Lanz (novel)
Lanz is a novel by the Swiss author Flurin Jecker , published by Nagel & Kimche Verlag in Zurich in 2017 . The novel revolves around the life and problems of a teenager in today's world and has attracted attention mainly because of the extraordinary language used by the 14-year-old narrator.
content
Blog
The main character Lanz writes blog entries on the occasion of a school project week on the subject of “I'm writing a blog”. Its entries are sorted by day of the week, titled and usually arise during the same day or the following day.
Monday (pp. 7-18)
I wanted Lynn and not a shitty blog: It's Monday and the project week has started. Lanz chose “I'm writing a blog” as a topic because his friend Andi told him that Lynn chose it. But instead of meeting Lynn, he sees his class teacher Mr. Gilgen and a few other students. He thinks of Andi because he had told him that Lynn was also participating in this project. Mr. Gilgen introduces the project and gives initial instructions, e.g. B. that you should definitely have a fixed topic before you write. Like every Monday and Thursday, Lanz goes to the Müller's lunch. On the way to the Müllers, Lanz writes to Andi, claiming that he couldn't use a friend to fool him with something like that. Andi, on the other hand, swears that he was sure that Lynn had also taken this course. Lanz arrives at the Müller's and has lunch with them while they talk about school and what's going on at Lanz. The conversation is a bit long, Lanz is late.
In the afternoon he comes into the room and begins to write for the first time. Teacher Gilgen asks what he has written. That's none of his business, says Lanz, and refuses to show. Teacher Gilgen creates a new document with the title “MY BLOG WITH MR GILGEN”. Lanz waits until the teacher turns to someone else and changes the title to “I wanted Lynn and no shitty blog” (p. 15). Lanz makes his first voluntary entry and can hardly stop writing. Despite the ringing, he stays in the room and continues to write after everyone is gone.
At home he finds that his mother and her boyfriend Mani are there. He suspects they are sleeping together. That always creates an embarrassing atmosphere, also because he is bothered by the fact that Mani always comes out of the bedroom perfectly dressed. Lanz therefore closes the door of his room, hears nirvana and rolls a cigarette , which is a new habit of his.
Tuesday (pp. 19–60)
Lanz and Mani (whom he calls «Manimat») sit down at the table for dinner in the evening. Mani notices that Lanz smells like smoke and demands from Silvia that she should punish him.
After dinner, Lanz sits down at the computer and starts the video game Heroes of the Storm . He's been playing the game for several years. The first few laps are fun for him, but then he gets bored. He clicks around listlessly in his profile, at some point closes the laptop and wonders what he is actually doing there. Instead, he decides to go outside, to his place by the oak tree, which is a little above the house. From there he decides to go further into the forest. To go into the forest alone, he has to overcome his fear. On the way to the forest, he passes a farm with a light on. Here he is afraid because he imagines that a child molester could live here. In a flashback, he describes his childhood fear that he would be caught by child molesters. As a result of this fear, he always had to wait for his schoolmate and neighbor Livu after school. He didn't like Livu, but he didn't have to walk home alone. He continues to the village square to a fountain and smokes a joint there . He gets cold quickly and so he goes home again.
The next morning, Lanz is late for school, is scolded by teacher Gilgen and realizes that Lynn is now sitting next to him. Gilgen wants Lanz to read a passage from his blog, but Lanz refuses. Gilgen then goes to Lanz and has a conversation with him about the fact that Lanz should not disturb the project lessons. After lunch, Lanz has a superficial conversation with Lynn. At dinner, Lanz tells his mother that he has project week, but not that his project is being taught by teacher Gilgen. Lanz reflects on the fact that he maintains the communication between mother and biological father and notices his discomfort in this role. He wishes his parents were together again.
Wednesday (pp. 61–72)
Lanz begins his entry on Wednesday with the description of Tuesday evening. He tells how he stayed with his father and had to go to bed at a quarter past nine. He stayed awake for a long time and even smoked on the balcony. He thought about what he could do during the vacation and doesn't know. This prompts him to report on his worst vacation with his father. The holidays were boring and sad. The father did not sleep enough and looked ill. Lanz even thought that he could have cancer .
Back at school, he meets Lynn again. Finally he asks Lynn if he can add her to Facebook , which she agrees to. He wants to know if Lynn is going to the school graduation party. Lynn says no, but Lanz does not find out why, because the teacher Gilgen interrupts the conversation.
