Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces

For some time now, Jenny Erpenbeck (° 1967) is one of the better German writers. Her novels are not always easy to read, but they are always worth it. This is a non-fiction book, with a collection of lectures she gave on various themes. To begin with, the struggle with her East German past: like no other, Erpenbeck puts into words how traumatic the sudden disappearance of the GDR was, as if part of her own identity was cut off, and how derogatory the attitude of many Westerners still is about that past. She links this, as in her beautiful novel Go, Went, Gone, to how disruptive the life of illegal refugees in today's Germany must be. And she immediately opens that up to how life can fundamentally change for each of us from one moment show more to the next, and how that affects our own identity: “We know that transformations lie before us, we know that transformations lie behind us, and we know, according to scientific findings, that the present belongs to us for precisely 3 seconds before it plunges down the throat of the past. That means that every 3 seconds, we produce ourselves again as strangers. What should I say, then, when I’m asked to say who I am?”
The most clever contributions in this book are about language, literature, and especially the act of writing. In very thoughtful, slowly digging circular movements, Erpenbeck exposes what a phenomenally given language is, and how literature both creates reality and exposes the unfathomability of that reality: “Literature tells us that what we know is never the whole truth, but literature also tells us that the whole truth is waiting for us, if only we could read. And with that, it begins to teach us to read, even if that lesson requires more time to learn than we have in our own lifetimes. It also teaches us — and here I include myself as a writer — that the truth never ends where we want it to end.” For Erpenbeck, the pinnacle of literature can be found on stage, where an inimitable play takes place between actions, words and silences, which can only be compared to music: “And so in silence, in every silence that is not dead and empty, but rather filled to the brim with what is truly essential, literature and music meet. Both literature and music are closely connected to this silence, in their essence they are nothing but interpretations of this silence, at least insofar as they aim to arrive at something like truth. And both music and literature — which creates sounds in our minds, even when we are reading silently — have the privilege that they can take those things that cannot or will not be spoken of directly, and make them audible in other ways.” This book is chock full of reflections and contemplations that testify to a very alert, empathic mind. Highly recommended. show less

Collected non-fiction occasional pieces, as Erpenbeck’s title declares, do not constitute a novel. They also, however, may not amount to a memoir. They are, at best, a publisher’s amalgam enabling the publisher to strike, as it where, while the iron is hot. Jenny Erpenbeck’s literary iron is rather hot and certainly there are sparks that fly here when she brings her hammer down, especially in the opening six pieces under the heading, “Life.” As we are presented these pieces in chronological order, it is clear that Erpenbeck’s skill as an essayist develops over time. She passes through an ungainly period of introspection on her writing talents, but flourishes again when considering the works of those she admires, such as show more Fallada or Mann. The result is thus somewhat uneven. And, given the forms she is set — e.g. the award acceptance speech — there is a fair bit of repetition.

Still, there is no doubting her talent. I only regret that she is so often called away from the serious business of crafting her small literary masterpieces to write such pieces as these, despite their sometime charm.

The fans of Erpenbeck will read this collection without my recommendation. For others, I recommend any one of Erpenbeck’s novels. show less

A miscellaneous set of collected talks and speeches by the well-known German novelist and opera director (both roles are relevant here, but mostly the former). But scarcely the “memoir in pieces” claimed by the subtitle of the English translation. There are a few pieces where she reflects on her early life and on the slightly disturbing coincidence that the country she spent her childhood in ceased to exist just as her childhood ended. But most of the book is given over to her thoughts on books, music, pictures and the refugee crisis.

On books, there are several interesting lectures where she talks about the writing of her own novels, including a fascinating one where we are taken in detail through the process of revising a single show more difficult sentence from Aller Tage Abend. And, inevitably, there’s a slew of acceptance speeches for literary prizes, many of them awarded by towns we would have trouble finding on a map and named after writers of formidable obscurity. Erpenbeck conscientiously finds something interesting and positive to say about all of them, and a couple of times she even made me stop to take a note of the dedicatee to go and look for their books.

The music section was a bit of a disappointment, as it’s dominated by a long essay about Wagner’s Siegfried that is quite interesting, but utterly fails to disguise its origin as a college dissertation. It would have been nice to have a bit more about the actual work of staging operas, but that is mostly confined to the margins of pieces about other things.

As usual with this kind of book, it’s an interesting addition to the picture we have of the author, and it contains a few pieces I’ll certainly come back to, but it’s not likely to be of very much interest if you don’t know Erpenbeck’s novels. show less