Showing posts with label ingo schulze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ingo schulze. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 October 2010

Schulze & Hartwig on Contemporary German Writing

Two great pieces on German books in English:

My number-one fave critic Ina Hartwig gets all enthusiastic about Lutz Seiler, Clemens Meyer, Herta Müller, David Wagner (one of those people I see literally almost everywhere I go), Ulrich Peltzer (whose Part of the Solution will be out in English next year, translated by Martin Chalmers) and Marlene Streeruwitz. At sign and sight.

Hartwig writes:

The post-ideological vacuum which, at the end of the old world order, seemed to have resulted in a certain paralysis, has now given way to powerful and fascinating diagnoses of our times. Contemporary literature has long been fulfilling its very real seismographic duties. It is delivering earnest, sarcastic, sceptical, lyrical, buoyant and enduring images, more bold that the most incisive editorials, which go straight to the heart of the unknown society in which we live.

And in the run-up to their Best European Fiction 2011 anthology, Dalkey Archive Press interview the German contributor, Ingo Schulze. Echoing almost every writer I know, Schulze says:

Someone like Wolfgang Hilbig, who died three years ago, should be read and translated far more than he is. The best writing of the last thirty years in German comes from him.

This is indeed a crying shame. You can read translations of three very short pieces and "The Abandoned Factory" by Isabel Cole online, but he hasn't been published in the US or UK so far.

Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Ingo Schulze on the Terrace

Before everyone in Berlin switches their attention to the terraces as the World Cup kicks off, Ingo Schulze last night had the honour of opening the outdoor season at the Literary Colloquium. Now if you've never been to the Literary Colloquium in Berlin, you must right this wrong as soon as possible. Even if you live in Michigan or Montevideo. I've said it before but I'll say it again: it is the world's most beautiful literary venue, a lakeside villa on the edge of Berlin where writers and translators can stay. And despite the opulent surroundings, everyone who works there is very friendly and welcoming.

It's fine and dandy in the winter, but in the summer the LCB comes into its own. Imagine a balmy evening on the terrace, sipping wine and listening to a talented writer as the sun sets over the Wannsee. There may be few pleasures more innocent. Ahh.

Anyway, Ingo Schulze has written a new book of short stories, Orangen und Engel. Allow me to insult your intelligence by translating that - it means Oranges and Angels. And it's all about Italy, where such things grow on trees. I forgot to look at the book, but it's illustrated with photos by Matthias Hoch. Incidentally, Schulze's previous short story collection is just out in English, no doubt expertly translated by John E. Woods, under the title One More Story. Click on that link to make your way to an excerpt. His gorgeous novel set in the heady summer of 1989, Adam and Evelyn, is also coming up in English at some point.

The thing about Schulze's prose is that it appears deceptively simple. But as you delve deeper, you find nuances of meaning and humour that make you realise just how clever the man is. He's also very nice, and very political, and was recently made president of the Berlin Academy of Arts. So his book on Italy is rather an orange to be peeled and dissected, discovering the sweetness inside. Oh, I do so love a laboured metaphor.

To start the evening, Schulze talked to the critic Ursula März about the German and his own relationship to Italy. Ever since Goethe, the Germans have had the hots for the place. And this year the Villa Massimo in Rome celebrates its hundredth anniversary as a state-owned hangout for German writers and artists. Ingo Schulze and his family spent 2007 there, working very hard apparently. And strangely enough, the narrator in Orangen und Engel is also a writer staying at the Villa Massimo with his family. As so often, Ingo Schulze plays his game of pretending the narrator is Ingo Schulze. Which is always fun.

Schulze read a long piece from the collection, featuring a Romanian man who tells the narrator a story every writer wants to hear. The political undertones were very clear but never overwhelmed the story, which had me transfixed from about a third of the way in. This is far from a romanticised view of Italy, despite featuring Latin lovers and car accidents. Afterwards, I talked to a jet-setting professional hair colorist about whether the story was feasible. No, even the apparently realistic parts aren't overly likely to have ever happened to anyone. But surely that's the joy of telling stories - and of being told them? Because in stories, anything can happen. And in Ingo Schulze's stories, it often does.

Monday, 2 November 2009

Four German Titles on Incredibly Long Impac Longlist

They've announced the 156-strong longlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Titles are nominated by participating libraries, which I think is a fantastic idea. And there are four German books in the running for the €100,000 prize - which would be split 75:25 between the author and their translator, should a translated title win.

