Kevin Vennemann

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Kevin Vennemann (* 1977 in Dorsten ) is a German author , translator and university lecturer .

Life

Vennemann is of German- Austrian origin. He studied German , English , Jewish and history in Cologne , Innsbruck , Berlin and Vienna . Vennemann received his doctorate from New York University in 2015 with a literary thesis on fatigue. Since 2016 he has been teaching as an Assistant Professor in the Department of German Studies at Scripps College in Claremont (California) . In 2016 he was also a fellow of the research group "Transpacifica" of Einstein Visiting Fellow Stefan Keppler-Tasaki at the University of Tokyo . The research group is funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin .

plant

In 2002 he made his debut with the short story volume Wolfskinderringe , and in autumn 2005 his first novel Nahe Jedenew was published . In June 2006 he was a participant in the Ingeborg Bachmann competition and read the excerpt in the composing house from a new novel project. This novel was published under the title Mara Kogoj in spring 2007 and discussed in various ways ( Der Tagesspiegel , March 4, 2007: “'Mara Kogoj' is handicraft, too cleverly made and too well-intentioned to be anywhere near good."; Berliner Zeitung , March 20, 2007: “'Mara Kogoj' is literature in its most significant form.”; Frankfurter Rundschau , March 21, 2007: “You could also call this concentrated, clever novel a 'composition for three voices and tape recorder', because his narrative rhythm is determined by fast forwarding and rewinding and the cyclical variations of the central motifs. ”; Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 19, 2007:“ Kevin Vennemann's grandiose novel 'Mara Kogoj'. ”) In May 2007 he also had a radio play called Both sides Premiere on Bavarian Radio (Director: Ulrich Lampen, Music: Hans Platzgumer ).

Important elements of Vennemann's writing are - after the largely apolitical, hardly experimental debut Wolfskinderringe - language games and narrative cuts that dissolve clear narrativity, as well as an anti-fascist and anti-national direction of the subjects and motifs: “In principle, I like the raised index finger, also as a reader because I think that various social grievances are more worth working on than personally experienced. ”( sick of standing with my hands in my pockets , interview with Kevin Vennemann, BELLA triste No. 15, summer 2006).

Near Jedenew

The almost one hundred and forty-page book was initially ignored. This changed with an emphatic review by Helmut Böttiger , with which he clearly emphasized the importance of the book: “[...] after the first few pages it is clear: This is by far the best literary text that has been published by has been published by someone under thirty. ”(Böttiger, Zerfallen aller Sicherheiten , Deutschlandradio Kultur , book review, December 28, 2005). A one-and-a-half-page review published a little later as the lead of the literary part of ZEIT (Georg Diez, Die schönste saddest story , Die ZEIT, January 12, 2006) continued to draw the attention of the feature section and readership to the book, so that by autumn 2006 it was already in four Editions could appear. Nahe Jedenew describes how two Jewish girls experience a pogrom on their families. Hidden in a tree house, they watch the destruction of their familiar surroundings and take refuge in memories of the past.

In a review for the weekly newspaper Freitag, the critic Georg Kasch placed the literary rank of the book and Vennemann's prose strategy of radical visualization of the past at the center of his review: “In the end, even if the narrator's existence is destroyed, is life and death of the family has become highly present and tangible for the reader. In this, not in genesis, the novel resembles the great texts of WG Sebald : He succeeds in making the incomprehensible of Jewish extermination tangible for oppressive moments. Vennemann's rhythmic variations disturb, reverberate and hold your breath ”(Kasch, Reiz der Fiktion , Friday, April 7, 2006).

Occasionally, but not in the literary reviews of the feature pages, the assumption was made that the fictitious pogrom described in Nahe Jedenew was intended to commemorate the massacre that actually happened in Jedwabne, Poland, on July 10, 1941. Vennemann's comments on these assumptions are not known.

Works

Stories, novels

  • Wolf rings. Stories. Tropen Verlag , Cologne 2002.
  • Near Jedenew. Novel. Suhrkamp Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Mara Kogoj. Novel. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007.
  • Sunset Boulevard. About filming, building and dying in Los Angeles. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2012.

Contributions (selection)

  • And so it was with the cornfield. Narrative. In: Michael Zöllner, Leander Scholz (Eds.): Ex. Reinbek 2000,
  • On the cherry blossom tree. Narrative. In: BELLA triste. No. 4, Hildesheim, autumn 2002,
  • Hide. Narrative. In: Susann Rehlein (Ed.): Alles Lametta ,. Munich 2002/2003,
  • Near Yegwenew (prologue). Extract from the novel. In: Edit , No. 36, Leipzig, 2004,
  • That Sturmhard Kubel. Narrative. In: Jörn Morisse, Stefan Rehberger (Eds.): Driving home for Christmas. Frankfurt am Main 2006,

Radio works

Reviews, essays

  • The order of the snow. Geographies. About Andreas Münzner's novel The Height of the Alps. In: Wasp's Nest . 141, December 2005.
  • Else Lasker-Schüler : Me and me. Works and letters. In: Wasp's Nest. 133, December 2003.
  • Andrea Krauss: Breaking tradition. In: Wasp's Nest. 133, December 2003.
  • with Sebastian Bischoff: You have to be eighty million friends. About national madness and forced collectivism in the run-up to a German soccer World Cup. In: Ballesterer FM. Issue 21, Summer 2006.

Translations

  • Benjamin Kunkel , Keith Gessen (Ed.): One step further. The n + 1 anthology. From the American by Kevin Vennemann. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008.
  • Mark Greif : Blue screen. Essays . From the American by Kevin Vennemann. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2011.
  • Franco Berardi : The uprising. About poetry and finance . Translated from the English by Kevin Vennemann. Matthes & Seitz , Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95757-237-0 .
  • Franco Berardi: Heroes. About mass murder and suicide . Translated from the English by Kevin Vennemann. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95757-237-0 .
  • Chris Kraus : I Love Dick . From American English by Kevin Vennemann. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95757-364-3 .
  • Franco Berardi: The soul at work. From alienation to autonomy . Translated from the English by Kevin Vennemann. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-95757-535-7 .

As editor

Awards

Interviews with Kevin Vennemann

  • Knowing what for. Interview by Ilka Schröder , Sebastian Bischoff and Hartmut Burggrabe. In: concrete. No. 06/2006.
  • sick of standing with my hands in my pockets. Interview by Katrin Zimmermann. In: BELLA triste. No. 15, 2006.
  • From Germany to Ljubljana. The young writer Kevin Vennemann is interested in the history of Eastern Europe. Interview by Stephanie von Oppen. Deutschlandradio Kultur , Radiofeuilleton Profil, November 8, 2006.

Further public appearances

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ scrippscollege.edu
  2. ↑ Felix Stephan writes in his SZ review of July 18, 2012 that this "factual text" should be read as a novel.
personal data
SURNAME Vennemann, Kevin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorsten