Fiber country

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fiberland is the 1995 debut novel by the Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing house by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht, who was born in 1966 . Initially received rather cautiously by criticism, the novel is now one of the best-known German-language literary texts of the 1990s. According to Christian Kracht, Fibersland is the first part of a triptych consisting of the novels Fibersland , 1979 and I will be here in the sunshine and in the shade .

Fiber country has been translated into Russian, French, Ukrainian, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Latvian, Swedish and Lithuanian so far (as of 2019).

content

Travel stays in the novel

The novel tells the story of a journey. The first-person narrator is a nameless man in his late twenties and the son of a rich family who drives or flies from north to south through Germany and on to Switzerland. He is more of an involuntary spectator than a participant in the events described. From Sylt he finally reached Zurich after stays in Hamburg , Frankfurt , Heidelberg , Munich and Meersburg on Lake Constance . In each of these places he experiences excessive alcohol, drug and sex parties, which the participants no longer experience as positive experiences, but are merely an expression of their hopelessness. The protagonist observes the decadence of his generation - best illustrated by the example of a wealthy childhood friend who throws a luxury party in his parents' villa on Lake Constance and then commits suicide - and, while at the same time reflecting on his own childhood memories, registers his personal decline. The novel is divided into eight unnamed chapters.

Chapter 1

The narrator meets his old friend Karin at the northernmost point of Sylt , whom he still knows from the Salem boarding school . He seems absent, because while Karin tells him a lot, he doesn't listen to her. During the rather one-sided conversation it becomes clear that the first-person narrator and his acquaintance live in wealthier circumstances. On the way to Kampen they stop at the beach to pick up Karin's friends Anne and Sergio. After a long champagne drink in the "Odin", Karin and the narrator leave the bar and drive to the beach. After they kissed there, Karin would like to see him again the next evening, although he will have left by then. When Karin left, the narrator decides not to travel to Sylt anymore.

Chapter 2

After leaving Sylt, the first-person narrator is on the train to Hamburg-Altona . There he consumes five small bottles of wine, the last of them in the train toilet. When he arrives in Hamburg , he visits his friend Nigel, with whom he lives. He thinks his apartment is dearly furnished but shabby. In general he thinks about a lot, mainly about others, but then remembers his first love and the day when he threw up and relieved himself in her bed while drunk. He accompanies his friend Nigel to a party at which he throws a pill for the first time in his life and then has to deal with the consequences. Disgusted by himself and a girl who threw up in the bathroom, he takes a taxi back to Nigel because he could not find him at the party.

Chapter 3

After the first-person narrator arrives at Nigel's home, he deliberately opens the bedroom door because he has heard suspicious noises and sees his friend, a jazz freak and a black model, who were also at the party, having a threesome which is explicitly described. Due to his shocked condition, he goes to the airport and buys a ticket to Frankfurt. He annoys other passengers with his inappropriate behavior and fantasizes about the actress Isabella Rossellini . The mood is depressed and he seems lonely.

Chapter 4

The first-person narrator is in Frankfurt Airport . After leaving the airport, he takes a taxi to the Hotel Frankfurter Hof . He remembers his old friend Alexander. In his hotel room he lies on his bed and thinks of Alexander. He finally calls him tense when he suddenly feels sick. He falls to the ground and vomits. When he then takes a bath, he falls asleep. After he wakes up, everything is miraculously tidy and nothing can be seen of the previous incident. He decides to go to Café Eckstein. There he thinks about different characters of girls and even flirts with one. Suddenly Alexander enters the café, but he does not recognize the narrator. The narrator takes Alexander's Barbour jacket from the back of the chair and pulls it on after Alexander has disappeared into the cellar.

Chapter 5

Since the narrator finds Frankfurt repulsive, he takes the train to Karlsruhe . However, after meeting trend researcher Matthias Horx, who is also known to him on the train , and who tells him that he is also on his way to Karlsruhe , he gets off early in Heidelberg , which, according to hearsay, is a beautiful city. First he checks into a hotel that reminds him of his childhood and then drives to a bar. There he meets Eugen, who takes him to a party. At the party he meets Nadja and has a long conversation with her. When the narrator wants to get drinks for Nadja and himself, he runs into Eugen, who urges him to consume cocaine . However, he refuses and is subsequently sexually harassed by Eugen. The narrator finds Nadja in the basement, who is consuming drugs with Nigel, who is also at the party . Nigel and Nadja are no longer available. Horrified by what he saw, he escapes from the house in shock and faints.

Chapter 6

Rollo, an old friend who was also at the party in Heidelberg , shakes him awake. He passed out there and he is now in Munich. Rollo drives him to a rave on the outskirts of Munich , where the two attract attention because of their clothes, which are neat and they have no shaved heads. After a while a hippie sits down next to them, since he is very friendly, the two don't dare to turn him away. He offers them drugs that they accept but do not consume. A short time later they continue to the city center. They leave a bar after a short time because a fight with neo-Nazis breaks out there. The narrator spends the night in Rollo's large apartment in Bogenhausen .

Chapter 7

At the beginning of the chapter, the first-person narrator drives with his friend Rollo from Bogenhausen to Meersburg , where Rollo wants to celebrate his birthday in the villa of his wealthy parents on the lake. At the party he meets Karin again and has a short chat with her. Rollo is dependent on pills and alcohol, and the narrator also states that Rollo has no real friends, but only superficial acquaintances, so he seems very lonely. Towards the end of the chapter, the first-person narrator finds his friend Rollo drunk and drugged by the lake. He promises to get beers for both of them so that he can listen to Rollo afterwards. Instead, he escapes by stealing Rollos Porsche in order to take it to Zurich . The mood in the whole chapter seems very sad, everyone involved seems to be suppressing their feelings.

