Fame (novel)

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Ruhm - A Novel in Nine Stories is a narrative work by Daniel Kehlmann that was published in German in 2009 . The novel's nine loosely connected stories revolve around issues of communication with mobile phones, computers and the Internet. Her characters appear and disappear again, change or exchange their identity , are forgotten. The fame mentioned in the title runs as a leitmotif through most of the short stories in the novel. By October 2011, the novel had sold over 700,000 times in Germany alone.

content

The novel consists of nine individual stories about virtual and real worlds that are more or less obviously connected or intertwined.

  1. Voices
    The technician Ebling bought a mobile phone . But he is assigned the still active number of another participant named Ralf. The calls not intended for him seduce him to slip into the role of the other. He makes an appointment with the calling women, but doesn't dare to meet them personally. He also tries to get involved in the stranger's business life and enjoys this game.
  2. In danger
    The over-anxious writer Leo Richter flies with his girlfriend Elisabeth on a lecture tour to Latin America. While he is constantly complaining about little things, she fears for the lives of three kidnapped work colleagues. Leo is introduced as the author of the character Lara Gaspard and the following story.
  3. Rosalie goes to die
    On her trip to an association for euthanasia in Switzerland, the cancer patient Rosalie tries to convince the author of her story (i.e. Leo Richter) to change the plot and let her live. The recurring obstacles on this journey make the reader believe that their fate will turn for the better after all. Leo finally lets himself be convinced, transforms her into her younger self and lets her live. However, Rosalie's existence dissolves into nothing when the author ends the story.
  4. The way out
    At a competition, the famous actor Ralf Tanner appears as an imitator of himself. By entering another life, that is, the life of an imitator, he escapes the hype about his person and enjoys life as a normal citizen. Meanwhile, someone else takes his place in the old life. Someone else receives his calls too. In connection with the first story one can conclude: the technician Ebling.
  5. East
    The writer Maria Rubinstein goes on a press trip to Central Asia to replace the Leo Richter who was actually invited. Through a chain of strange coincidences, she is forgotten by the tour group and gets lost in a foreign country without money, mobile phone or language skills. She remains missing.
  6. Answer to the abbess
    The successful author Miguel Auristos Blancos, known worldwide for his esoteric life help books - his books appear in almost all stories - writes a letter to an abbess seeking help on the problem of theodicy . In this he breaks radically with all of his optimistic theses about God and the world. To signal this break, he contemplates killing himself. Whether he does it remains open.
  7. A contribution to the debate
    The internet addict Mollwitz, employee of a mobile phone company, is sent by his boss to a congress to give a lecture. There he meets the writer Leo Richter, whom he adores because of the creation of his character "Lara Gaspard". However, Richter evades Mollwitz and his presentation fails.
  8. How I lied and died
    The head of department of a large cell phone company leads a double life with his wife Hannah and his friend Luzia. During this time, due to his negligence, mobile phone numbers were accidentally assigned twice. Because of the tricky circumstances in his life, he leaves an important presentation to the incompetent Mollwitz - which thoroughly fails (see “A Contribution to the Debate”).
  9. In danger
    The story has the same title as the second. The two main characters - Leo and his girlfriend Elisabeth - appear again, this time in the story of the author Leo Richter, who has turned into a courageous companion for his girlfriend on a humanitarian mission in the African war zone. Elisabeth realizes that what happened to her was exactly what she always feared: to be used as a character in a story of her friend Leo.

characters

Ebling : He is a computer technician whose only bright spot in life is the inexplicable madness of a computer. But with the purchase of a new cell phone, which he has long rejected, Ebling has an interesting new job. He becomes a stranger whose number he got by mistake. He literally takes refuge in the life of a stranger and enjoys the newly acquired power over another.

Leo Richter : He is a writer, very vain, neurotic and hates the question of where he “got these brilliant ideas” because he doesn't want to admit that he puts everyone around him into the stories about his protagonist Lara Gaspard . He is the author of the third story.

Elisabeth : Leo Richter's friend was on the road for a long time in war zones as a volunteer, which leaves her with deep psychological wounds, which she tries vehemently to suppress. So she doesn't want Leo Richter to use it in one of his novels, as she fears that she will be confronted with it again.

Rosalie : She is an old woman who decides to accept euthanasia in Switzerland because she has incurable cancer. But during her trip she notices that she is not ready to die yet, but does not want to admit it to herself. Now faced directly with death, she begins to plead with the author of the story. The request to have a second chance to live is granted to her.

Lara Gaspard : She is the main character in several of Leo Richter's stories; in the story about Rosalie she appears as her niece. Elisabeth is similar to her in terms of age and appearance, but also in terms of her profession (doctor). In the last story, Elisabeth and Lara meet as characters in a story.

Ralf Tanner : He is a famous actor who, however, no longer sees any attraction in this existence. That's why he tries to discover himself by imitating himself on a show. In this way he builds up a second life and finds a new meaning in it. But his first life, in which someone else pretends to be himself, slips out of his hands.

Maria Rubinstein : The writer Maria Rubinstein doesn't ask much of life, but more than what Central Asia offers her. Everything seems desolate to her and (like so much in this book) surreal. But when she is separated from her group, she loses control of everything, so she now realizes how natural it used to be for her. Like Rosalie, she embodies despair here - with the exception that she cannot speak to its author.

Auristos Blancos : He appears in almost all stories through the frequent mention of his novels as a kind of superordinate authority. However, this is only a facade, because he suffers from severe depression, which is why he wants to kill himself. His wife, a distant relative of Ebling, denied him access to his children. His novels, on the other hand, are characterized by optimism, which is intended to help his readers in life. Shortly before the end of his story, he wrote a letter to an abbess in which he pessimistically revoked all of his theses. However, it is not clear whether he will ultimately shoot himself.

Mollwitz : He describes himself as tall and “full figured” ( euphemism for “fat”), is clumsy and lazy and writes in internet forums about gossip (also about the events surrounding Ralf Tanner) about himself in a different world to flee. In order to evade his inferiority towards others, he behaves very rude to them and blames all his problems on them. In meeting Leo Richter at a congress, he now sees an opportunity to add something good to his life. He tries to force Richter to appear in a novel with his character Lara Gaspard and thus to be close to his "love". But when Richter leaves Congress without having spoken to him in detail, he is broken by the ultimate realization that he is meaningless and that his life is disappointing.

Head of department : He works for a mobile phone provider and is Mollwitz's manager. He is married with two children but does not live with his family during the week because of his work. One day he meets another woman with whom he has a relationship. From this point on, he always tries to have both relationships without the partners knowing about each other.

interpretation

Levels of fiction and approach to interpretation

The stories play on different levels of fiction , so that several metaleps happen at once : The primary level is formed by the stories of the author Kehlmann, a secondary level is formed by the two stories, whose author is explicitly named Leo Richter - a character from Kehlmann ( Rosalie goes to die , In danger (2) ). Several storylines and characters violate the logical boundaries of these levels. These include, for example, Rosalie's conversation with her author, the entire composition of In Danger (2) with real and virtual people, the desire of people or their fear of appearing in Leo Richter's stories, or the fictional character of Lara Gaspard who for Mollwitz in A Contribution to Debate Becomes Almost Real.

What the actions of the nine stories have in common are the small coincidences that suddenly change a lot and give life a new direction. Behind this topic of the abrupt and unwanted change in life hides the question of one's own identity , its transience or even arbitrariness. The desire to play a different role can be understood as a reaction to the loss of identity described. In a “ Spiegel ” interview, Daniel Kehlmann said about his book that it was “about being forgotten, about disappearing, about getting lost or breaking up”.

