be that of an old IRA - courier to his own mother, whose past as the daughter of an executed Irish Fenian was hidden from the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service due to multiple marriages and stays abroad stayed. So disclosure of this letter would end his own career. He cleverly covers up all traces, first pushes his mother to the country and later, as demented, to a retirement home, as well as Ned under the influence of drugs as crazy to a Swedish insane asylum located on a remote island in the Baltic Sea , which has been good for the British secret service several times Has rendered services. To the public he feigns a kidnapping by the Provisional IRA .

While his old "friends" quickly forget him, all have careers for their part and Gordon and Portia, who never wanted to forget him, become a couple, Ned, like his literary role model Edmond Dantès , languishes in an escape-proof manner not in prison, but on an island in the Madhouse in the care of the diabolical Dr. Mallo. After an infinite period of drug and drug intoxication in solitary confinement, which he can hardly grasp, he succeeds in simulating the collapse of his carers and no longer taking the medication. Thanks to the involuntary help of a social organization that advocates contact with other English-speaking patients, he has been in the generally accessible lounge for the first time in ten years.

There he met the babe, who had been in prison since 1969, on the chessboard . He pretends to have completely lost his mind, but is in reality a former British secret service agent who, in turn, has been deported here after a planned disclosure book. The extremely intelligent babe now makes it his task to shape the spirit of the completely demoralized 27-year-old, who looks ten to 20 years older with his hair now graying on his temples, in a positive way, to shape the chess game to perfection for him and all of his own Knowledge of logic such as B. Ockham's razor or Zeno's paradox of the pile as a legacy. "Skill equals necessity times confidence through time" is Babe's motto. Above all else, he trains Ned's view of his own fate in order to find out the cause of this misery. When, after another eight years, Ned identifies the real culprits for his fate thanks to his psychological skills and knowledge of the secret service, all he has to do is break out of the clinic and take revenge . Since Babe suspects that he will not be able to do this in terms of health, he gives him the secret numbers of bank accounts that he once opened with secret service funds.

Like the Count of Monte Christo , Ned arrives as the corpse of his friend from the island and, thanks to the immeasurable funds of 324 million pounds from Germany , is now starting to build up a corporate empire as the mysterious Simon Cotter in the Internet age , which he at the same time the favor of the media and the interest of the public and the powerful. Only in this way can he successfully turn the greed of his former friends or enemies against them.

Ashley, now a powerful political puller in the background, he invites privately to organize surveillance hardware to curb computer crime and pornography , in order to then stumble upon an Internet sex scandal and drive him into suicide. He incites Rufus, who is also active in the Internet industry, on detours via "found" drugs on the neck of the Mafia , who dismembered him alive. He forces Oliver Delft to swallow hot coals like the Portia in William Shakespeare's drama Julius Caesar instead of spending his old age in the madhouse. Gordon, who built a business empire in the fair trade business, dies of a heart attack after Ned unmasked him as a ruthless expropriator and rapist.

But in the end - in contrast to the role model - he is unable to regain Portia's love of all things and returns disillusioned and close to madness to the Swedish island, "where Babe's spirit would come to him and instruct him further".

Narrative technique and language

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Fry's narrative technique is multi-perspective and reports from the perspective of all six protagonists predominantly in the third person. Exceptions are those chapters in which Fry uses the stylistic device of the classic letter or diary novel. The novel ends with a quote from the first love letter that Ned tears up on the crossing and throws overboard.

The language adapts to the respective circumstances and is sometimes quite sarcastic when it comes to paraphrasing disgust. An excerpt from the dialogue between Philippa and Oliver Delft may serve as an example: “I couldn't hold the chair when you were born […]. For many years I wondered if the excitement the midwife threw away the child and wrapped the shit up and put it on my chest. I'm sure now. "

The ever-present social criticism of the establishment also shines through when Fry sees the former conspirators assess themselves: "Conceit, ambition and bad soap had, as Oliver discovered, engraved themselves into Ashley's features as deeply as they did in the heyday of the Empire gin and tropical sun Had left traces on their faces. "

In addition, as a member of the upper class and a Cambridge graduate , Fry uses numerous citations from literature that do not necessarily correspond to the German educational canon .