Chapter 8

Thomas Mann's grave

In the eighth chapter of the novel, the first-person narrator is on his way through Zurich . Two days have passed. Before that, he had moved into a hotel room and parked the stolen Porsche at Zurich Airport. He walks past street cafes and various shops. At a kiosk, he gets a daily newspaper and a pack of cigarettes after leaving his one a few minutes earlier at one of the street cafés. When, contrary to his usual habits, he reads the newspaper, he learns of the death of his friend Rollo, who had committed suicide after the party in his villa. The depressing mood that was prevalent from the start is even stronger.

He continues his way through Zurich and finds himself in the Zurich cemetery. There he searches in vain for the grave of Katia Mann and Thomas Mann . The reason for the search and the relationship between the two and the main character remain unknown. Darkness falls and he walks on to Lake Zurich . He meets a man with a rowboat at the jetty. He offers him 200 francs to drive him out to the middle of the lake. The story ends here. A suicide is hinted at, the end remains open: Allusions to Greek mythology ( Charon , Obolus , Hades ) supplement intertextual references to Cornelius Ferdinand Meyer , Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's ode “Der Zürchersee” or Goethe's poem “Ein Gleiches”. Whether the protagonist's nocturnal voyage out onto the lake is to be interpreted as preparation for suicide , as an early variation of the motif of disappearance typical of Kracht's work, or to be interpreted differently, is left to the judgment of the reader.

reception

When it appeared , fiberland was widely received in the German-language feuilletons, but initially discussed rather cautiously: Martin Halter, for example, wrote in the Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger: “There is a disgustingly arrogant snob who thinks his 'zeitgeist' dandy is literature and his banal ones Travel Notes for Mercilessly Sharp Observations ”. Comparisons of the book with the works of Anglo-American literature in particular, such as Jay McInerney or Bret Easton Ellis , were made early on .

A few years after its publication, fiber land was also widely discussed with a view to its possible contribution to the so-called second German pop literature . Moritz Baßler, for example, suggested that fiber land be interpreted as a “founding phenomenon ” of “literary pop”. The development of Kracht's other literary work has shown, however, that the work cannot be adequately met with the category of pop literature. Hubert Spiegel already noted for Kracht's second novel, which could no longer be grasped with the schemes of pop literature, with " 1979 " "the brief bloom of German pop literature [...] has come to its preliminary end". Feature sections and literary scholarship meanwhile agree that Kracht has at least a "tricky" relationship to the tradition of pop literature and that the complexity of the work calls for more complex interpretations than the attempted narrowing down to the pop literary tradition.

Richard Kämmerlings states that while fiberland gave the “starting signal for a literary modernization push that was called pop”, the book was hardly followed by a comparable one; even Kracht himself had turned his back on the here and now in his successor works.

Since the publication of the novel, there has been no consensus among its readers as to whether it was Kracht's intention to invite the reader to identify with the perspective of the first-person narrator, or whether he wanted to criticize it. Stefan Beuse believes that Kracht has “created a figure to identify with for large parts of an entire generation”, and Florian Illies praised the novel in 2000 with the words: “The seriousness with which Kracht introduced branded products and as the foundations of life in the early 1990s demonstrated, had a liberating effect. ”Moritz Baßler, on the other hand, praised Kracht for having succeeded in depicting“ the inability to communicate not only of the hero, but also of his class and generation colleagues in general ”. Finally, on the cover of the novel, Gregor von Rezzori praised it with the words: “ I have the precision of perception in a world that consists only of branded articles, this wide awakening in the void, the condemnation to collective banalities and the subtle feeling of differentiation I have never found it displayed so crystal clear. "

Georg Diez stated in 2002:

“Christian Kracht's Germany crossing, fiber country, is the most misunderstood book of the 1990s. It was liked with the wrong arguments and criticized with the right words; there was hardly any truth in the criticism. The book caught its readers so unprepared that they were amazed at how funny these stories from party Germany sounded, of fish-gosch, champagne and scampi on Sylt, of colorful pills, gay fraternities and black models in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Heidelberg, of small clubs in Munich and big festivals on Lake Constance - and if it sounded funny, it had to be pop, after all, they knew that from the colorful magazines, after all, everything was pop now. But this book had precious little to do with pop, whatever that was, and all those who just read the affirmation with that certain tenderness, with the crash, simply couldn't decipher that the suffering was itself spelled differently in the world today. "

Diez continues his thesis of the overexertion of novel readers in 1995 by claiming:

“In“ Fibers Land ”Kracht tells of the end of a world, even before the so-called mainstream had even recognized that this world existed, let alone that it was already over. Kracht's art is to combine the timeliness of his narrative with a feeling of existential abandonment. "

Philipp Laage also considers the novel to be an expression of suffering in the world:

“A big mistake about fibrous land lies in assuming Kracht irony on the basis of the remote language. What is described in the novel is deadly sad. Those involved fail to fill their lives with meaning. In a cosmos of brand mania, the need to demarcate and aesthetic trivialities, people flee into the intoxication from which they perish. What's nice about that? Nothing. The language is not either, it is soberly associative, less clear than the precise expression of the subsequent novels. But the apathy that is expressed in it makes the criticism of the neglect of social prosperity visible. The reader 'listens' if you will. In Fiberland, beauty is not an issue in language, but in the viewpoint of the actor. Aesthetic demands - just think of the often mentioned Barbour jacket - and content are wide apart. People are judged aesthetically; but what really happens has nothing to do with beauty. Seen in this way, fiber land falls out a little. The horror is not nice here, but it is no longer bad either. The vacuum of meaning cannot be filled, rather the events escalate in a continuous vortex of self-destructive apathy. "

Fiberland was compulsory reading in German for high school graduates in 2013 at secondary schools in Lower Saxony . This regulation was sharply criticized by the Lower Saxony / Bremen regional association of the “Fachverband Deutsch im Deutschen Germanistenverband”: It is “hardly understandable why Christian Kracht's novel fiber land is made compulsory reading and thus receives the status of exemplary for modern German literature ”. The novel refers to an attitude towards life that is not that of today's students. At best, it reflects the attitudes towards life of a small group of 40 to 60 year olds today. Kracht's first-person narrator is not exemplary for the modern man of the 21st century.