Networking the stories

The following table shows the networking of the nine stories by the people and characters involved. Here H identifies the main character (s), N an important secondary character and R a marginal character of the respective story. It lists all the people who appear or are mentioned in at least two stories in the novel.

person be right danger Rosalie Way out east answer Contribution lie danger
Ebling H . R. . . . R. .
Ralf Tanner R. R. . H . . R. R. .
Carla Mirelli N . N . . R. R. .
MA Blancos R. R. . R. R. H R. . R.
Leo Richter . H N . N . N . H
Elisabeth . H . . . . . . H
Lara Gaspard . R. N . . . R. . N
Maria Rubinstein . R. . . H . . . R.
Rosalie . R. H . . . R. . .
Mollwitz . . . . . . H R. .
Head of department . . . . . . N H .
Mrs. Riedergott . N . . . . . . R.
Praise Meier . . . . . . N N .
Thin man (driver) . . N . . . . N .

Leitmotifs

Fame

The title “Fame” is also an important leitmotif, it appears in all episodes. All characters are positively or negatively influenced by the concept of "fame". Already successful characters it becomes the undoing, others enrich themselves with it.

  • Voices: Ebling's number is swapped for that of Ralf Tanner, a famous film actor, and he gets a little bit of fame.
  • In danger: Leo Richter is a famous author. His new girlfriend Elisabeth has to cope with the situation of being the nameless girlfriend of a famous author.
  • Rosalie Goes To Die: This is Leo Richter's most famous story.
  • The way out: When trying to escape his fame, Ralf Tanner loses his identity.
  • East: Maria Rubinstein is accommodated in an empty hotel. The flight home goes without her, and she finds herself in a place where nobody knows her and nobody helps her. Her disappearance without a trace triggers an increase in her popularity in the western world that she did not have before - although she was already a crime writer, but largely unknown. She is famous from then on.
  • Answer to the Abbess: Miguel Auristos Blancos is so famous that he appears in all the other stories. Nevertheless, the “fame” is only a facade for the author himself, because in reality he suffers from depression and by no means has a stable family environment. Due to the fact that he is about to shoot himself at the end of the episode (whether he really does it remains open), one can conclude that for Miguel Auristos Blancos the instability of his family environment outweighs the "fame" or his worldwide fame as a writer of encouraging esoteric stories.
  • A contribution to the debate: Mollwitz tries to get hold of Leo Richter in order to become a famous figure in one of his works. He thinks he's a famous blogger, but in real life he only attracts attention for his embarrassing appearances.
  • How I Lied and Died: This story is the key point for fame in other stories: the carelessness of the department head doubles cell phone numbers. This is how the technician Ebling (from “Voices”) achieved his fame. Mollwitz (“A Contribution to the Debate”) is also allowed to travel to the conference in the first place because the department head cannot appear due to his situation. This gives Mollwitz the opportunity to get to know his revered writer Leo Richter and comes closer to his desire to become a famous figure in one of his books. For Ralf Tanner, on the other hand, this mishap with the double assignment of numbers triggers an identity crisis and that is the beginning of the decline of his career as a famous film actor.
  • In danger: Elisabeth becomes Richter's most famous fictional character: Lara Gaspard.

identity

All of the main characters in the nine stories change, swap or lose their identity.

  • Ebling: answers Ralf Tanner's calls and slips into a new role.
  • Ralf Tanner: The most striking example; his life is carried on by another man, Tanner begins a new life.
  • Leo Richter: becomes part of his stories himself, once as a godlike author (“Rosalie goes to die”), once as a courageous companion to Elisabeth (“In Danger”)
  • Rosalie: is made a young, beautiful girl again by Leo and is healed
  • Maria Rubinstein: loses her proven identity in the east due to her disappearance (as a crime writer)
  • Head of department: leads a double life, divides his identity.
  • Elisabeth: She loses her identity when Leo Richter integrates her into his story, although she has previously stated that she does not want that (“In danger”)

Modern technologies

Modern technologies play an important role in all stories. “I believe that cell phones, e-mails and iPods mean the greatest change in the reality of our lives since the industrial revolution. We haven't even started to understand that. ”“ Cell phones and email create a parallel reality. You can lead additional life in addition to your own - another topic of the novel. ” In the nine stories, Kehlmann demonstrates the profound changes brought about by the various new communication technologies in an almost model-like manner. The life of most of the protagonists is determined by the functioning or non-functioning of technology. But the novel structure and the plot are also shaped by the recourse to modern technologies. These "constantly create new storylines, narrative levels and levels of fiction" .