The books are:

Christoph Hein, Settlement, tr. Philip Boehm
Ingo Schulze, New Lives, tr. John E Woods
Sasa Stanisic, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, tr. Anthea Bell
Ilija Trojanov, The Collector of Worlds, tr. William Hobson

You can see which libraries participated and which books they nominated, and a brief look shows something interesting. This time around, the libraries in Germany almost all picked at least one German book, while the Austrian and Swiss libraries were completely unpatriotic. Of the thirteen nominations from England, one is a translated title. Irish libraries suggest two translations, Scottish none (although there were only two libraries participating). South African zero. USA four of around seventy suggestions. Australia none, New Zealand one. Barbados & Jamaica none, Canada one. (And sorry to have overlooked, like, half the English-speaking countries on the list. It's because I don't get out enough.)

In most cases, translated books were nominated solely by libraries in their countries of origin (which explains the lack of Austrian and Swiss titles on the list). But at least this is a good way to get greater attention for those books in the English-speaking world, however much it smacks of Eurovisionism. The actual judging is more traditional, so that also gives less popular titles a fair shot at the prize.

Monday, 24 August 2009

Election Season

There's something that makes Germany very different to Britain in my eyes, and that's the fact that it's OK to talk about politics on any and every occasion. Whereas families in England will often change the subject when Uncle Joe starts on about the immigrants again, your average German family will get stuck in with gusto. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and they're entitled to air it at great length as well. Don't get me wrong, there are advantages to this, and it's usually very interesting.

Being human beings like the rest of us, German writers are no exception - only their options for airing their political views are wider than the odd Christmas dinner and drunken wake. And when election time comes around, there's no stopping them. I've already posted about Julia Franck's public advocacy of the SPD, but there have been a number of other interesting authorly interventions over the past few weeks.

First up was Dietmar Dath, in an interview with Welt Online. Dath has written all sorts of genre-busting stuff somewhere between literary fiction, fantasy and science fiction, including a non-fiction book about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and was shortlisted for last year's German Book Prize with Die Abschaffung der Arten. From the extracts I've read of it, I'd say Dath wedded Arno Schmidt with Margaret Atwood and a healthy dose of his own ideas. Anyway, he's a very vocal Marxist-Leninist and at the same time an accepted member of the literary establishment. So the interview with one of Germany's most conservative newspapers is great reading. Asked who he'll be voting for, he plumps for the former PDS, now called Die Linke:

The fun boys and girls in Oskar's crew (Lafontaine). Why? Because if a tiny remnant of health insurance, rent control, affordable education, collective wage law, etc. rears its head out of the rubble anywhere, these people will tie themselves to it with daisy chains and hurl insults at the diggers come to clear the ground. (...) I don't want socialism because it's written in books, I want it because I don't have rich parents. If I can't work any more I'll be in trouble if nobody helps me out.

On the same day Ingo Schulze weighed in, another candidate on last year's shortlist with the rather lovely Adam und Evelyn. Schulze has a lot to say about the former East Germany and the chances that unification blew, but this time he's widened his radius, giving us a broad picture of the evils of the world in an FAZ essay on the future of capitalism. Again, it's fascinating stuff, if perhaps not all that new to many readers. Fortress Europe, corruption, global warming, falling wages and rising debt - we need to rethink the way our world works, he writes. He recalls a scene from Rokand Emmerich's Godzilla, in which a scientist is standing in a huge hole in the ground saying, I can't see any traces of a monster, then the camera pulls out and we see he's in a massive footprint:

The German government reminds me of that scientist. They're trying to use the old ideas and categories to find out what kind of monster we're dealing with. But the standpoint and the approach are all wrong. (...) The finance minister Steinbrück recently talked about "fighting fire with fire" in extraordinary situations. I can't remember any political move in the past twenty years that didn't try fighting fire with fire. It might be a good idea to have a go at combatting flames with water for once.

And now we get Thomas Brussig, in the Tagesspiegel, on people who don't vote. Brussig is another East German, and has written a lot of satire on the subject of the GDR, including Heroes Like Us. It's hard to tell if he's being serious here, but it wouldn't surprise me. He complains that elections mess up the business of running the country, and compares voting behaviour in the GDR and modern-day Germany - people were once forced to vote but had no actual influence over their own lives, and now they stay away from the polls in their droves:

Not voting can mean: I'm not scared of any of the options on offer, and I don't tie my life's happiness to any of them. Not voting means not feeling subjugated to political conditions. I think that's not a bad situation. It's even a state of being worth striving for. Not voting means expressing freedom from politics. That's something very, very valuable.

Of course, some of us in Germany are free from politics by way of being disenfranchised, which doesn't mean we're not subjugated to decisions made above our heads, just to bang my own drum here. Aside from that, Brussig doesn't go into how democracy might work out what people want without actually asking them, so to speak, at the polls.

But ultimately, all these people are writers, so perhaps it's legitimate for them to leave any possible solutions out of the equation. After all, Uncle Joe doesn't have all the answers either.