In contrast, Reinhard Wilczek judged in 2003: “Kracht's [...] narrator occupies (t) a perspective that describes consistently from the imagination of today's youth and everyday culture. It is the leitmotifs of a simplified portrayed adventure society that meet here: going on holiday, consuming alcohol, spending money, political disinterest, melancholy and tiredness of reflection. "

Interpretations

Fabian Lettow interprets the novel as a portrayal of an identity crisis: “ Fiberland describes the search for a modern identity that fails due to the external circumstances of a [...] postmodern space in whose coordinates the protagonist of the novel moves. This failure of a modern, i. H. Above all, the creation of a uniform identity forms the film for the self-design that can be seen in Kracht's other writings, which describes an 'identity in transition' constituted in the aesthetic discourse in the sense of a 'tinkering existence'. "

One of the special achievements of the novel is the “enormous artistry” of its language, “which is primarily about catchiness, rhythm, lightness”, or that with the novel “a certain detail realism and the depiction of the reality of the Federal Republic of Germany a generation optionally named X , Y , @ or Golf found more prominent entry into the literature “- Differentiated analyzes are now available for a number of individual aspects of the novel, for example the importance of Switzerland for fiber country or the structure of obvious intertextual references.

The author Kracht and the first-person narrator

Innokentij Kreknin claims that fiber land is not an autobiographical report, so that it is not permissible to equate author and first-person narrator. It is "rather about stylistically excellently implemented role prose". In fact, unlike the first-person narrator in Fiberland , Kracht was no longer solely dependent on financial donations from his parents or on a fortune derived from them as a source of income as early as 1995, and it is hard to imagine that Kracht had the same educational gaps as his protagonist in 1995 by z. B. did not know that Walther von der Vogelweide and Bernhard von Clairvaux were not “painters”. On the other hand, it is also not clear whether the novel is actually set in the year of publication. In Heidelberg, for example, the protagonist saw a cinema poster advertising the film Stalingrad , which had already been released in January 1993 .

Till Briegleb judged the first-person narrator in 2012: “Unlike Bret Easton Ellis, who in his novels interprets this rich boredom as structural violence and coldness, Kracht's description remains consistently at the level of a participant who - garnished with nice childhood memories and warm Moments - never questioning anything. His aggressive sidelong moments are rebellion without risk. The great indifference receives at most a mark of Weltschmerz. "

In an interview with Die Welt in 2009 , Kracht spoke about his relationship as an author to the first-person narrator in Fiberland : He wanted to “denounce” him like the entire “middle class”. His attempts to demarcate himself downwards are "tragicomic". Claudia Hasbach also thinks that Kracht wrote his work with critical intent: “The author wants to show the negative consequences life in the jaded, fast-moving and seemingly postmodern society can have on an immature individual. [...] The work would be a critical problem study of German society in the 90s, the negative aspects of which Kracht denounced under affirmation ”.

In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung in July 1995 , Christian Kracht replied to the question of what he had against the SPD : “Everything. Most of all, Rudolf Scharping bothers me . The SPD is the very last. But I'm not really interested in politics. I'm just worried when politicians no longer look as sexy as Brandt and Gysi , but like Rudolf Scharping. ”In the same interview, Kracht justifies the method of judging people by their appearance by claiming:“ You can and may someone who you don't know, just judge the surface and appearance. Anything else would be arrogant and presumptuous. "

Till Huber sees this attitude as an expression of aestheticism . Postmodern aestheticism tries to “express the loss of 'deeper meaning' through an affirmation of the superficial”. Kracht's remarks in his interview with the Berliner Zeitung can be interpreted as an indication that Kracht thought in the same aestheticistic categories in 1995 as the first-person narrator in Fiberland , and that his thinking should by no means be "denounced". According to this interpretation, the mature Kracht disguises the fact that it did not always adopt the position announced in 2009.

However, Volker Weidermann warns against taking any statement by Christian Kracht seriously without careful examination. Not even close friends always know whether Kracht really means what he says. Kracht often gives in to his desire to playfully provoke others.

Secondary orality

In epic texts in which a first-person narrator occurs, a distinction is generally made between the narrated time and the narrative time . In the narrated time, the first-person narrator is usually involved in the narrated plot, while in the narrative time he acts as a mediator between the reader and the narrated plot. In the novel Faserland the narrator conveying the material can be felt in the form of statements of the type: "I'll explain that later."

The I referred to in the text, however, is predominantly an entity that seems to be completely absorbed in the action. The visualization of the plot, which is similar to the preparation of the subject matter in a drama that also always takes place "now", can be recognized by the almost constant use of the present tense as the tense of representation. The overall impression is as if someone was speaking to the reader “right now” while the action is taking place. As usual in conversations, what has been said cannot be deleted afterwards, only corrected. The technique of retrospectively “improving” what has been “said” (but actually written down by the author with care) supports the illusion of a live talk by the narrator, making the reader familiar.

Ute Paulokat calls the narrative technique described "secondary orality". What is written is formulated like oral language, but since it is fixed in writing, orality is secondary.

The reader tends to appreciate the confidentiality with which he is approached, for example when the narrator confesses to him in the Heidelberg fraternity house: “Suddenly I feel very alone at this party, and threatened.” Or: “I think because I don't know how it will be in the coming years. ”That in the following chapter the narrator initially doesn't know how he got to Munich, but then he“ [y] etzt, in this moment ”(as if the narrator spoke to him in the narrative time and not in the narrative time) it occurs to me that he was “saved” by Rollo in Heidelberg, a reader who has already experienced a “ film tear ” may forgive the narrator. That the narrator is also “tricking” the reader, he later notices when the narrator casually notes: “After all, I only met him [(Rollo)] by chance at this rave out there.” Here the first-person narrator behaves like a defendant in a main hearing who cannot remember which lie he has told the judge immediately before and gets involved in contradictions.

