Jessica, 30

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The novel Jessica, 30. by the Austrian author Marlene Streeruwitz , which appeared in April 2004 and immediately entered the Austrian bestseller list, deals with the reality of life of a 30-year-old, highly qualified, good-looking single woman, member of the Praktikum generation .

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Jessica Somner, 30 years old, is a typical representative of the “ internship generation ”. She studied German and philosophy in Vienna, did her doctorate with a dissertation on feminist theory , lives in a single apartment in Vienna and writes as a volunteer for a Viennese women's newspaper (which can easily be identified as the magazine woman belonging to the news group ) Reports on sex and fashion topics. At an age when traditionally the founding of a family has long taken place, Jessica is still financially dependent on her parents despite her doctorate, practical and international experience. As an overqualified cultural scientist, she is one of the typical losers of neoliberalism . The young woman is constantly caught in a field of tension between intellectual training and the trivialities of everyday life as a single (fitness mania for fear of the ideal figure, regrets about night-time walnut ice cream orgies, the volatility of fashion trends and the art of applying mascara). This ambivalence is particularly evident when it comes to sexuality issues in which the feminist position of the philosopher Jessica Somner and Sex and the City - wisdoms about femininity, power and sexual liberation collide.

Whether Jessica feels the laws of lifestyle as compulsion or rather as pleasure - she sees through the mechanisms that are behind them, and is still subject to them. Above all, the entire first chapter of the three-chapter novel is located in this area of ​​tension. By means of interior monologue (see: Language & Style) allows the author to the reader directly into the stream of consciousness (stream of consciousness) of the protagonist during a jogging tour through the Vienna Prater plunge as mentally for the upcoming meeting with prepared by the editor-in-chief, which will decide about her professional future. Shortly before the appointment in the editorial office, the narrative flow breaks off and only starts again in the second chapter, where Jessica is about to have a conversation with her lover, the (fictional) ÖVP State Secretary Gerhard Hollitzer, whose extramarital Sado-Maso amusements the women's magazine starts Wants to bring light. The conversation ends with a double humiliation of Jessica by the politician - while she pleases him with her mouth, he tells his wife about the ongoing government negotiations and ejaculates the lover against her will in the mouth, and during the conversation, in the course of this Jessica information wants to get out of Hollitzer for the exclusive story, he takes control of the conversation and makes Jessica look like a naive child.

After a long leap in time, Jessica is in the third chapter on her way to Hamburg, where she wants to sell her research on sex orgies with illegal prostitutes from the Czech Republic, which Hollitzer and other Austrian government members are investigating, to the Stern editorial team. In weeks of work, Jessica has uncovered the scandal that she hopes will topple the government, take personal revenge on her ex-lover, and at the same time get a future with the star. Parallel to the political scandal and Jessica's hope for the appointment in Hamburg, the chapter discusses the recent suicide of her great-uncle, who mainly creates pictures of other women in Jessica's relatives (grandmother, great-aunt and mother), in addition and only partially as a counter-concept to the situation of the 30-year-olds - all four women live without a husband, which is more of a community of fate than a generation conflict. In particular, the close relationship with the mother, a tenured teacher of classical languages ​​at a high school in Graz, who lives separately from her husband, is worked out at several points in the work.

The novel breaks off abruptly just before Jessica's plane lands. The further fate of the freelance journalist remains open, as does the further course and political consequences of the revelations about the Austrian government.

Contemporary history background

Without giving the year, Streeruwitz settles the novel in a precisely localizable timeframe: Chapters 1 and 2 take place at the beginning of 2003: It's winter, Graz is the cultural capital and the ÖVP is in coalition negotiations with the Greens. Chapter 3 takes place a few months later, in the early summer of the same year, after the spectacular theft of the Saliera from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Above all, the political references characterize the action period as an explosive period in which the future of Austrian domestic policy was negotiated - which ultimately led to a new edition of the heavily criticized black-and-blue government, which is no longer directly mentioned in the book. Austrian politicians are sometimes named by name ( Wolfgang Schüssel , Jörg Haider , Alexander Van der Bellen ) and sometimes clearly described ( Elisabeth Gehrer , Maria Rauch-Kallat ). But also in relation to the temporal background, trivial lifestyle phenomena ( Starmania ) stand next to the domestic and foreign political events ( Iraq war ).

Streeruwitz criticizes the situation in Austria with little subtlety - through direct reflections by the protagonist on politicians and their decisions, but also through allusions to “how things are going here”. The provincial quality that Austria and the federal capital exude pervades the work. Again and again, as a counter-concept to Vienna, the metropolis New York is alluded to as a sophisticated, open metropolis in which you can do what you want and in which everything is possible; it serves as a contrast film to the petty-bourgeois, lazy capital of Austria.

Language and style

The most striking stylistic feature in this novel is the portrayal of the plot as an internal monologue by the protagonist Jessica Somner - apart from a few passages in the second chapter, which are conducted in the form of a dialogue between Jessica and Hollitzer. This representation of a flowing stream of consciousness , interrupted by many commas and not a single point , differs from the staccato style, consisting of choppy, grammatically often incomplete, short sentences that characterize other works by the author. In the first chapter in particular, the flowing style complements the protagonist's activity - running - and the inner turmoil in which she finds herself.

In terms of language, a high density of English loanwords is particularly noticeable, all belonging to the lifestyle vocabulary of the 21st century and consistently written in small letters ( high society look-alikes , sexdrive , caller-ID , domestic violence ), and there is also frequent evidence of Viennese Colloquial language ( Schatzl , Farbpatzer , Würstel , Mia , clever ).

All in all, Streeruwitz uses the literary technique that is so characteristic of her, which is outlined in the text and criticism volume published in October 2004 as “ triviality as an art form”.

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