Thursday (pp. 73-100)
Lanz's schoolmate Tabea writes to Lanz on Facebook. He is disappointed that it is not Lynn who is writing to him. That's why he ignores Tabea. (P. 75). Then Lanz goes to Andi and they smoke pot together. Lanz tells Andi that establishing a relationship with Lynn couldn't work because she was traveling to Colorado on vacation. That's why she doesn't come to the graduation party (pp. 76–77). He then goes alone to his place by the oak tree above his home. He thinks about the project week or about his group. He doesn't want to go home or anywhere else (pp. 78–79). He remembers Easter , which when he was little was special to him (pp. 80–81).
He returns home after all, but there he packs his most important things in a backpack. Takes his mother's money to buy a train ticket, leaves his house and goes to the train station. On the opposite platform he sees a former teacher, which triggers feelings of shame (pp. 82–83). But he gets on the train to Bern and continues from there to Zurich . His parents don't know about his sudden disappearance. On the train to Chur , he has a short conversation with a woman who is training a guide dog (p. 85). His travel destination is Clavau (a fictional place in Graubünden). In Clavau he leaves the train and goes to the house of his relatives whom he last saw a year ago (p. 89). Memories of this last visit are woven in: at that time he often watched TV with his cousin Gian and smoked in the stable. He had also fallen in love with a friend of his cousin, Simona, during this stay and they even wrote to each other after he returned home from vacation. When he arrives at his relatives, he first runs to the stable. Here he remembers fighting in the hay with Gian. In the stable he now sees his relatives Anna, Mike, Gian, Ciara and their dog Cesar (p. 82). At first they don't even notice Lanz and he needs courage to identify himself. But the family is busy because a cow is seriously ill. The vet comes and has to put her to sleep. Gian and Lanz load the animal corpses with a forklift and take them out of the stable (p. 94–95). Later, the great-aunt (known as "Tatta") cooks dinner for the whole family. Then Gian, Lanz and Ciara sneak into the pigsty to smoke pot. Lanz sleeps in Tatta's room (pp. 98–100).
Last day (pp. 101–125)
Writing is so important to Lanz that he sits down at the computer as soon as he gets up and blogs about his latest experiences. He also prefers to write instead of going to work with Gian on the farm. He writes that he would rather write a text than pursue a so-called "shitty idea" (p. 103). To Gian, he says: "I didn't run away because writing sucks, but because the teacher is an asshole" (p. 104). Gian and Ciara tease Lanz and interrupt him several times while he is writing. While writing, he relives the past events and falls back into the present (p. 105). He begins to speak openly about his hurt feelings as his mother apparently still has not noticed that he has disappeared (p. 106). Lanz decides to take a walk and gets a kind of panic attack through his ideas and thoughts . After hastily climbing a rock, he begins to cry. This is triggered by an imagination of spiders and the “shitty feeling” that his parents don't know where he is at this moment. (P. 108). Gian and Cara discover Lanz by chance. Now he helps with shoveling and flattening molehills, which he now pursues angrily (p. 110). When hail suddenly sets in, they run into a nearby mountain pasture . There they find shelter, tell stories, smoke pot and do nonsense. When night sets in, they spend the night in the Maiensäss (pp. 112–123).
The next day, Lanz reports to his mother, who then travels to Clavau. They then stay together with the relatives until the end of the holiday.
At the end of the vacation, Lanz and his mother return home. Lanz works out how many more hours he will spend in class with teacher Gilgen. Andi is waiting for him at the train station (pp. 124–125).
Characters
Lanz
The main character Lanz is a fourteen-year-old school boy who has to struggle with typical and atypical everyday problems of a young person. Compared to his peers, Lanz thinks more rebelliously, because he wants to make life as simple as possible, but on the other hand he is also fearful. In the novel, his everyday life is shaped by the arguments of his parents or his mother and her friend. Despite his friend Andi or his interest in his crush, Lynn, Lanz seems lonely. During the project week he tries to get closer to Lynn and to establish contact, it remains open whether Lynn develops any kind of interest in Lanz. Lanz is often bored, which is why he smokes, smokes, and plays video games without really enjoying it. He finds a new passion in writing his blog.
Teacher Gilgen
Teacher Gilgen, also called Gilginator by Lanz , is Lanz's class teacher. For Lanz he is a «hate teacher». He also attends the “I'm writing a blog” course with him during the project week. Teacher Gilgen has been a senior teacher for 20 years.
Lynn
Lynn Wyss is the 14-year-old girl Lanz raves about. It is only because of Lynn that he is enrolling in the project week course “I'm writing a blog”. It remains to be seen whether Lynn is also interested in Lanz. On Tuesday and Wednesday they have brief conversations in the course, on Wednesday evening they briefly write to each other on Facebook. Lynn travels to Colorado for vacation before the end of the project week, which is why she cannot come to the graduation party.
