The love stupidity

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Die Liebesblödigkeit is a novel by Wilhelm Genazino that was published by Hanser in 2005 .

content

The story is told from the perspective of an intellectual who earns his living by lecturing about the apocalypse . In comfortable hotels he gives lectures on the anticipated danger of leisure fascism, which presents the downgrading of marginalized groups as an entertainment program and in this way conquers people without resistance. The world of pedestrian zones, screwed up intellectuals and their projects appears absurd and destructive.

The 52-year-old hero of the story has made himself comfortable in this scenario. Two lovers, Sandra, chief secretary, 9 years younger than him, and the pianist Judith, 52 years old, who lives from tutoring and piano lessons, ensure contact with eroticism and reality. Nevertheless, the hero sees the core of his problems here alongside hypochondriac fears of old age: He is faced with the decision of which of the two women to leave.

subjects

The novel mainly revolves around the topic of aging . Hypochondriac fears, external decay and minor illnesses occupy the main and minor characters. The absurdity of the health system and efforts to protect one's own health are presented, from orthopedic specialist shops to the sporting commitment of retirees to the establishment of medical practices. It is precisely the fear of losing sexuality in the aging figures that leads to a sarcastic and detailed description of the joy of experimenting in this area.

Another topic is the “professional boundaries of the free-floating intellectuals” who have not been able to save themselves in the institutions. Panic advisors, disgusters, shock and dust researchers, agents for outraged people in a medium-sized company entertain the established middle class with lectures and are confronted with painting secretaries or absurd business ideas. The destructive of the postmodern world appears in fool's costume, even those affected by rationalization and marginalization do not succeed in taking their own problems seriously as long as there are still niches. The “messing up of the world” appears harmless in the absurdities of automation, the hypochondriac fears, the ridiculousness of the everyday world. To the hero of the novel, his own environment appears again and again as unreal, as a cynical staging, contact with reality must always be consciously established.

The "love" is based on a network of misunderstandings and lies, real openness or real closeness appear only as a desirable but unrealizable requirement. But it remains the most important kinetic energy of what is happening alongside professional activities, which are also undermined as dubious. Nevertheless, there are moments of tolerance for the other in all his doubt, in his aging and with his health problems. The sexuality is lived relatively soberly and objectively, without great inhibitions and illusions, especially the women make their wishes clear.

The “Apocalypse” runs through the text as a motif, referring to various sources from the Revelation of John to modern doomsday scenarios and private fears for one's own existence. The reference to the great catastrophes always seems ironically broken, the real problems appear as completely privatized reactions to the everyday madness. The novel interprets the problems of mankind as no longer dramatizable, the time of the great tragedies as closed, at least in West German reality. Private catastrophes and social misery are certainly addressed, the first-person narrator repeatedly encounters homeless people, beggars, and decrepit people, and feels the obligation to give alms. However, the narrator does not escape his first-person perspective, not even when life catastrophes suddenly affect his consciousness, the memory of an abortion with his ex-wife, for example, of the poverty of childhood. At the end, the narrator undergoes therapy with the panic counselor, who advises him to first observe the surroundings from the roof of a house through binoculars, later to put suitcases with superfluous things from his life somewhere and watch what happens. What he discovers are two things: the admirable hopes and timelessness of childhood and the ability to say goodbye to things that were directly part of his life. The novel appears in this area as a lesson in stoic composure.

style

The events are told chronologically from the perspective of the male hero. The text entertains mainly through self-irony, funny little anecdotes and bonmots: "I always wanted my father to be better off than me." (P. 121)

Between humor, fears and cynicism, the hero moves through the absurdly drawn modern world of automatics and attempts at meaning. What is striking is the present tense as a continuous tense of narration, the farewell to the past tense. The narrator remains in the role of the observer, a perspective that - as flashbacks show - he already assumed as a child. If there is one development of the narrator, it is most likely that he accepts his unwillingness to make any life decision of importance as insurmountable.

Reviews

Helmut Böttiger writes in his review Die Apocalypse wears support stockings (DIE ZEIT February 24, 2005 No. 9):

“The corruption of the world continues. And Wilhelm Genazino finds the right sentences for it. In the last few years the silent author, who drove his chats on and on on the edge of the abyss, has secretly become the recorder of social consciousness. That made him rise to the Büchner Prize winner. [...] Even the heroes of Genazino's last books were all marginal figures of the cultural milieu, unpaid private scholars, outsiders of the company - with the freelance apocalyptic the author has now achieved the closest possible proximity to his own existence as a freelance writer. This brings the response to his latest novels to the point. Genazino described the unsteadiness, and the hold was suddenly within reach. The apocalyptic explains his popularity as follows: 'People like to listen to me because I don't give up the world completely.' "

Patrick Bahners writes in his review He follows her shoes, blushing, Wilhelm Genazinos merciful comedy (FAZ March 16, 2005)

“In the act of concentrating on the apocalypse, inhibitions drive away; In the fear of the end of the day, you can make yourself comfortable like in a train compartment, unless you are considerate. [...] The first-person narrator sees a dead fly in the sparkling clean Swiss hotel room; It wants to appear 'very wonderful' to him, the carcass as a representative of life in the midst of sterile kitsch. Later we learn that his father used to catch flies in the cupped hand and sometimes locked them in the dark until they fell on the kitchen table as if dead. Wherever we go, this ineffable is circled here, our parents have already been. Revenants of apparent possibilities of shamelessly innocent observation encounter the first-person narrator at every turn in the emblematic figures of the homeless and children. When he walks on, they confront him with Genazino's characteristic thought of the diffuse guilt of bare life, of looking away and letting die. Genazino goes beyond Bergson: In laughing at the embarrassing situation of the outsider, with Bergson an indication of the ruthlessness of the socialization, he would like to see an inarticulate form of sympathy. "

Ijoma Mangold is more critical in the SZ (March 12, 2005):

"Let's listen to one of his lectures: 'The disclosure of discretion in public space is a preliminary stage to the fascist orderly thinking, I say in a slightly raised voice.' Of course this is a Richard Sennett caricature - as such not only intended by the author, but also seen through by the narrator himself. He is well aware of the dubious hollowness of his clothes. But to be aware of the hollowness of one's own actions and still continue them, that is what defines the cynic. The hero of Genazino's new book is a self-satisfied cynic. [...] Perhaps two women are actually 'the minimum luxuriance with which we can fight our poor life'. In any case, it's funny stuff. But this is where the problem lies. In previous books by Genazino, humor was always something like an existential noise accompanying the individual way his characters walked through the world. In 'Liebesblödigkeit', on the other hand, we see a punch line designer working on the drawing board. 'I would not have thought,' says the hero, for example, 'that the apocalypse would go so well this year.' Is he saying it that way because you build such a strange sentence? Sometimes you even get the impression that the first-person narrator pauses briefly after particularly successful formulations such as the 'old-age security of our sexuality' or the so-called 'wobbling erection' and looks the reader in the face from the pages to see whether there are any facial features because I also made a smile. "

literature

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