Quisquilia: Lib. nov.

Leo N. Tolstoj: Die Kreutzersonate / Der Teufel
Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek b. Hamburg 1961
beg, bee: 24.02.2009, 04.03.2009

antimodernistisch, christliche Morallehre

160 Seiten, Taschenbuch
dt.-sprachig (Ü: Alexander Eliasberg, Svetlana Geier)
Prosa, Literatur, Rußland

Deborah Mathieu: Preventing Prenatal Harm – Should the State Intervene?
(Second Edition)
Georgetown University Press, Washington D.C. 1996
beg, bee: 04.02.2009, 23.02.2009

Review by Heather Draper (PDF)

viii, 188 Seiten, Taschenbuch
engl.-sprachig
Bioethik, Medizin, Recht, Nordamerika

The next day Denise decided to confront her mother directly about the medication she was or was not taking […] All six of us where jammed into the car on our way to Mid-Village Mall and Denise simply waited for a natural break in the conversation, directing her question toward the back of Babette’s head, in a voice drained of inference.
„What do you know about Dylar?“
„Is that the black girl who’s staying with the Stovers?“
„That’s Dakar,“ Steffie said.
„Dakar isn’t her name, it’s where she’s from,“ Denise said. „It’s a country on the ivory coast of Africa.“
„The capital is Lagos,“ Babette said. „I know that because of a surfer movie I saw once where they travel all over the world.“
„The Perfect Wave,“ Heinrich said. „I saw it on TV.“
„But what’s the girl’s name?“ Steffie said.
„I don’t know,“ Babette said, „but the movie wasn’t called The Perfect Wave. The perfect wave is what they were looking for.“
„They go to Hawaii,“ Denise told Steffie, „and wait for these tidal waves to come from Japan. They’re called origamis.“
„And the movie was called The Long Hot Summer,“ her mother said.
„The Long Hot Summer,“ Heinrich said, „happens to be a play by Tennessee Ernie Williams.“
„It doesn’t matter,“ Babette said, „because you can’t copyright titles anyways.“
„If she’s an African,“ Steffie said, „I wonder if she ever rode a camel.“
„Try an Audi Turbo.“
„Try a Toyota Supra.“
„What is it camels store in their humps?“ Babette said. „Food or water? I could never get that straight.“
„There are one-hump camels and two-hump camels,“ Heinrich told her. „So it depends which kind you’re talking about.“
„Are you telling me a two-hump camel stores food in one hump and water in the other?“
„The important thing about camels,“ he said, „is that camel meat is considered a delicacy.“
„I thought that was alligator meat,“ Denise said.
„Who introduced the camel to America?“ Babette said. „They had them out west for a while to carry supplies to coolies who were building the great railroads that met at Ogden, Utah. I remember my history exams.“
„Are you sure you’re not talking about llamas?“ Heinrich said.
„The llama stayed in Peru,“ Denise said. „Peru has the llama, the vicuña and one other animal. Bolivia has tin. Chile has copper and iron.“
„I’ll give anyone in this car five dollars,“ Heinrich said, „if they can name the population of Bolivia.“
„Bolivians,“ my daughter said.
The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Overcloseness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. […] The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true. (pp. 80-82)

Besprechung

Don DeLillo: White Noise
Picador, London 1999
21. Auflage 2006
beg, bee: 20.01.2009, 02.02.2009

„The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.
May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.“ (p. 98)

326 Seiten, Taschenbuch
engl.-sprachig
Roman, Literatur, Postmoderne, Nordamerika

Thomas Bernhard: Der Stimmenimitator
Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1987
4. Auflage 1997
beg, bee: 09.01.2009, 18.01.2009

180 Seiten, Taschenbuch
dt.-sprachig
Prosa, Literatur, Deutschland, Österreich

Georges Perec: W oder die Erinnerung an die Kindheit
Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1978
beg, bee: 13.12.2008, 03.01.2009

Erstausgabe

„Ich weiß nicht, ob ich nichts zu sagen habe; ich weiß nicht, ob, was ich etwa zu sagen hätte, nicht gesagt wird, weil es unsagbar ist (das Unsagbare verbirgt sich nicht im Geschriebenen, es ist vielmehr jenes Etwas, was lange zuvor zu seinem Entstehen geführt hat); ich weiß, daß meine Aussage leer, neutral ist, sie ist ein endgültiges Zeichen einer endgültigen Vernichtung.
Das eben ist es, was ich sage, was ich schreibe, und das allein findet sich in den Worten, die ich setze, in den von diesen Worten gebildeten Zeilen, in den leeren Räumen zwischen den Zeilen…
Ich schreibe nicht, um auszusagen, daß ich nichts sagen werde, ich schreibe nicht, um darzutun, daß ich nichts zu sagen habe. Darum schreibe ich: weil wir miteinander gelebt haben, weil ich einer von ihnen war, ein Schatten inmitten ihrer Schatten, ein Körper nahe ihren Körpern; ich schreibe, weil sie mir ihre unauslöschliche Spur hinterlassen haben, die in dem von mir Geschriebenen zutage tritt: Die Erinnerung an sie läßt sich nicht schriftlich erfassen; wenn ich schreibe, so geschieht es, um ihres Todes zu gedenken und um zu bekräftigen, daß ich lebe.“ (S. 51f.)

191 Seiten, Taschenbuch
dt.-sprachig (Ü: Thorgerd Schücker)
Erzählung, Autobiographie, Frankreich

He watched Broadway float into the curved window and felt as if blocks of time and space had come loose and drifted. The misplaced heartland hotel. The signs for Mita, Midori, Kirin, Magno, Suntory – words that were part of some synthetic mass language, the esperanto of jet lag. And the tower under construction across the street, webbed and draped against the weather, figures moving fleetly past gaps in the orange sheeting. He saw them clearly now, three or four kids playing on the girders, making the building seem a ruin, an abandonment. (p. 23)

People with supermarket carts. When did these things come out of the stores and into the streets? She saw these things everywhere, pushed, dragged, lived in, fought over, unwheeled, bent, rolling haywire, filled with living trivia, the holistic dregs of everything that is correctly put. She talked to the woman in the plastic bag, offering to get a shopping cart for her.
[…]
It was a different language completely, unwritable and interior, the rag-speak of shopping carts and plastic bags, the language of soot, and Karen had to listen carefully to the way the woman dragged a line of words out of her throat like hankies tied together and then she tried to go back and reconstruct. (p. 180)

Besprechung

Don DeLillo: Mao II
Vintage U.K., London 1992
12. Auflage 2004
beg, bee: 09.12.2008, 26.12.2008

„[T]he withheld work of art is the only eloquence left.“ (p. 67)

„Beckett is the last writer to shape the way we think and see. After him, the major work involves midair explosions and crumbling buildings. This is the new tragic narrative.“ (p. 157)

250 Seiten, Taschenbuch
engl.-sprachig
Roman, Literatur, Postmoderne, Nordamerika

Thomas Bernhard: Ereignisse
Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1994
2. Auflage 1997
beg, bee: 13.12.2008, 13.12.2008

72 Seiten, Taschenbuch
dt.-sprachig
Prosa, Literatur, Deutschland, Österreich

Bypassing literature - ein Bypass für die Literatur

Ein Ort für Künstler, Filmschaffende, Literaten, Romantiker, Nachtschwärmer, Computernerds und Teeliebhaber. Mitten in Prenzlauer Berg:
Tee- und Kunsthaus Tschaikowsky

Die Programmankündigung der Lesung findet sich hier.