Fuck machine

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Charles Bukowski, drawn by Graziano Origa

Fuck Machine is the title of a short story by the American writer Charles Bukowski , which first appeared in 1972 as part of a collection. When the collection of short stories was translated into German, this collection appeared in 1977 under the title Fuck Machine . The motif of the story is the sexual satisfaction of a man through an apparatus that replaces a human sexual partner or makes it entirely superfluous

background

The short story Fuck Machine (German: Die Fickmaschine ) appeared in 1972 in a collection entitled Erections, Ejaculations; Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (German roughly: erections, ejaculations, exhibitionism and other general stories of ordinary madness ) at City Lights Publishers as paperback . The prose texts gathered in it were written between 1967 and 1972. Before that, they had already been published in isolated cases in the underground magazines "Berkeley Barb" and "Open City".

The name giver for the collection translated into German by Wulf Teichmann in 1977 and published by S. Fischer Verlag was the short story of the same name mentioned above. It is about the invention of a mad German scientist, referred to only as B. He once hid his machine, which was used for male sexual satisfaction, from Hitler , so that his counter-mates and drinking buddies can try it out in the back room of Toni's bar.

The stories of the band are all from the perspective of a certain Henry Chinaski (called Hank) in the I-form presented. This person appears again and again in Bukowski's works and can be understood as the author's alter ego .

reception

The Fuck Machine collection only partially received benevolent criticism. The Basler Zeitung stated that Bukowski's short stories were now among the classics of American literature. They are evil, obscene and funny at the same time. The author describes his own life and the experiences he has made with the American dream, which at times turns out to be a nightmare, with great sensitivity. The lyrics are full of passion. The obscene in his prose serves to portray the inner workings of the protagonists and is not intended to satisfy petty bourgeois revelers.

The short story received negative criticism on the occasion of the publication of a CD by Hörverlag in 2003. It contained poems and the only prose text, Fuck Machine , which also gave its name. The contributions were read by Martin Semmelrogge . The Süddeutsche Zeitung praised the actor for his performance, but at the same time denied the lyrics a real artistic quality.

In 2016, the journalist Matthias Heine claimed in his book "Since when has geil nothing to do with sex - 100 German words and their amazing careers" that Bukowski's cover story first established the term fuck in the German language.

Publications

  • Charles Bukowski: Erections, ejaculations, exhibitions and general tales of ordinary madness . City Light Books, San Francisco 1972, ISBN 0-87286-061-2 . (First publication of the collection of short stories)
  • Charles Bukowski: Broken in Hollywood . Maro, Augsburg 1976. (Translated edition of the collection of short stories)
  • Charles Bukowski: Fuck machine . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1980. (Translated edition of the collection of short stories)
  • Charles Bukowski: Broken in Hollywood , translated from the American by Carl Weissner. DAV 2017, ISBN 978-3-7424-0208-0 . (Reading with Otto Sander )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Hemmer (ed.), Robert Johnson: "Encyclopedia of Beat Literature", Facts on File, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-4297-5 , pp. 84 f.
  2. ↑ Fuck Machine. lovelybooks.de. Retrieved September 4, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Fuck Machine - Poems from the South End of the Couch , ISBN 978-3-89584-945-9
  4. ↑ Tobias Lehmkuhl: "Tough guys - Martin Semmelrogge lets Bukowski go down", Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 21, 2003.
  5. ↑ dpa: 100 German words and their history . In: Hamburger Abendblatt from July 12, 2016.