Heavy tremor

Schweres quake (in the original: Strong Motion ) is the title of the second novel by Jonathan Franzen . It was published in 1992 and its main topic deals with the environmental crime of managing a chemical company through the injection of toxic waste water and the associated responsibility of people for ecology . In this context, the author uses the example of a family to paint a diverse picture of North American society in the 1980s, e. For example, young people's criticism of their parents' way of life, women's aspirations for emancipation, the student milieu, real estate and stock deals and the actions of radical anti-abortionists. The German translation by Thomas Piltz was published in 2005 after the success of The Corrections and the resulting interest in the author's early works.

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Strong Motion is set in the late 1980s in Boston (Massachusetts) and the surrounding area, where the author's fiction in 1987 caused a series of earthquakes over the course of a year, which left the story behind the two dissatisfied with their lives and looking for one Triggering the aim of swaying main characters: The twenty-three year old Louis Holland returns to Boston at the beginning of the plot after completing his studies in Houston and works there as a broadcast technician until the local radio station SNE in Somerville is sold to the Reverend Stites sect . The actual central character of the novel is his lover, the career-oriented thirty-year-old Harvard seismologist Dr. who is at the same time gripped by self-doubt about her single existence and her role as a woman. Renée Seitchek.

Part 1 GENDER: KA (Kp. 1–6)

In the first part, presented in personal form from Louis' perspective, the initial situation, the people and the hypothesis they are discussing are presented that the tremors were caused by the chemical company "Sweeting-Aldren Industries". Renée gets on the trail during a party at Louis' sister Eileen's. Eileen's fiancé Peter Stoorhuys, the son of the current managing director of “Sweeting-Aldren”, chats carelessly in a drunk state about the toxic waste water from the factory, which destroys the environment (cf. 4). During her research Renée found an article by A. Krasner from 1969 about her theory of oil fields in great depth. She connects both pieces of information with the earthquake (Chapter 5) and suspects that unsuccessful test bores were carried out in 1970 and that sewage from the Peabody works was illegally injected into the pipes for many years. As a result, the rock gradually slipped ( induced seismicity ).

Louis and Renée meet by chance at the site of the first quake (Chapter 3). She has a scientific interest. With him, the shock has a personal, family component. His aggressive anarchist tendencies are combined with the rebellion against his bourgeois family, which is adapted to social norms and is commercially orientated (Chapter 1). His sixty-eight-year-old step-grandmother Rita Damiano Kernaghan was killed in her house in the earthquake (cp. 2). As a result, his mother Melanie not only inherits the spacious villa on "Argilla Road", but also an estimated $ 22 million in shares in "Sweeting-Aldren Industries", of which her father Jack was a member of the board. The use of the money leads to an argument between him, his sister Eileen and his mother. After a river near the factory was polluted by harmful chemicals, apparently from tanks damaged in the earthquake or illegal discharges, share prices fell sharply. Melanie Holland is wondering whether she should sell her inheritance as soon as possible or wait until it rises again. She doesn't want to take responsibility herself and hand over the decision to an expert. She meets with Renée to hear the seismologist's assessment (Chapter 9). They make a bet that Melanie's attorney, Henry Rudman, of Arger, Kummer & Rudman, is contracting out. The millionaire heir undertakes to pay the scientist up to $ 600,000 (minus taxes) if her assessment of the course development turns out to be correct. If not, she will lose her $ 8,000 deposit in return. Renée then advises her to sell the shares in "Sweeting-Aldren Industries". Later, before going to the abortion clinic, Renée tears up the contract that was sent to her and at the end of the novel also the check (Kp. 11, 17). Melanie follows Renée's assessment and thereby saves her fortune (cp. 16).

Another, metaphysical, theory is the Reverend Philip Stites with his "Church of Christian Action". He regards the earthquake as a divine judgment and claims that the sect's residential center and church, which are at risk of earthquakes and are actually uninhabitable, were spared as a sign of recognition, while the destruction of other buildings should be seen as God's punishment for the abortions they fought. When Renée Seitchek speaks out against this irrational interpretation and the actions of the sect in a television interview, she is insulted and threatened in letters and phone calls.