Meaning of the title

The title fiber country allows for several interpretations.

The first possibility is to interpret the title as "fatherland" in carelessly spoken English , Germanized to " Vaterland ". This results in a direct reference to the English German novel " Vaterland " from 1992 (with a film adaptation from 1994), which also has some basic thematic features in common.

Second, as pars pro toto , “fiber” refers to the “exclusive fibers” of the textiles , with the help of which the first-person narrator and his “friends” differentiate themselves from those who define them as “out”.

Third, an association with the verbs “fray” or even “babble” is possible. Florian Illies judged in 1998: " Everything is frayed in 'fiber land'." The fabric of German society is dissolving by being "frayed" into single threads, into a multitude of individuals who lack cohesion. Even the individuals who lack structure, medium and long-term planning and self-discipline appear “frayed”. Finally, the text also appears “frayed”, the individual threads of which (the topics addressed) are repeatedly dropped and neither deepened nor brought to an end, so that there is no coherent picture and no coherence (cf. the section on blanks ).

"Fatherland"

The word "Fiberland" offers a high level of sound similarity to the novel " Fatherland " from 1992, which was widely discussed at the time of its creation. This similarity becomes particularly clear when you think of the English word pronounced with a German accent.

One possible interpretation of this parallelism of words would be that the actual National Socialist amorality unconsciously lives on in the person of the first-person narrator, so that the Nazi ideology would have won the day unnoticed. This ironizes the basic idea of ​​the alternative world history in “Fatherland”, in which Germany won the Second World War and the Nazi ideology won. In the person of the first-person narrator it could be recognized that the attitudes towards life of the Nazi era can be found in the present, even in spite of the real history of the lost war.

The novel was published in 1995, five years after the restoration of national unity in Germany . A novel published during this time could theoretically take up the beginning of the " Becher Hymne ", the GDR's national anthem :

Rising from the Ruins
And facing the future
Let us serve you for good,
Germany United fatherland. [...]

In fact, the novel is not about the restored "Fatherland Germany" within the borders of 1990. The only East German character that is described in more detail in Fiberland is Varna, whom the first-person narrator completely rejects. The only city clearly east of the tenth degree of longitude on the narrator's journey is Munich, a city of the old Federal Republic, and the milieu in which the protagonist moves is clearly “western”: From Sylt he would have traveled to London or Nice can, as he himself states, by no means go to Leipzig or Dresden. Unlike in the case of Heidelberg, which he visits for the first time on his trip, he would lack the right “locations” in the East German cities. Klaus-Michael Bogdal does not generally see the events of 1989/1990 in Germany as the reference point for the literature of younger authors in the 1990s, but rather the 1970s in the old Federal Republic, in which the “first notable cult books of the differentiating milieus "appeared.

The idea of "serving" an idealized "fatherland" as a patriot would seem absurd to the first-person narrator. Duty performance is not a category that applies to him. Wealthy and thus freed from work constraints, he can spontaneously pursue his inclinations. The protagonist regularly disregards regulations: he smokes everywhere, even in the non-smoking compartment of the aircraft, he drives under the influence of alcohol , steals from "friends" twice and lights a fire on a public traffic area by burning his jacket . He even appears drunk for the Abitur exam (the consequences of this are not explicitly addressed in the text). Strangely enough, the first-person narrator never seems to have come into serious conflict with state organs and other authorities; So the flight attendant warns him in a friendly tone not to quit smoking until he lands in Frankfurt, and the hotel bed in Frankfurt, which has been soiled by vomit, is converted back into usable condition without much ado. The protagonist scoffs at the companies that stand for “ Deutschland AG ” and advertise themselves at Frankfurt Airport, but they are the beneficiaries.

The “Land of Fathers” appears in Fiberland as a country where fathers are rarely physically with their children. A common feature of the first-person narrator and the core of his "friends" is that they have completed their compulsory schooling in boarding school , separate from their parents. In the presence of the narrator, fathers play a central role as providers of the material resources on which the generation of heirs lives. However, this fact is hardly reflected in the novel. Income from personal work is mentioned rather casually and only by a few of the protagonist's younger "friends". At no point in the novel is there any mention of the first-person narrator's gainful employment. The idea of writing a musical “Horxiana” about Matthias Horx with his friend Alexander seems to fall into the categories “crazy idea ” or “joke”, especially since the friendship has long since broken in the presence of the narrator.

The first-person narrator imagines having children with Isabella Rossellini . Apart from this fantasy, one learns nothing about how the narrator imagines his private future. Even a tentative attempt in Meersburg to kiss Karin, his childhood friend, fails. If you evade the suggestion that the protagonist will commit suicide at the end of the story, you come to the question of whether the narrator himself will one day have children. Given his mental health problems, that is unlikely. In general, there can be no question of it being “turned towards the future”.

Land of "luxurious fibers"

Olaf Grabienski proves that around seventy different brands and products are mentioned by name in Kracht's novel , most of which come from the areas of transport, food and luxury goods, media, fashion and clothing. Textiles are of central importance, especially the Barbour jacket , which is not only worn by the first-person narrator, but also by several “friends” from the old days.

Kracht's novel leads the reader into a world that consists primarily of brand labels that differentiate between “right” and “wrong” clothing, with corresponding reactions to those who wear the same, in which only the (beautiful) surface, the appearance, counts Identity and individuality are only simulated as a substitute using branded articles in which people only have their place as consumers at the end of a chain of market economy laws, in which the individual person with his characteristics, his strengths and weaknesses is not perceived and in which the view on the inside is consistently and fearfully avoided. The choice of consumer goods is not always about satisfying real needs. Right at the beginning of the novel, the protagonist realizes that he actually doesn't like the “ Jever ” at all; His way of drinking “Jever” on a North Sea island, however, fits the beer brand's commercial with the “cool” man who lets himself fall into the North Sea dunes with a bottle in hand. Ultimately, the narrator reproduces an advertising story on Sylt that has been positively rated in the scene.