  • Voices and The way out: Technician Ebling takes over Ralf Tanner's life due to an incorrectly assigned phone number.
  • Rosalie goes to die: Rosalie organizes the euthanasia and the trip to it via communication media.
  • In danger (1): Leo Richter received the invitations to the book tour because of his controversial lecture on the “extinction of culture” through the (digital) “age of images” and the “power of technology”. He welcomes this state of affairs as a “religious ideal” of the “mystical dawning in the eternal now” that has become reality, but leaves it unclear whether he is serious or ironic.
  • East: Maria Rubinstein is permanently missing after the battery of her cell phone ran out.
  • A contribution to the debate: Mollwitz is addicted to the internet and defines himself through the digital world. In addition, his presentation fails, among other things, due to the failure of the technology (the electronic presentation).
  • How I lied and died: The department head coordinates two lives with the help of cell phones and emails.

shape

language

Kehlmann uses a variety of lexical and stylistic means to individualize and differentiate the stories and above all the characters. The language of the third story, Rosalie gehtdie , written by the character Leo Richter, reflects the ambivalent, torn character of the "author" (Leo Richter) with its postmodern narrative gimmicks, while the blogger's entry in A Contribution to the Debate is characterized by anglicisms, colloquial expressions and solecisms . Answer to the abbess , on the other hand, uses a (pseudo-) artificial, inflated genus dicendi with hypotaxes, some of which are reminiscent of Thomas Mann and especially his novella Death in Venice , in order to underline the divergence between existence and appearance.

Speaking names are also used, as with Mann. As an author, Leo Richter takes on the role of a judge in the book. He decides if something happens or not. The title Auristos Blancos also symbolizes the word structure of an esoteric, pure being.

Novella

The work Fame as a Whole is not a novella . According to the current definition, a novella is, among other things, “ a single-stranded, straightforward leading to a goal ” short story in prose. This is not the case here because of the many different storylines throughout the novel. However, the nine chapters meet the above and other criteria of an amendment. These are unheard-of, but possible individual incidents with individual central conflicts, in a condensed form. Goethe saw as the center of the novella "an unheard-of occurrence" (quoted in).

Episodic novel

Fame is written in the style of an episode novel; one of the partial stories (episodes) can be deleted without further ado without the main plot losing meaning. An episode can also be extracted individually from the story and viewed, even if some questions remain unanswered that can otherwise be answered through the close interweaving of the story. So apart from the last episode, each one works on its own.

“My idea was”, says the author Daniel Kehlmann about his novel, “to push it further and to condense it, or in other words: to transfer the form of the episode film to the novel - to write a novel that consists of episodes, each closed, but all closely related in a large arch. "

filming

The book was filmed in 2010/2011. The screenwriter Isabel Kleefeld also directed. The main roles include Stefan Kurt as Leo Richter, Heino Ferch as Ralf Tanner and Julia Koschitz as Elisabeth. The tragicomedy was filmed in Cologne , Zurich , Buenos Aires , Kiev , the Crimea and near Cancún . The cinema release took place on March 22, 2012.

Reviews

The majority of the critics gave Kehlmann's work a positive rating. The interweaving of the nine stories could not inspire everyone: While Kehlmann is a “virtuoso, amused, light-handed juggler” for Ina Hartwing and Volker Hage describes the book as a “fine network of underground references”, Lothar Müller finds the author's attempt “remarkable Way unsuccessful ”. The book reached first place on the bestseller lists of Der Spiegel and Focus and is 10th on the 2009 annual bestseller list of the Spiegel. By early 2009, 300,000 copies had been sold.