Monday, 8 June 2009

Wolfenbüttel: 9 Hours' Sleep Is Not Enough

I'm back at my desk after a heady weekend of translatorly frolics. The Wolfenbütteler Gespräch is the German literary translators' association's annual get-together, where the members meet and greet, give and receive readings, workshops and honours, and generally work up a sweat on and off the dancefloor. It's a pretty unique gathering that changes the face of the small town of Wolfenbüttel for three days of every year.

What struck me this year was the absolutely warm and supportive atmosphere. Although a couple of events are open to the public and the odd editor and student does attend, we were pretty much all in the same boat. But this year there seemed no trace of creative or political rivalry - possibly because there were fewer people in attendance than in the last couple of years. Instead, all the criticism in the workshops was wonderfully constructive, there were professions of support and appreciation all over the shop, and I generally felt embraced in a warm hug the whole time I was there.

The weekend kicked off with an evening of readings - four simultaneous ones, to be precise. I went to "My Favourite Book", which was an excellent idea and expertly moderated by Isabel Bogdan - a shout-out to Isa right here and thanks for all the Kleidpropaganda! Imagine the riches when four outstanding translators read from the books they've most enjoyed translating. Five hours' sleep later it was off to the workshops. I attended an all-day creative writing session, which convinced me that literary translators have all the skills they need to write their own material - and are their own best critics.

That evening Susanne Lange handed on the VdÜ's Hieronymusring award to Ulrich Blumenbach, from Cervantes to David Foster Wallace in one infinite leap. And then of course there was the party, where DJs Lang & Scheidt had them translators shakin' their bacon all night long. There were requests for a request form next year (in dreifacher Ausfertigung?), but I'm tempted to remain a dictatorial DJ. It was at least an honour to be told by a prizewinning translator that we had played "mainly good music".

A short four hours in the land of nod were followed by one of my highlights - Ingo Schulze in conversation with his English and Hungarian translators, John E. Woods and Lídia Nádori. The subject was translating Neue Leben - which presented a few problems, as readers outside of the former East Germany (including in the West) aren't generally familiar with a lot of the material. So the translators added a few footnotes of their own, in addition to the know-it-all notes by the "editor", a certain I.S. Ingo Schulze, we were told, is one of the friendliest and most helpful authors around - rather like being called the most intelligent rock singer, he laughed.

They also mentioned the May workshop in Straelen with the author and 17 of his translators, all of whom are working on Adam und Evelyn. You can listen to pieces (in German) on the workshop via Deutsche Welle and Deutschlandradio. And I now have a signed and tattered copy of Neue Leben to go with John Woods' translation New Lives on my To Be Read pile.

All in all, I suspect most of us returned home tired but happy. Oh, and can I just add that the overall female:male ratio was about 15:1, but the ratio of female to male record requesters was 1:7. What does this tell us?

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

Overly Adoring Fans

I've noticed a strange phenomenon in several German books written by men. Let's call it the "adoring female fan" syndrome.

It first caught my attention in Ingo Schulze's award-winning Handy. Strangely, although I know John E. Woods has been translating it, the book is not yet available in English. Maybe later in the year. Anyway, one of the really rather good short stories is about an author on a reading tour in Egypt. Apart from playing with your mind by naming his translators John E. Woods (English) and Samir Grees (Arabic) and making it plain that the first-person narrator is very much himself, Schulze writes about his companion on the trip, Sheila:

Sheila and I had met at a reading in Koblenz at the end of 2003. She had joined us for a meal afterwards and subsequently accompanied me to my hotel, along with the bookseller. Could she have a look at my room and the view of the Rhine, she asked when I was saying goodbye. I really had been raving about the view of the Rhine.

Sheila is the archetypal adoring female fan, young and attractive and straight-forward, until she falls out of love with the author and into love with a young Egyptian, that is.

Then there's Selim Özdogan's slightly rambling novel Mehr. The narrator is a struggling author and has a fling with a female fan.

A woman with a bottle of beer in her hand came and stood next to me.
- I've read your books. Very good, I must say, I liked them a lot.
At first I didn't know what to say. It wasn't every day that someone came up and talked to me like that. I smiled at her.
- Glad to hear it.


But of course, he is wracked with guilt for cheating on his girlfriend (unlike in the story above, at least nominally) and it all ends in tears.

And then there's Maxim Biller's Liebe Heute. The short story collection will be published in English in June, translated by - you guessed it - Anthea "must be incredibly busy" Bell. I can't for the life of me find the reference now, but I remember reading there's a similar story in there. You get the message, author has sex with adoring female fan, it all goes wrong, cue melancholy ending. By the way, you can read an interview in English with Biller in the New Yorker here.

So there must be something behind it. Either German readings are a hotbed of hormonal activity, with attractive readers throwing themselves at their favourite writers like rock groupies, or that's every (male) writer's secret wish. I must pay more attention at the next one I attend...