Interestingly, in the last chapter, which takes place in Switzerland, only one brand (" Lindt ") is mentioned, and the protagonist drinks coffee in Zurich, contrary to his habit, namely "any" coffee. This also makes Switzerland the counterpart to the “fiber country Germany”.

In an interview with Die Welt , Christian Kracht rejects the widespread view that the first-person narrator belongs to the upper class: “ Salem is only elitist and upper class. They are the children of tile manufacturers, future business students, Barbour jacket wearers used to be said to be ice ducks. ”He himself is a member of the“ middle class ”. The demarcation downwards through demonstrative consumption has always been typical for this.

Fiberized land

In an introductory text to his book Die Asozialen , Walter Wüllenweber summarizes: “German society is in a state of dissolution.” In 2012, members of the upper class would no longer have any relation to the majority of workers in Germany and their performance ethics . In particular, Wüllenweber emphasizes: "If you can't improve your situation through effort and performance, tricks are becoming more and more important." The trickery of the first-person narrator, to which Wüllenweber's statement already applies in 1995, shortly before Rollo's death: The I. -The narrator leads his desperate, completely drunk and helpless friend Rollo to the end of a boat dock and leaves him there alone under the pretext of wanting to get something to drink. Then he drives to Switzerland with roller blinds that have “become abandoned” Porsche. When parking in a multi-storey car park in Zurich, he carefully wipes his fingerprints off the steering wheel. A professional thief would not have acted any differently.

In his novel The Magic Mountain , Thomas Mann explains that people can only think of time in relation to light and darkness and a far-reaching and regular structure of the day. Routine and variety have to be in balance. The days of Kracht's protagonists, however, have no meaningful structure. […] In this way it is possible for the narrator-figure as well as her entire milieu to smoke and drink huge amounts of alcohol at any time of the day or night; the entire day turns into night, as it were, the entire life turns into nightlife. But if your whole life turns into a party, the reasons to celebrate are quickly used up. Boredom, Ennui arises in the face of a 'standing now'. It is precisely this lack of structure that causes life in the reference environment of the novel to “fray”.

Land of drivel

In his interview with the “Berliner Zeitung”, the author Christian Kracht himself establishes a connection between the title Fiberland and “Faseln”.

In particular, the first-person narrator himself is constantly “babbling”. So lets him z. B. not rid of the subject of " National Socialism ". The narrator correctly recognizes that cities like Heidelberg and Zurich are so beautiful because they were spared the bombing of the Second World War (for which the National Socialists ultimately bore great responsibility), and that all of Germany could fulfill the promise made by the word "Neckarauen" would go out if it hadn't been for the bombing war.

What defines the essence of National Socialism, however, he apparently did not understand despite his " elite education " in Salem: The first-person narrator evaluates all possible people who come too close to him (as he sees it) (even if only because of their appearance) , as "Nazis", also those who remind him of a smoking ban, and alleged supporters of the SPD. He insulted a “ works council chairman” as “SPD Nazi”, even though the SPD was the only party in the German Reichstag to vote on March 24, 1933 against the Enabling Act , which officially abolished democracy in Germany. Likewise, the protagonist does not understand Wim Wenders ' silence when he compares his work with the (National Socialist) aesthetics of Leni Riefenstahl , whose film Triumph des Willes the first-person narrator admires.

Theories, which the narrator “whispers”, such as the fact that the Hungarian (i.e. non-Slavic) sports teacher in Salem wanted to take revenge for the Slavs through harassing exercises , completely discredit the comments of the narrator, who insofar as an example of the genre of the " unreliable narrator " proves. The judgments of the other characters in the novel are often not more meaningful. So z. B. the first-person narrator for his part (from Varna) insulted as "a Nazi and completely apolitical".

Blanks

The many gaps in fibrous land are noticeable , and not only those to which the narrator expressly refers. This remains z. B. owes a coherent answer to the question of how he got from Heidelberg to Munich, which, firstly, is far off the line Sylt - Zurich and, secondly, where the narrator finds himself in a milieu in which he must feel completely alien.

Stories from the past are also repeatedly told whose relation to the present is unclear and where one wonders why the narrator burdens himself, apparently without even realizing it. So one wonders z. For example, why the narrator, as a child, kept the eyes of his father driving the car from the back seat, why he did not even retrospectively address the (self-) murderous nature of this behavior and how the episode ended, especially how his father responded to this naughty behavior responded.

In general, the narrator hides motives and consequences of his behavior in his stories. Readers can assume that he had to leave Salem because “the measure was full” when he and Alexander took the high school exams while drunk; but the narrator does not say it explicitly.

The empty spaces and inconsistencies in the text make it appear fragmentary. In general, he leaves the impression that important things are kept secret. In particular, it remains completely unclear why the subject of "National Socialism" has become an obsession for the narrator . Because very few are likely to z. B. think of Goering's dagger when walking through the dunes of Sylt .

National Socialism as a motive

Christian Rink places fiber land in the context of the history of the “negative memory” of the Germans with regard to National Socialism after its end. An early phase of repression of the crimes committed by Germans (until around 1958) was followed by a phase of denial on the part of the generation of perpetrators or the indictment and demarcation on the part of the generation of war children, the " 68ers ".

The Golf generation , to which the first-person narrator also belongs, is a generation of the grandchildren of the perpetrator generation and at the same time the generation of the sons and daughters of the war children. Typical of puberty is the effort on the part of sons and daughters to distance themselves from their parents, their habits and views. According to Florian Illies, the author of the book Generation Golf , it is easy to understand that this generation felt the need to emancipate itself from the compulsion to regularly think of the atrocities of the National Socialists (and that with disgust), that of the in the meantime the mainstream- defining 68ers had run out.