Part 2 I ♥ LIFE (Kp. 7-11)

In the second part, presented from Renée Seitchek's perspective, the focus shifts. On the one hand, in connection with a description of her biography, her complex personality in search of self-realization becomes clear. She reflects on her role as an emancipated woman in society, focused on her profession, and on her existential situation in a long conversation with Reverend Stites, who represents the Christian position (Chapter 10). Before that, the two of them first came into contact when they unsuccessfully warned Stites and his community not to inhabit the buildings that were in danger of collapsing. The decisive confrontation finally arises in front of the clinic in the Holyoke Center, where Renée has her five-week fetus, which was received by Louis, having an abortion when she publicly acknowledges her decision in front of the demonstrators and justifies this with her women's right to self-determination. Renée did not want to carry the child after she separated from Louis. The reason for this was Louis' indecisive behavior when Lauren Bowles, his exalted pampered girlfriend from his Houston student days (Kp. 3), suddenly showed up and he did not see her off immediately. Lauren regrets her decision against him and her marriage to Emmett Andrew Osterlitz and confesses her love to him (cp. 6). Louis is still impressed by her angelic beauty and they spend a few days together. But both are unsure about the sustainability of a relationship in Louis' small room, especially since she is financially dependent on her wealthy in-laws with her demanding lifestyle. She asks for time to think about it and returns to Austin. When Louis tries to explain the situation to Renée, he can no longer speak to it.

In the second storyline, Renée continues her seismological investigations and checks her hypothesis through individual actions: She presents her assumptions to the Office for Environmental Protection, which is skeptical and negative about her (chapter 8), she flies over the premises of the "Sweeting-Aldren Industries", takes photos the facilities and can use a ruse to save the photos from being confiscated by the security service (Chapter 9), she finds private photos of drilling rigs on the factory premises from the 1970s, inspired by a picture in the "Globe" (Chapter 10) .

In the last two parts of the novel, the criminal act is resolved, whereby the information about the two families involved, Kernaghan and Stoorhuis, converges at Louis and he drives the investigation.

Part 3 ARGILLA ROAD (Kp. 12-13)

The third part leads back to the Hollands. Louis has returned to his parents' home in Evanston, Illinois at the invitation of his father. The two speak out and Bob, whose biography and left-liberal, ecological stance as a history professor at Northwestern University in the campus scene of the 1970s is inserted into the conversation by the authorial narrator, tells his son the family story of his wife Melanie. For him it is representative of the concentration of power and wealth of profit-greedy settler families in the New England states that resulted from the exploitation of nature and human beings, from worldwide trade in the colonial era and industrialization. In this context, he puts the background of the “Sweeting-Aldren Industries” share purchase by his father-in-law in the tradition of white-collar crime manipulation. (Kp. 12 & 13): Jack Kernaghan was a lawyer for the law firm Troob, Smith, Kernaghan & Lee and worked as a consultant to the group, which made a lot of money with explosives for the Second World War, with pesticides, defoliants for the Vietnam War, elastic synthetic textile fibers, etc. earned. When he became a board member at the age of fifty-six, using his position and money to deal with affairs with younger women, his private business crime began. In order to persuade the young chemist Anna Krasner to become his lover, he had to support her research idea, which is controversial among experts and published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, that giant subcrustal oil fields are to be found at depths of four miles. Aldren senior drill an expensive hole. However, he only succeeded with a new idea that if, as expected, one could not find any oil, one could solve a disposal problem by pumping toxic wastewater through the pipe into the depths. Kernaghan's secretary and former lover Rita Damiano jealously watched the secret actions, eventually found out the real reason for the deep drilling and informed Anna about it. She lost hope of her scientific success and left the company without leaving a message. In 1972, the day before Kernaghan's seventy-second birthday, the day he retired, Rita blackmailed him with the threat of reporting his secret sewage project. To prevent this, he married her and at the same time rearranged his fortune by buying additional "Sweeting-Aldren Industries" shares. In doing so he forced her to remain silent, for she now had a financial interest in secrecy.

Part 4 IN THE BLACK (Kp. 14-17)

Returning to Boston, Louis finds refuge with his sister and learns there of the assassination attempt on Renée after the abortion in front of her apartment (cp. 14). This attack alleviates tensions in the Holland family, people talk to each other about their problems again, and so Peter learns of Renée's assumptions about the cause of the earthquake and combines them with his background knowledge of Rita Kernaghan, for whose esoteric publications he had taken on the public relations work, and his father's business (cp. 15). Louis, Eileen and Peter confront David Stoorhuys and accuse him of the attack to prevent further investigation and the release of the evidence. Stoorhuys denies the act, but is indirectly burdened with allegations that he has taken care of his family with his wife, who is not interested in business, and leaves the house. Shortly thereafter, a strong earthquake shook the Boston region, the chemical plant in Peabody was destroyed by explosions and fires and the power supply failed, so that Louis with orientation difficulties “in the black” first went to his mother's house, who was selling champagne in the middle of the destruction celebrating their stocks and survival, and then having to drive to Renée's hospital. When he saw the many damage to the houses, injured people and a dead car driver and found out about the fire in the factory, he asked the guilty question: “How could an earthquake, which was caused by the greed and unscrupulousness of individual people, itself still transform into an act of force majeure, with all the windy, inhuman intangibility that is inherent in higher powers? […] The correct word was secret ”(Chapter 16).

The quake means ruin for "Sweeting-Aldren Industries". There are 23 dead and 110 injured among company employees. The company archive in the headquarters was destroyed by arson, as found fire accelerators prove, and all documents have been destroyed. The contaminated area can only be entered with protective clothing and gas masks. That is why the Office for Environmental Protection considers it irresponsible to look for a well. Instead of getting entangled in the question of guilt, the task now is to join forces to protect people. This attitude is supported by various statements by scientists published in the press. While the seismologist Larry Axelrod from MIT supports the Seitchek hypothesis, the seismologist Howard Chun does not consider the quake to be a swarm quake as it was in the spring, but rather the result of a fault fracture along a deep fault. It is related to the Ipswich earth tremors, but not to those of Peabody. As a precaution, however, the company directors, Aldren, Tabscott, Stoorhuys, the company legal advisor and the chief financial officer, with family members, quickly moved to the island state of St. Kitts in the Caribbean, where they live in the company's vacation villas, and their liquid assets, 30 million dollars, are there transferred. Extradition to the US is unlikely because of the difficulty in resolving the question of guilt. Although there is a threat of a wave of claims for damages with lengthy litigation, the outcome is uncertain. Politicians and authorities respond in press releases with stereotyped condolences to the damaged families, promise quick help and appeal to the cohesion and courage of the population.

As Renée prophesied, the buildings of the “Church of Christian Action” were also destroyed. Disappointed with Reverend Philip Stites, who failed to protect their church as promised, the sect dissolves and the leader goes to Omaha, Nebraska. Civil lawsuits with millions claims are directed against "Sweeting-Aldren Industries" as well as the state of Massachusetts and by supporters of the Sekt against Stites. Full of guilt, Louis moves back to her apartment after Renée's discharge from the hospital and takes care of her. But the development of their relationship is open. Louis lacks a life goal without a job, Louis senses his dissatisfaction and is jealous of Lauren, who is still writing letters to her boyfriend. Only after Lauren announces her pregnancy and ends the platonic contact is this chapter closed for everyone.

A fairytale ending with elements of parody follows. The left-liberal Bob and the capitalist enterprising Melanie Holland part, but the novel ends with three weddings: Eileen and Peter Stoorhuis, Howard and Sally, Alec Bressler, who has bought back the local radio station SNE from Stites and Louis is making the offer, again as a broadcast engineer working for him, and Joyce Edelstein, a philanthropist and the patron of his new idealistic broadcasting project. As the fourth couple, Renée and Louis want to bond firmly together and wish they had a child together when they cross the Charles River Bridge at sunset after the Alecs and Joyce Fest. Louis is relieved of his doubts: “He put out his feelers to the familiar place inside him, but what he found there no longer felt like grief. He wondered if it had ever been grief ”(Cp. 17).

Narrative form

The plot is essentially presented chronologically, sometimes with small jumps and flashbacks, in personal narrative form, alternating from the point of view of Louis or Renée and in the last part occasionally Eileen. Some actions, such as Eileen's and Peters' trip to France, the gas mask and disaster protection scene or the family reconciliation at the end, and the characterization of individual people, e.g. B. Melanie and Bob Holland, Howard Chun, Terry Snall, MaryAnn and Lauren Bowles have satirical and tragicomic traits, respectively.

The many personally and thematically linked main and subplots (e.g. the stories of the family stories of Jack Kernaghan and his in-laws Dennis, Kp. 13, or Jurene Caddulos, Kp. 10) are repeatedly interrupted by authorial insertions: Howard Chun's biography (Ch. 7) the original vegetation of the New England states and their use by the Indians in document form superimposed in Bob Holland's report on the destruction of nature by the European settlers (Ch. 13), summary of the public reactions to the earth tremors and the measures the government (Kp. 8), declarations about the difference between men and women (Kp. 8), environmental pollution that extremely changes living conditions (Kp. 10), the raccoon's path through the litter of the city (Kp. 11), the artificial intelligence of computers (chapter 10).

reception

Since the second novel was only published in Germany after the great success of the third, “The Corrections”, “Schweres Beben” was measured against it by many reviewers and assessed either as a more or less successful forerunner or as proof of Franz's talent.

The negative reviews criticize the “confused”, “too constructed” acting actions and the “woodcut-like [-]” or “so unsatisfactory [e]” figure drawings in addition to the “dazzling” secondary characters. as well as the many coincidences and “genre-like elements” of the crime story. In addition, the late publication of the novel shows an "anachronism", because you can feel the "strong [n] smell of the eighties."

The mixed evaluations also indicate a “overwhelming” and overly complex “obsession with detail”, one often has the impression that one is moving in several novels. But they praise the "clear and unadorned view of the normality of family life", which reminds of the "corrections".

This aspect of reality mixed with the criticism of civilization comes to the fore in other reviews: the author was already "at the height of great ambition" in 1992 without propagating a doctrine. With a “power of narration” the author develops a “society panorama” of the “upheavals of the present in the highly developed world”, in which the question of responsibility for their own behavior is repeatedly asked for the people involved, without the “ready-made ones Answers "to be supplied. Other literary critics even consider the author to be a “gifted neo-traditionalist” who distinguishes “conservative language accuracy, classic form awareness and the ability to create an almost thriller-like tension with an apparently conventionally designed plot”, as well as an “downright absurd [-] obsession with detail . ”Despite a few lengthy passages, the novel is“ an opulent family story, with elements of the thriller, the love story and the creation story. ”

Furthermore, the mannerist's linguistic creativity is rated with “extraordinary metaphors” and the outcome of the novel as ambivalent and the question is asked “whether the elaboration deserves recognition or whether the effort for originality runs the risk of blooming styles”. The dissolution of the novel also caused "[aesthetic] unease". The happy ending is "so inadequately motivated that one would like to believe that the narrator is not particularly serious about it and that he is playing ironically with the traditional means of finishing a novel".

Editions and literature

• Strong Motion. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1992.
• Heavy tremor. Novel. German by Thomas Piltz, Rowohlt Reinbek 2005.
• s. literature

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau of September 21, 2005. Neue Zürcher Zeitung of July 23, 2005.
2. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 6, 2005.
3. ^ The time of August 4, 2005.
4. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of July 27, 2005.
5. ↑ Der Spiegel of July 29, 2005, similarly positive: The daily newspaper of July 23, 2005.
6. ↑ literaturkritik.de