Lanz's mother
Silvia works as a nurse and leads a team in the hospital. Her boyfriend's name is Mani (Manfred). She works a lot and during shifts, which is why she has little time for her son and little insight into Lanz's life. She knows that Lanz smokes and hardly rebukes him. Lanz suspects she thinks it's the only thing that gives him pleasure. When Lanz leaves for Clavau, she only notices this when Lanz calls her.
Lanz's father
Lanz calls his father “Babs”. He works as a journalist and is stricter with Lanz than his mother. Lanz has to help out a lot with his father and - as a fourteen-year-old - goes to bed very early. The father does not treat his son in an age-appropriate manner. Lanz does not dare to smoke in the presence of his father, although the father smokes himself. The father has lived separately from Lanz and his mother for seven years, but lives in an apartment in the same village as Lanz's mother.
And I
Andi is a school friend of Lanz. He is the only person Lanz spends his free time with. Nevertheless, the two of them are not very friendly with each other. Andi also smokes and weeds, often together with Lanz.
Gian, Ciara, Anna and Mike
Lanz's relatives live in Clavau in Graubünden. You are his cousins. At the end of the project week, Lanz runs off to see these relatives. He gets along particularly well with Gian and Ciara, as he has already experienced a lot with them. His relatives live in rural areas and run a farm, which is why Lanz also helps in the stable and with other work there.
shape
Literary genre
Lanz is an epic text or a novel . This is shown by the fact that it is in prose and contains almost 130 pages.
construction
The book is written in the form of a blog , with the reader reading the main character's personal blog posts. The plot is divided into five chapters, which correspond to the days of the week Monday - Friday. The work plays the last week of school before the Easter break in spring. The articles for these weekdays are partly written on the same day, partly on the following day. Accordingly, the novel takes place in just over five days. Each chapter also contains several sub-chapters (also individual blog entries). On the one hand, Lanz tells about his everyday school life in the project week, on the other hand, flashbacks are used to interweave Lanz's childhood memories and reflections.
At the beginning Lanz wrote in the past tense, later he changed to the present tense.
Narrative technique
The narrative perspective remains a personal first-person perspective throughout the novel. It enables a direct impression of the experience and an insight into the thoughts of the narrator. Flurin Jecker has chosen a perspective that is typical and common for personal blog posts.
linguistic style
The novel is based on an oral use of language. Lanz does not write in a typical standard language . Many youth language terms and expressions from the Swiss German dialect and from English are used, but the text is also based on the High German standard . The frequent occurrence of statements in the subjunctive is also noteworthy, which is also an indication of the peculiarities of Swiss orality.
Martin Ebel writes in his review in the Tages-Anzeiger on the language of Lanz:
Jecker does not fall into the trap of youthful jargon throwing trendy vocabulary around ("shit" in all grammatical variants has long been part of normal vocabulary). He does not flirt with the dialect (in which, if the book wanted to be “authentic”, his hero would of course have to speak) and neither, as other Swiss authors are currently doing, experiment with a combination of high-level language and dialect. He does not imitate SMS dialogues, but knows that mastering the subjunctive, for example, is beneficial to the mental differentiation of his character.
Jecker has found a tone that translates the feelings of his hero into prose with quiet distance, with supposedly simple but cleverly employed means.
Malin Hunziker notes in her review of the language in the novel:
Flurin Jecker knows how to empathize with the soul of a disoriented boy and bluntly comment on the trials and tribulations of puberty. He tells in an unusual, direct language that seems to be a mixture of youth language and German dialect and does not shy away from Anglicisms and vulgar language.
Reception and criticism
Awards and grants
Author Flurin Jecker received the following awards for his novel:
- 2017: Toad of the Month , June 2017
- 2017: Continue writing grant from the City of Bern
- 2018: Kranichsteiner youth literature scholarship
Reviews and Criticism
The novel was well received by the majority of critics. The book was discussed in many media, including NZZ , Tages-Anzeiger and the Aargauer Zeitung .
The language, which some critics described as stylistically and others as an appropriate representation of youth language, caused criticism.
A lot of positive criticism was expressed. The novel by Markus Gasser, Swiss SRF 2, Context “Literature in Conversation” was praised for transforming orality back into a beautifully elaborated, very concise literary language. Esther Schneider from SRF 2, “Context Literature in Conversation” also only loses good words about the book. She praises the linguistic reduction of the language and the youthful, authentic narrative tone.
expenditure
- Flurin Jecker: Lanz . Nagel & Kimche Verlag in Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-312-01022-6
Web links
- Publishing website for the novel
- Website of the author with current reading dates and press reviews
- Author's Twitter account