Fry does not only use the plot, even the names and situations give parallels. The involvement in the intrigues surrounding Napoleon Bonaparte becomes that of the IRA, and the Abbé as an anagram Babe . Another anagram is the name of the ship: the "Pharaon" Dumas becomes an orphana . It is no coincidence that the names of the villains resemble those of the older model: Rufus Cade, Garland, Gordon Fendeman and Oliver Delft can hardly deny that they are related to Caderousse, Danglars, Fernand Mondego and de Villefort. Some critics saw in the sanatorium similarities to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain , in the Vita Babes one may also parallels with the figure of of Sean Connery embodied John Patrick Mason in the film The Rock - Rock of the decision notice - but even this figure is Dumas borrowed. On the other hand, Mercedes and Portia could pass as "automobile" puns , since the women's name sounds similar to Porsche in the English language . Albert Fendemen , on the other hand, is a homonym of Albert de Morcerf .

review

Susanne Balthasar felt well entertained, but found the characters described too one-dimensional. "The successful conceptual and academic acrobatics crushed the storytelling." Nevertheless, the result is exciting, the construction of the plot "crystal clear" and complex. "In times when the adventure novel has gone out of fashion and the disappearance of stories is lamented, such a crazy plot is almost bold."

Frank Schäfer saw the work as a colportage novel , which was so cleverly constructed that one does not immediately recognize the literary model. The amusing book, which is practiced in "literary detective games", therefore invites you to "intertextual guesswork" and to cross-read Alexandre Dumas' novel.

Joachim Scholl's verdict was clearly positive: “Fry steals the entire story royalty-free , changes the name, relocates the plot to 20th century England and delivers a squeaky clean, highly exciting novel that does not rank as one of the most brazen and successful plagiarism Only in the history of literature in English should take […] the rascal Stephen Fry clearly recognized the novelty of literary history that Alexandre Dumas brought into the world in its modernity. The Count of Monte Christo is the first literary hero to triumph by the sheer power of money. Edmond Dantès does not destroy his opponents with gun in hand, but by ruining them. [...] After this novel, one resolves to become a better person. "

"For those who complain about the lack of gripping plot in contemporary literature, Stephen Fry's new novel is the long overdue answer."

"A firework of slapstick and hilarious dialogues." ( Hamburger Abendblatt )

Tina Manske found the work equally praiseworthy and terrifying: “This is how Fry turns the classic into a post-modern media drama in which Shakespeare is also mentioned in detail. What begins as an amusing satire on English society is increasingly turning into a thriller, and the reader is sometimes almost shocked at how stringently Fry develops the drama and brings it to a close. With the atrocities that Ned Maddstone inflicts on his enemies, even Fry's humor no longer helps: you have to be very afraid of this angel of vengeance. "

expenditure

Audio book

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi . 1623. Act V. Scene 3
  2. ↑ Stephen Fry: The Stars Tennis Balls . Aufbau-Taschenbuchverlag, 3rd edition Berlin 2003, p. 52.
  3. ↑ Fry, 2003, p. 187
  4. ↑ Note: Simon was Babes ' actual first name , which he rarely used as the youngest offspring of an old Scottish noble family.
  5. ↑ Fry, 2003, p. 390.
  6. ↑ Fry, 2003, pp. 9-23.
  7. ↑ Fry, 2003, pp. 24-32 or pp. 58-62.
  8. ↑ Fry, 2003, p. 114.
  9. ↑ Fry, 2003, p. 275.
  10. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau, August 9, 2002 ( Memento from October 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Die Tageszeitung, March 12, 2002
  12. ^ With the Count of Monte Christo . In: Tagesspiegel , January 26, 2001.
  13. ↑ Review: Fiction Glut im Schlund - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 22, 2001
  14. ↑ The star tennis balls. In: Aufbau-Verlag.de. Retrieved March 8, 2020 ( scroll under press comments ).
  15. ↑ www.literaturkritiken.de