Good against north wind
Gut gegen Nordwind is a novel by the Austrian writer Daniel Glattauer .
The modern version of a letter novel about an Internet love affair was published by Deuticke Verlag in 2006 and has already been translated into 28 languages. Weltbild-Verlag published the unabridged version of the novel in Germany in 2007; the RM book and media distribution (Rheda-Wiedenbrück) issued another licensed edition in the same year. The novel was published as a paperback in 2008 by Goldmann Verlag . Almost 800,000 copies had been sold by early 2010.
In stage version was Gut gegen Nordwind in more than 40 theaters played, including in Vienna and Berlin on Theater am Kurfürstendamm with Tanja Wedhorn and in Theater iron hand of the State Theater Linz .
The plot of the e-mail novel is continued in Glattauer's 2009 e-mail novel Alle seven Wellen .
The film adaptation of the book of the same name was released in German cinemas on September 12, 2019, and in Austrian cinemas the following day. The main roles were played by Nora Tschirner and Alexander Fehling .
content
One day Leo Leike receives an email that shouldn't actually end up in his mailbox. A certain Emma Rothner declares the cancellation of her magazine subscription. After further emails, Leo points out to Ms. Rothner that, like some others, she made a mistake when typing the email address. Emma apologized, but contacted me several times by e-mail in the following weeks because she made the same typo over and over again. Leo tells her that such a typo is not surprising in a person who writes so rushed. Emma then wants to know how the other person comes across it. Leo explains that he currently professionally deals with the language of e-mails, and Emma replies that they contrast homepages designed. The two also know from their conversation about the newspaper subscription that they live in the same town.
This brief, initially random exchange of words becomes the cornerstone of further e-mails between the two of them. Even if Leo and Emmi, as Leo now calls them, avoid private issues such as family life or personal problems at the beginning, both develop an interest in each other over time, and soon a trusting relationship develops, in the course of which taboo topics such as Leos also develop failed relationship or Emmi's relationship with her family are discussed. The mutual curiosity ultimately leads to thinking about a real meeting. Since Leo claims to be able to recognize Emmi from a crowd, after some hesitation on both sides a meeting is arranged in a café, but on the condition that one does not identify oneself directly. Both should appear in the café at about the same time and try to recognize the other among all the other guests by observing them as inconspicuously as possible. The “meeting” takes place, and when the two of them contact each other again shortly afterwards, Emmi soberly realizes that none of those present looked like “her Leo”. Rather, she found none of them particularly interesting, with the exception of a man who was in the café with another woman. Leo, on the other hand, believes that Emmi has recognized or at least able to limit the selection of people who would be eligible. Finally Leo resolves that he was actually the man that Emmi was the only person who found halfway interesting, even if she can barely remember what he looked like because she didn't pay any attention to him because she didn't think that he would be there with company. The woman who was with him in the café was his sister, and while he sat with his back to those present she had been able to watch the women in the café undisturbed. That would have left three potential Emmis, one of which Leo would even be able to fall in love with, according to his sister, but he leaves open which one is meant.
As the conversation progresses , Emmi and Leo repeatedly come across topics that are both uncomfortable. Emmi prefers not to talk about her husband or his children, whom he brought into the marriage, while Leo repeatedly suggests that in his opinion Emmi is not happy in this relationship. When Leo wrote an email to Emmi one evening in a drunk state, the feelings he had for her became clear, and which were beyond the friendship level. At the same time, Leo is reluctant to have such an idea, because on the one hand he feels affection for Emmi, on the other hand he knows she is in a committed relationship. Ultimately, his longing gets out of hand and he asks Emmi that same night to come to him to do what “comes up”. However, Emmi declines politely but firmly.
A little later, the trust that Emmi and Leo have built up in the meantime is severely shaken: Emmi talked to a friend about Leo, and she indicated that Emmi could possibly only be a guinea pig for Leo, since Leo claims to be professional busy transmitting emotions via email. In her fear that this claim could be correct, Emmi confronts Leo with her fears. When he did not answer for days, Emmi saw this as confirmation of her suspicion and expressed her disappointment with Leo. A little later, however, he reports back from the vacation he spent with Marlene, his ex-girlfriend. He reports to Emmi that he realized once again that it wasn't working with Marlene. Emmi then offers Leo to set him up with one of her friends. After some initial hesitation, he agrees. There is a meeting between Leo and Emmi's friend Mia. Contrary to what was expected, both Emmi tell little or nothing about their encounter and the further course of their relationship. When Emmi wanted to know more and more insistently what was going on between Mia and Leo, Leo admits that he had slept with Mia, but less out of love or affection, but out of defiance towards Emmi. This paired the two not out of friendliness or goodwill, but rather to be close to Leo in an indirect way through Mia. Leo explains that he cannot have a relationship with Mia because this was not possible from the outset due to Emmi's wrong intentions.
However, the feelings they both have for each other grow stronger over time. Emmi tells Leo that the north wind troubles her because it makes it harder for her to fall asleep, but that it is much easier with a Leo in her mailbox. Both suggest again and again to have erotic fantasies of each other.