  • “Kehlmann weaves a fine network of underground references. What remains open in one story may find an explanation or continuation in another; what becomes a riddle in one is casually revealed in another. "
  • “This art plays with its role models as casually as with delusion and reality. The subtitle is reminiscent of Salinger's 'Nine Stories', Pynchon and Burroughs send their regards, and whoever wants to can feel reminded of Kehlmann's house saints such as Nabokov and Perutz, Thomas Mann and Borges. Above all, however, Kehlmann proves himself to be a very contemporary romantic with this novel, a philosophical storyteller from those times when romantic irony was invented, the game of chance and necessity elevated to a principle of fiction, and mirrors, repeaters and doubles became favorite motifs of an era . You don't have to notice any of these references to read this book with the greatest pleasure. "
  • “As if nerve tracts were thrown over the nine stories that hold the text corpus together. Deciphering the respective connections is certainly one of the most enjoyable aspects of fame . Here the author shows himself to be a virtuoso, amused, light-handed juggler. ”But in conclusion:“ 'Fame' remains stuck to an old-fashioned image of man. It is the good old wishes and conflicts that prevail here. That can be found comforting. Or conservative. "
  • “As the subtitle suggests, this book contains nine interlinked narratives that are supposed to result in a novel. It failed in a remarkable way. Because it reveals, firstly, one of this author's weaknesses, his limits: He cannot invent characters who offer serious resistance to their author, who keep secrets from him that he cannot resolve. Secondly, it bases its narrative dramaturgy on a theory that makes it all too easy for its subject, modern communication technologies. [...] No, this is not an important book, not a big hit, in which nine stories emerge as the whole of a novel. Because he does not succeed in finding an equivalent for the location and the atmospheric density that unites the disparate narratives and characters in a modern classic of the genre like Sherwood Anderson's 'Winesburg, Ohio' (1919). In 'Fame', the logical connection of the stories remains: what happens to the character in one story is placed in the causal chain of events in a later one, or vice versa. "

expenditure

Research literature

  • Stefan Neuhaus (2010): "Of emphatics, gnostics, zombies and rescuers: On the current situation of literary criticism in the print media", in: Digital literature mediation. Practice - Research - Archiving , edited by Renate Giacomuzzi, Stefan Neuhaus and Christiane Zintzen, Studienverlag, Innsbruck, ISBN 3-7065-4883-6 , pp. 36–47, pp. 38–39. (On the marketing strategy of the Rowohlt publishing house, on reviews and meta-criticisms)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anne Brendel: Isabel Kleefeld brings Daniel Kehlmann's fame to the big canvases. In: negativ-film.de. October 13, 2011, archived from the original on January 21, 2013 ; accessed on August 4, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Volker Hage, Der Spiegel , January 5, 2009: I suffered a lot
  3. ↑ a b Felicitas von Lovenberg: In conversation: Daniel Kehlmann: In how many worlds do you write, Mr. Kehlmann? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Online. December 29, 2008, accessed August 4, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Iuditha Balint: Hyperfiction, Simulation. Media (technologies) and the architecture of storytelling in Daniel Kehlmann's fame. A novel in nine stories . In: Yearbook of Hungarian German Studies 2010. Budapest, Bonn 2011, pp. 15–31. Here p. 15
  5. ↑ a b Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 231). 8th, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-23108-5 .
  6. ↑ cf. Gero von Wilpert: Subject dictionary of literature . Stuttgart: Kröner, 2001.
  7. ^ Ina Hartwig, Frankfurter Rundschau -Online, January 16, 2009: Wrong connection!
  8. ^ Lothar Müller, Süddeutsche Zeitung -Online, January 16, 2009: Sudoku is not a novel
  9. ↑ Michael Kluger: ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Sometimes an author is gracious ). In: Frankfurter Neue Presse from February 20, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.fnp.de
  10. ^ Heinrich Detering, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung -Online, January 16, 2009: When the cell phone rings twice