Christian Rink thinks that this compulsion appears in the novel Faserland in the form of constant use of the verb “must” (“I have to think of ...”), which could be a symptom of an obsessive-compulsive disorder . “The constant use of the word 'must' can be read as a criticism of a prescribed reminder of the National Socialist violent crimes and also suggests that the first-person narrator cannot escape the aftermath of the past despite his refusal. In the representation, this corresponds exactly to the effect of a longer repressed, traumatic memory that unintentionally penetrates the memory. "

Aestheticism and Amoralism

In his master's thesis, Till Huber refers to the closeness of pop literature of the late 20th century to the “ fin de siècle ” literature of the late 19th century. In particular, Huber sees a relationship between the work of the young Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the novel Faserland . Both “fins de siècle” have a basic attitude in common, according to which the cult of beauty takes precedence over other things, especially over social obligations of all kinds, as expressed in the motto: “ L'art pour l'art ”. That this cult of beauty requires freedom from economic constraints can already be seen in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's song of life , written in 1896 : "Let the heirs waste / On eagles, lamb and peacock / The anointing oil from their hands / The dead old woman!"

The first-person narrator copies the upscale traditional "British lifestyle ": He wears a Barbour jacket and has a triumph . In the style of the British “ upper class ”, he attended an exclusive boarding school. He tries to live the life of a dandy in the late 20th century . The protagonist in Fiberland states on Mykonos : “I don't want to have to exert myself, definitely not!”. The resolve to enjoy life in a hedonistic way as a lover and to devote himself to the beautiful runs through the entire novel.

In Meersburg, the protagonist realizes that Rollo urgently needs a real friend. But he also realizes that he would have to constantly take care of Rollo for at least two weeks. However, the narrator can hardly stand the symptoms of Rollos acute crisis that are "exhausting". Although he realizes that Rollo will not survive the scene, he abandons him and steals Rollo's Porsche. Here the dark side of aestheticism, recognized a hundred years earlier, becomes clear: its amoralism. This was heavily criticized by the older Hofmannsthal, who turned to the social.

The lack of any form of “ slave morality ” in the sense in which Friedrich Nietzsche uses the term, shows at the same time a proximity to what Nietzsche calls “ master humanity ”. Because of his amoralism, the first-person narrator is closer to the National Socialists than he is aware of. However, the first-person narrator is anything but a “gentleman”: he can only appear “bossy” because he has a lot of money. There can be no question of a connection between his receptivity for the beautiful with a “ will to power ”, which according to Nietzsche characterizes the “gentleman” of the Renaissance period .

intertextuality

In the 2019 novel "I am the one my mother warned me about" by the Swiss author Demian Lienhardt, some parts of Chapter 8, set in Zurich, are portrayed from the perspective of the first-person narrator Alba Doppler, including the end of Fiber country is told. On Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse, the Lienhardt narrator noticed "a guy who wears his hair long at the front and short at the back, and his neck is shaved nice and clean." (P. 369) The fact that this figure must be Kracht's narrator is confirmed at the latest by the addition "In any case, he is now wearing such a jacket and one of those green wax jackets [...]" (p. 370) clear. The following account of bankers drinking beer with grenadine syrup (p. 370) also refers to an almost identical passage in Kracht's fiber country, although the two versions differ in one point: The Kracht first-person narrator says that the bankers actually had his Took cigarettes, while Alba Doppler claims that she took the cigarettes before the Kracht narrator returned to the table, so that the latter mistakenly believed that the bankers were smoking his cigarettes. The first meaningless appearing in Lienhardts Roman episode gets another dimension on page 372: In a way, en passant is told here that police divers had the lifeless body of the narrator of Faserland in the outdoor pool at the Zurich Letten found. According to this version, the first-person narrator from Fiberland would have decided to commit suicide on Lake Zurich and would have been found dead a few days later downstream.

Edits

On April 14, 2012, a dramatized version of the novel was premiered at the Hanover Theater.

literature

  • Stefan Beuse: 154 beautiful white blank sheets. Christian Kracht's "Fiber Land" , in: The German novel of the present. Edited by Friend / friend. Munich: Fink, 2001, pp. 150–155
  • Anke S. Biendarra: “The narrator as 'Popmoderner Flaneur' in Christian Kracht's novel Faserland ”, in: German Life and Letters 55, 2002, pp. 164–179.
  • Lothar Bluhm: Between extinction and salvation. Intertextual ambivalences in the beginning of Christian Kracht's 'Fiberland' novel. In: Productive Reception. Contributions to literature and art in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries . Edited by Lothar Bluhm and Achim Hölter. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2010, pp. 91-104.
  • Thomas Borgstedt: "Pop men. Provocation and pose with Christian Kracht and Michel Houellebecq". In: masculinity as a masquerade. Cultural presentations from the Middle Ages to the present . Edited by Claudia Benthien and Inge Stephan. Cologne etc .: Böhlau, 2003, pp. 221–247.
  • Marco Borth: Christian Krachts fiber land at the borders of the adventure society, in: Abundance and transgression. The cultural practice of spending. Edited by Bähr, Bauschmid, Lenz, Ruf. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2009.
  • Martin Brinkmann: Uncomfortable worlds. Reality experiences in the new German-language literature, presented on the basis of Christian Kracht's “Fiberland” (1995), Elke Naters “Königinnen” (1998), Xaver Bayer's “Today could be a happy day” (2001) and Wolfgang Schömel's “Die Schnecke. Mostly Neurotic Stories ”(2002) . In: Weimar Contributions 53 (2007), no. 1, pp. 17–46
  • Claude Conter and Johannes Birgfeld (eds.): Christian Kracht. To life and work. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009, 280 pp.
  • Frank Finlay: "'Then Germany would be like the word Neckarauen': Surface, Superficiality and Globalization in Christian Kracht's Fiberland ", in: German Literature in the Age of Globalization . Edited by Stuart Taberner. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 2004, pp. 189-208.
  • Janina Gesche: On the problem of self-discovery in Christian Kracht's novel Faserland . Sopot: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2008 pp. 327–338 ( PDF , 3.9 MB)
  • Sven Glawion, Immanuel Nover: The empty center. Christian Kracht's 'Literature of Disappearance' . In: Alexandra Tacke, Björn Weyand (Ed.): Depressive Dandys. Game forms of decadence in pop modernism. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20279-8
  • Meike Krüger: Traces of the collective memory in the novel Fiberland by Christian Kracht . Växjö: Scripta Minora, 2006 ( PDF )
  • Georg Mein: Filiation in the fiber country . The negation of the fathers as the sacrifice of the sons . In: Hans Christoph Koller / Markus Rieger-Ladich (eds.): Figurations of adolescence. Pedagogical Readings of Contemporary Novels II . Bielefeld: transcript verlag, 2009, pp. 15–32
  • Iris Meinen: Wertherland. Krachts fiber land in the tradition of Werther . In: “And who are you looking at me?” Popular literature and culture as aesthetic phenomena. Edited by Helga Arend. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2010. ISBN 978-3-89528-814-2
  • Margret Möckel: Christian Kracht: Fiber country. King's Explanations and Materials (vol. 457). Hollfeld: Bange Verlag, 2nd edition 2010.
  • Immanuel Nover: Request for reference. Language and violence with Bret Easton Ellis and Christian Kracht. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2012. ISBN 978-3-412-20947-6
  • Christian Steltz: How do you inscribe yourself in history? A genre-poetic consideration of Christian Kracht's debut novel “Fiberland”, in: Life designs. Notes on literature and film studies. Edited by Corinna Schlicht. (= Authors in context, volume 7) Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen, 2005, pp. 33–48
  • Reinhard Wilczek: Generation Golf. Franz Schubert's “Winterreise” and Christian Kracht's “Fiberland” - a lesson suggestion for a literary-musical neighborhood, in: Musik & Bildung 36 (2004) 3, pp. 20-27
  • Niels Werber : Kracht's picaresque. Fiber country, reread . In: Journal for Literary Studies and Linguistics, Issue 175: Transformations of the Picarian. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart, 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Lindemann: Christian Kracht and naked fear . The world . October 13, 2008
  2. ↑ http://bookpost.com.ua/index.php?item=30561
  3. ↑ フ ァ ー ザ ー ラ ン ド . In: 国立 国会 図 書館 サ ー チ . National Library of Parliament , accessed February 22, 2013 (Japanese).
  4. ↑ http://moonji.com/?s=faserland
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ http:// Ersatz.se/bok_kracht3.htm
  7. ↑ See for example: Oliver Jahraus : Aesthetic Fundamentalism. Christian Kracht's radical narrative experiments. In: Birgfeld / Conter (ed.): Christian Kracht. To life and work. Munich: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009, pp. 13–23, here p. 18
  8. ↑ Reviews appeared in the FAZ (May 22, 1995), the Zeit (April 7, 1995), the Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger (April 29, 1995), the Wiener Presse (June 17/18, 1995), the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (March 4/5, 1995), the taz (March 23, 1995), the Süddeutsche Zeitung (April 6, 1995) and in almost all major regional newspapers ( Hamburger Abendblatt on May 16, 1995, Berliner Zeitung on May 23 , 1995) March 1995 etc.)
  9. ↑ See Martin Halter in: Tages-Anzeiger , Zurich, from April 29, 1995.
  10. ↑ See Hajo Steinert's review of Faserland “Dandy, Schnösel or Ekel” in: Die Weltwoche of March 30, 1995.
  11. ↑ On the debate about a distinction between “Pop 1” and “Pop 2” cf. for example Johannes Ullmaier: From Acid to Adlon and back. A journey through German-language pop literature. Mainz: Ventil-Verlag 2001.
  12. ↑ See Moritz Baßler: The German Pop-Roman. The new archivists. Munich: CH Beck 2002, p. 110.
  13. ↑ Cf. Hubert Spiegel: We see and with eyes that are not ours. A look at the surface is no longer enough: Christian Kracht's novel "1979" speaks of self-hatred as the West's attitude towards life. In: FAZ , October 9, 2001.
  14. ↑ See in detail Christoph Rauen: Dirty underpants become a cleaner bra. On "Overcoming Postmodernism and Pop in Christian Kracht". In: Birgfeld / Conter (ed.): Christian Kracht. To life and work. Munich: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009, pp. 116–130.
  15. ↑ See also: Innokentij Kreknin: Fun failure in the hall of mirrors. Christian Kracht and some corrections to the outdated discourse on pop literature. In: Zonic No 14-17, 2009, pp. 140-145.
  16. ↑ Richard Kämmerlings: Flourish, German Faserland . The world . October 1, 2010
