Popular literature

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Pop literature is not a clearly defined genre of literature. At the time of its creation in the 1940s, it expressed literary rebellion against the encrusted structures of US society.

history

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The first phase of German pop literature was based on the Beat Generation that emerged in the USA in the 1940s and 1950s , in which writers such as William S. Burroughs , Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg came together to form a more or less loose group and created a specific feeling Youngsters tried to express.

The so-called beatniks broke with the traditional dominant moral and life ideas, tried to expand their consciousness through drug consumption and to present their unconventional lifestyle in the most realistic language possible. This is how everyday and vulgar language found its way into literature. In this phase, popular literature was an attempt to give young people and their subcultural lifestyle an authentic language. Examples are the long poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg (1956) and the novels On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (1959).

In Germany the pop literature through 1968 in the magazine was a Christian and the world and in the magazine Playboy published paper Cross the Border - Close the Gap of Leslie Fiedler known. In it he called for the elitist high culture to be replaced by literature that also includes everyday life. Here it was above all the young, rebellious writer Rolf Dieter Brinkmann who, together with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla , published the anthology Acid in 1969 . Bringing out the new American scene and introducing the American pop literary figures to Germany. Brinkmann burst into a literary scene that was dominated by the restorative post-war period and the “politically correct” literature of Group 47 . His demeanor was extremely provocative.

Brinkmann writes:

“ Enzensberger's rejection of Kerouac's statement can be taken symptomatic of the well-known nonsensical thinking of Western intellectuals  [...]. It is actually hard to see why a thought shouldn't have the attractiveness of the tits of a 19 year old that one likes to touch [...] "

"The dead-star reflex that largely characterizes German-language literature products is expressed in the practice of unrestrained tabooing of certain" words "instead of hitting words or sentences until the life encapsulated in them (Dasein, simply: Dasein) new emerges from it in pictures, ideas [...] "

The historical significance of popular literature in Germany is related to the social developments of the 1960s, the student unrest and the 1968 movement . In this mood, pop literature was welcomed as a way of clearly distinguishing oneself culturally from the sharply criticized generation of parents. For the first time, “youth” becomes an independent phase of life with only subcultures reserved for it.

Present: fashion trend "pop literature"

In the 1990s, the term pop literature experienced a renaissance: especially the works of Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre , Christian Kracht , Elke Naters and Alexa Hennig von Lange were subsumed under it in the feature section . Even Judith Hermann , Thomas Brussig , Sibylle Berg , Andreas Mand , Takis Strangler and the Suhrkamp -Autoren Rainald Goetz , Andreas Neumeister and Thomas Meinecke are often called in this context.

Internationally, Nick Hornby is considered one of the most important current representatives of pop literature and pop culture .

One of the highlights of the new movement is the meeting of five pop literary figures in the Berlin Hotel Adlon , namely Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Christian Kracht, Eckhart Nickel , Alexander von Schönburg and Joachim Bessing . The conversations that took place were held in 1999 under the title Tristesse Royale. The pop culture quintet published in book form.

Music, drug use, travel and the processing of secondary reading from the fields of television, music, the Internet, pop culture in general or the current lifestyle find their way into the literary works of the authors mentioned. The classic definition of pop as taking up literary or mainly extra-literary topics and fragments as well as implementing them in a new prosaic form and depicting a section of the world by means of a surface description is continued in the new German pop literature, albeit differently from pop literary Approaches by Hubert Fichte or Rolf Dieter Brinkmann : Although the time of origin continues to be the anchor for the creation and simple reception (according to Diedrich Diederichsen, one of the most prominent features of pop literature; the zeitgeist reference of pop literature, which is often described in this context, cannot be denied) , but the subversive basic character seems to be lost the moment the protagonists seem to spring from a dandy, wealthy upper class. Other, thoroughly subversive approaches to more recent pop literature, such as Justin Larutan ( Das Assentat ), were of course hardly considered in the features section. The fact that the premonition of a loss of the subversive potency of the newer literary pop - an early prejudice of the first-time columnists - is now difficult to maintain anyway, can be proven as follows: At the moment when the supporters of the formerly subversive and sometimes also politically left subculture are have established - a not inconsiderable part of the columnists - can simply hardly be referred to as a subcultural movement, but rather to an opinion-forming establishment. This polemical "gooder fraction" mentioned critics took up the emerging new Popliteratur vigorously opposed, without the established traps - this one draw Faserland of Christian Kracht to notice or to see that behind the "new conservatism" and the political indifference - to rate there is a clear goal: the belated rebellion against the power of opinion of the 1968ers and their political successor organizations (The Greens, ATTAC, etc.). Obvious provocations were taken at face value, scientific principles (above all the differentiation between narrator and author) were neglected. Only more recent scientific work has clearly shown that the pop literature of the 1990s, on closer inspection and with all the appropriate criticism, turns out to be a novel, necessary and therefore by no means undemanding literary trend.

“Pop literature is literature that is produced and perceived under cultural-industrial conditions; So the word doesn't mean “books that contain records”. In my sense, all literature from rich countries that deals with what is actually going on here is pop literature today. "

- Dietmar Dath

Social beat or poetry slam can still be rated as further forms of pop culture genres in the older definition .

After the short-term climax at the end of the 1990s and the simultaneous media presence of the authors and their critics, the German pop literary figures fell silent at the same time as the first scientific papers on the topic were published.

Critical consideration

In Germany, the term pop literature was originally known in 1968 for literary movements that opposed a strict separation between high and mass culture.

Qualitative separations between high-quality literature and pop-cultural everyday worlds, mass cultures and mainstream genres (e.g. Westerns , pornography ) should be leveled. At the same time, elements of the consumer world should find their way into literary texts. As an approach, the path of subversive infiltration was chosen, by means of which the improvement of the existing conditions was sought.

In the 1990s a change took place which was reflected in fewer subversive efforts and more ostensibly affirmative but no less critical approaches to the existing order: enormous sales successes were achieved with the acquisition of proven marketing and promotion strategies ; At the same time, there was a relentless criticism of the prevailing balance of power, especially in the field of cultural journalism.

The authors of the 1990s wanted to use everyday language to convey the attitude towards life of a social group that stands between adolescence and starting a family.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Acid , p. 384.
  2. ^ Acid , p. 399.
  3. ↑ Publications on popular literature ( Memento from January 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, accessed on December 13, 2011
  4. ↑ In the sign of lies . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on March 24, 2017]).
  5. ↑ sueddeutsche.de ( Memento from February 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ While Hornby as theoretician, that is u. a. As a football and music critic who reflects on and analyzes phenomena of Fantum and pop music, fifteen years later, in his followers, the pop musician, singer and poet Maximilian Hecker, an author who knows the pop music scene from personal experience and in his autobiographical book The Rise and Fall of Maximilian Hecker (2012) subjectively commented and artistically processed.
  7. ↑ Compare the list in Johannes Ullmaier: From Acid to Adlon. A journey through German pop literature . Mainz 2001, p. 208
  8. ↑ The writings of Arnold, Baßler and Weigand (see bibliography) deserve special mention .
  9. ↑ Dietmar Dath's new book has to be read this autumn ( memento from July 1, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) zitty , October 20, 2006
  10. ↑ Enno Stahl: Trash, Social Beat and Slam Poetry - a confusion of terms. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): TEXT + KRITIK: SONDERBAND, edition text + kritik in Richard Boorberg Verlag, Bonn 2003, ISSN 0935-2929, ISBN 3-88377-735-8 , pp. 258-278.