Gregor Hens
Author of Nicotine
Works by Gregor Hens
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1965-11-25
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Germany
- Birthplace
- Köln, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deutschland
- Occupations
- translator
German studies professor
writer
Members
Reviews
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 9
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 116
- Popularity
- #169,721
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 9
- ISBNs
- 21
- Languages
- 4
- Favorited
- 1
I got some My Struggle vibes from this one. Maybe that just me lumping all the Nordic type authors into one thing, but there is a lot of rather pleasant navel-gazing that the two books share. I’m a real sucker for short books on a very specific topic (bonus points if the title is a single noun, I’m thinking of John McPhee’s Oranges for instance) and this one lives up to all the promise of the form, whose chief virtue is the longitude it gives to zoom in and out at will while maintaining concrete locus that’s easy to return to if you get lost in the weeds of abstraction and introspection. One thing I’m wary of when reading stuff like this though is when the author feels the need to insert factoids or research where it’s just not necessary. I just think it’s really difficult to pull that off without it sounding like an undergrad creative writing class. Hens lost points with me cuz he not only did this, but in the “postscript” verged into quasi motivational/self help territory (he suggests trying to write with our opposite hand for a few days… (more)