  17. ↑ Stefan Beuse: 154 beautiful white blank sheets. Christian Kracht's “Fiber Land”. In: Wieland Freund / Winfried Freund (ed.): The German novel of the present. Munich: Fink 2001, pp. 150–155, here p. 151.
  18. ↑ Florian Illies: Generation Golf . Berlin 2000, p. 111
  19. ↑ Moritz Baßler: The German pop novel. The new archivists. Munich: CH Beck 2002, p. 113.
  20. ^ Georg Diez: Christian Kracht: Fiber country . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 17, 2002
  21. ↑ Philipp Laage: The beauty of the terrible in Christian Kracht . New present . Magazine for media journalism . Edition 58. 2011
  22. ↑ Roland Quinten: High school students in the fiber country. Against the increasing flattening of grammar school German lessons. A call for reflection ( memento from January 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 139 kB). April 25, 2012
  23. ↑ Reinhard Wilczek: Fascinating school reading in the field of tension between tradition, adaptation and transformation. A practice-oriented solution proposal for the settlement of the unresolved canon conflict in Germany. In: Peter Bekes and Reinhard Wilczek (eds.): Literature in lessons. Texts of modernity and postmodernism in school . Issue 3/2003. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2004, pp. 213–221 (here: p. 218)
  24. ↑ Fabian Lettow: The postmodern dandy - the figure Christian Kracht between aesthetic self-stylization and enlightening sense of mission. In: Ralph Köhnen (ed.): Selbstpoetik 1800–2000. I-identities as literary symbol recycling. Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang 2001, pp. 285–305, here p. 286.
  25. ↑ Stefan Beuse: 154 beautiful white blank sheets. Christian Kracht's “Fiber Land”. In: Wieland Freund / Winfried Freund (ed.): The German novel of the present. Munich: Fink 2001, pp. 150–155, here p. 154.
  26. ↑ Anke S. Biendarra: The narrator as a 'Popmoderner Flaneur' in Christian Kracht's novel Faserland . In: German Life and Letters 55, 2002, pp. 164–179, here p. 164.
  27. ↑ Cf. Patrick Bühler / Franka Marquardt: The “great leveling land”? Switzerland in Christian Kracht's fiber country . In: Birgfeld / Conter (ed.): Christian Kracht. To life and work. Munich: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009, pp. 76–91.
  28. ↑ Cf. Lothar Bluhm : Between Extinction and Salvation. Intertextual ambivalences in the beginning of Christian Kracht's novel 'Fiberland': In: Lothar Bluhm / Achim Hölter (ed.): Productive reception. Contributions to literature and art in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Trier: WVT, 2010, pp. 91-104.
  29. ↑ See: Innokentij Kreknin: Fun failure in the hall of mirrors. Christian Kracht and some corrections to the outdated discourse on pop literature. In: Zonic No 14-17, 2009, pp. 140–145, here p. 142.
  30. ^ Till Briegleb: Christian Kracht at the theater - rebellion without risk . Süddeutsche Zeitung . April 17, 2012
  31. ↑ a b Kracht - “Who else should make the world a better place?” . "The world". 17th September 2009
  32. ↑ Claudia Hasbach: Christian Kracht's “Fiberland” in the context of the new German pop literature (PDF; 793 kB). Düsseldorf 2011, p. 52
  33. ↑ "The most legendary party of all time" Interview conducted by Guido Walter . In: Berliner Zeitung . July 19, 1995
  34. ^ Till Huber: Aestheticism in fin de siècle and pop literature: Hugo von Hofmannsthal's lyrical dramas and Christian Kracht's novels . University of Hamburg, 2007, p. 3 (PDF; 1.9 MB)
  35. ↑ Volker Weidermann: Notes on Kracht: What he wants Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 3, 2012
  36. ↑ Ute Paulokat: Christian Kracht Faserland . Braunschweig. Schroedel 2012, pp. 47-55. ISBN 978-3-507-47729-2
  37. ↑ Uwe Pralle: The rebellion on credit card . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . December 19, 1995
  38. ↑ Meike Krüger: Traces of the collective memory in the novel fiber land by Christian Kracht . Växjö: Scripta Minora, 2006, p. 3.
  39. ↑ A friend, a friend . "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". March 24, 1998
  40. ↑ According to the narrator, near Kassel is supposedly the eastern end of the North German Plain and thus the area where there was a notable culture in the Middle Ages
  41. ^ Klaus-Michael Bogdal: Climate change. A little meteorology of contemporary literature . In: Andreas Erb (Hrsg.): Construction site contemporary literature. The nineties . Opladen and Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998, pp. 9–31 (here: p. 15).
  42. ↑ Günter Nooke: We want to serve Germany. The importance of civil society for internal unity (PDF; 77 kB). Konrad Adenauer Foundation. March 17, 2011.
  43. ↑ 1. The naturalness with which the interpreters interpret the verses: “Just wait, you will rest soon too” in Goethe's poem Wanderer's Night Song as the announcement of death is not covered by the poem text itself.
    2. In Kracht's collection of texts, Holidays Forever , the narrator suggests "stealing the Tagi on display in the Odeon in order to take a break in the middle of a pedal boat ride on Lake Zurich towards Küsnacht and then read laughing in the afternoon sun."
  44. ↑ Olaf Grabienski: Christian Kracht's "Fiber Land". A tour of the novel and its reception (PDF; 148 kB). Hamburg 2001, p. 7
  45. ^ Christian Kracht: "Fiber country". Royal explanations and materials. C. Bange 2007. p. 61
  46. ↑ Walter Wüllenweber: The anti-social. How the upper and lower classes are ruining our country - and who is benefiting from it . DVA Munich 2012. ISBN 978-3-421-04571-3
  47. ↑ Walter Wüllenweber: Bye, middle! Upper and lower classes say goodbye to society . The star . Edition 38/2012, p. 58f. ( online ; PDF; 1.9 MB)
  48. ↑ Constanze Alt: Zeitdiagnosen in the novel of the present . trafo Wissenschaftsverlag. Berlin 2009, p. 295
  49. ↑ Kerstin Dreger: When authenticity meets the unreliable narrator. A narratological analysis of Christian Krachts Faserland and Elke Naters Königinnen ( Memento from August 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 157 kB). Växjö University. 2006
  50. ^ Christian Rink: From Christian Kracht to Günter Grass - The criticism of negative memory and the change in the German culture of remembrance (PDF; 824 kB). Universitas Wasaensis, Turku 2012, pp. 38–78 and 90–97
  51. ^ Christian Rink: From Christian Kracht to Günter Grass - The criticism of negative memory and the change in the German culture of remembrance (PDF; 824 kB). Universitas Wasaensis, Turku 2012, p. 95
  52. ↑ Demian Lienhard: I am the one my mother warned me about . 1st edition. Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 2019, ISBN 978-3-627-00260-2 , p. 369-372 .
  53. ^ Staatsschauspiel Hannover: Fiber country