This gradual approach is interrupted by an email from Bernhard Rothner, Emmi's husband, who directs it to Leo. Mr Rothner informs Leo that he has noticed changes to Emmi in the past few months and has finally found a folder in which Emmi keeps all of her email correspondence with Leo neatly printed out. With a touch of self-flagellation, since he could no longer bear the uncertainty, he had secretly copied all of this, read it later and was now informed about everything. However, since Leo, to his great disappointment, had not taken on any physical form in Emmi's life, he could not see him as a direct competitor to compete against. So Mr Rothner Leo makes an unusual offer: He asks him to meet Emmi once, regardless of the consequences. He even gives Leo permission to sleep with his wife, just so that the spook would finally be over and Leo can disappear from the life of the Rothner family. Leo asks for time to think about it and asks Emmi's husband not to write him any further e-mails or to read those between him and Emmi. In return, Leo agrees not to tell Emmi about Mr. Rothner's complicity.
Emmi, who meanwhile raves about Leo's voice, which both exchanged over the answering machine, suspects nothing of this, but notices the change in Leo's behavior towards her. She asks him what's going on, but he hushes himself. Only after a few days does Leo tell Emmi that he intends to move to Boston for a long time to work on a project there. This relocation should mark a new beginning for him, which is why he will end contact with Emmi at the same time. He also suggests that Emmi meet him once. She can't believe that Leo has decided to move to Boston and to stop contact with her. She is also suspicious of the offer to meet. Since Leo invokes only the best of intentions, she eventually agrees. Emmi is supposed to come to his house the following evening, both of which make it abundantly clear that there will most likely be more than just a friendly encounter.
The day after, Emmi Leo wrote an email in which she explained why she stayed away from the meeting at the last minute without logging out. Shortly before she left, her husband said goodbye with the words "Have a good time, Emmi". Her husband has not called her Emmi for years, but Emma. She was so disillusioned with the shock of addressing her that she was so afraid of herself that she didn't come to the meeting without finding the right words to let Leo know. In response, she only receives an automatically generated mail from the system manager, which informs her that the user has changed his mail address and that messages received at this address will be deleted immediately.
Reviews
Oliver Junge headlined his review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on November 7th, 2006 with the title Oh, if your cable wasn't '- surface polish: Daniel Glattauer flirts by email . The novel is "fast, funny, tends to be ill-conceived and above all intimate", and therefore entertaining; The love story is also based on a kind of “magic”, but the characters are only given “certain contours, but no depth”. Boys attest Glattauer's work a "love of surfaces", which is symptomatic of a "rampant documentation of the everyday". The reviewer recognizes content- related redundancies and improbabilities; It testifies to "self-referential lack of imagination, of all things to miss Leo the profile of 'communication advisor and university assistant for speech psychology'", which is not taken up again in the course of the work. The narrative lacks something special, such as the “voyeuristic aspect” of Nicholson Baker's Vox ; Expectations of a “gigantic fraud, presumptuous identities and gender- confusing cyberpunks ” would be “bitterly disappointed”. After all, “millions of inboxes look very similar”. For boys, good against the north wind is nothing more than a place to go to sleep.
Andreas Isenschmid's review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on December 17, 2006 is much more positive. The novel offers "pure romance", the story is told "formally slageless and smart". While Baker's Vox was occupied with the sexual fantasies of his characters, Glattauer wanted to go “higher” with Gut gegen Nordwind by trying to tell of a romantic love and the “spiritual needs” of our today's - albeit “sober” - times to become. Glattauer knows how to conjure up the “improbability of the narrative idea”, namely getting to know and love through the initial of a simple typo in an e-mail address, as “the most natural thing in the world”. The author succeeds in making the dialogue between the two characters "dramatically sophisticated and psychologically highly plausible". The novel represents a "minimalist, almost substance-free and yet every moment lively love story"; the “easy joke” of his protagonists is “the joke of two lovers who know that one of the lasting revivals of love is to enjoy the spirit of the other”, which makes reading an “untroubled pleasure”.
Awards
- The novel was nominated for the German Book Prize in 2006.
- In 2007 the novel received the Austrian literary prize Buchliebling in the category of literature, novels, and fiction.
Audio book
The book was set to music as an audio book in 2007. The speakers were the couple Andrea Sawatzki (Emmi Rothner) and Christian Berkel (Leo Leike). The sound carrier was published by Audiobook Hamburg .
Also in 2007 the ORF produced the novel as a radio play with Eva Herzig as Emmi and Michael Dangl as Leo. Editing and direction: Alice Elstner .
literature
Daniel Glattauer: Good against north wind . Deuticke, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-552-06129-3
Web links
- Good against north wind on Daniel Glattauer's website
- Review notes on Gut gegen Nordwind at perlentaucher.de
Individual evidence
- ^ List of translations on Daniel Glattauer's website. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 10, 2013 ; Retrieved June 29, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Acclaimed premiere of "Gut gegen Nordwind" In: Focus Online on January 18, 2010
- ↑ Glattauer play at the Eisenhand Theater in Linz In: orf.at of September 16, 2010
- ↑ film.at: Good against the north wind | film.at. Retrieved August 12, 2019 .
- ↑ Vanessa Jopp: GOOD AGAINST NORDWIND - Film 2019 - Filmstarts.de. In: Filmstarts.de. Retrieved August 12, 2019 .
- ↑ Oliver Junge: Oh, if it weren't for your cable - surface polish: David Glattauer flirted by email on November 7th, 2006 in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (accessed on buecher.de on October 31, 2010)
- ↑ Andreas Isenschmid: The first e-mail novel offers pure romance - you have never seen each other and devour each other. Daniel Glattauer uses straightforward language to bring two lovers together online. on December 17, 2006 in NZZ am Sonntag (accessed on June 14, 2019)
- ↑ HörDat.de .
