Berømmelse. En roman i ni historier

by Daniel Kehlmann

Den feterede skuespiller Ralf Tanner får sin identitet overtaget af en anden og bliver pludselig en ikke-person. Bag det hele sidder en manipulerende forfatter og styrer en række figurers liv

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, German Literature, School, Contemporary, Germany, Novels

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2009

About the author

Daniel Kehlmann is a German-Austrian author.

His novel Measuring the World (German: Die Vermessung der Welt) was translated into more than forty languages. Awards his work has received include the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Heimito von Doderer Literature Award, the Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Kehlmann divides his time between Vienna and Berlin.

Reviews

[Berengaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

😍🤩😍🤩 How does Kehlmann do it? How does he create both narratively absurd, and at the same time multi-layered, fiction that defies categorisation? How does deliver a master class in meta-fiction while never going off-point or turning into one of those tiresome Alice Munro wanna-bes?

I don't know. But what I do know is that Daniel Kehlmann is a German national treasure.

These 9 interlocking stories appear to be stand-alones, and yes, can be read as such, but they form a complete statement, a complete thought, when read as a whole. Is it about "Fame"? Not really, but fame is one expression of the real topic: the unreality and inconsistency of what we take to be reality.

What is fiction? Is it what a writer creates in his head and puts down on paper, or it is also what we see, think and feel? How sure can any of us be that we actually exists and are not - to quote the philosophers - merely a thought in the mind of God?

These are think pieces - and you have to pay attention to catch all the doubling of characters and events - but Kehlmann gets some jabs in there too.

Pablo Coelho and his mega popular feel-good spiritual stories get a fairly good drubbing in "Antwort an die Äbtissin," (chapter 6) North Korea (or similar) gets kicked in the nuts for being backwaters with 1st world ambitions in "Osten" (chapter 5) and internet trolls are shown up for the pathetic, lonely men they are in "Ein Beitrag zur Debatte" (chapter 7).

My fave story "Rosalie geht sterben" (chapter 3) includes my very fave meta-fictional device of authors talking directly with their characters to illustrate how we all haggle with God or fate about the time and place of our deaths.

So much to love here. And while "Ruhm" (Fame) may not be as impressive as "Tyll" or as bizarre as "F," it has strong elements of both and is fabulously Kehlmann in its own way.

Really amazing literature with a capital L.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

How much power does the author have to change the fate of his characters?

How much power does a human being have to write him/herself into a meaningful story?

What if the author is kind enough to offer a terminally ill character a magical healing - only to make the story disappear altogether by removing the plot? Is that better or worse than the tragedy of the death of the character?

What if there is no difference between reality and fiction anymore, as we all live virtual lives that we can modify according to our level of imagination?

What if ... fiction takes over where life left off? Do we want that to happen? Do we have any choice in the matter?

Nine great stories, forming a novel of sorts if connected. And connection there must be, for a perfect parody on the silliness of Paolo Coelho's universal humbug follows the characters in the shape of a fictional Brazilian bestseller author whose books litter the hotels of the globe... The whole universe conspires to interfere in the storytelling.

Successfully so. Great fun.

[Mark Hebwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not often give 5 stars to a book, but this one impressed me.

Daniel presents his material in nine interlinked brief stories. Often, the links between the stories are embedded in one fictional "layer", and we encounter the main character of one story as a side character in another, and vice versa. This device, in the way I read the novel, created an effect as if I (the reader) was empowered to look at an event, or the personality of a character, in two ways. When I encountered a character as the protagonist of its chapter, I inhabited the character's mind from the inside. When, later on, I inhabited the thoughts of a different protagonist, in a different chapter, I observed the protagonist of an earlier chapter with external eyes. Daniel constantly swapped internal and external views of characters in the novel, and I ended up asking myself which view reflected "reality"? Is it the view a character has of himself? Or is it the view others have of him? And of course, we have not seen these flips in perspective for the first time - Daniel loves thinking about internal and external realities, indeed, he explored this theme also in Mahler's Zeit. But I don't think Daniel achieved a mastery of the level shown in Ruhm in his earlier work, so this technique is spot on here.

This would be impressive enough, in my view, but I have only scratched the surface. Often, the links are of a more fundamental, deeper kind. In one story, the main character starts interacting with the story's narrator. This is amusing and a joy to read, but it also cleverly connects two, normally separate, layers of fiction. A narrator stands above the characters in a story, it does not normally interact with them.

Fair enough. But in a later story this narrator is identified as Leo, a writer and protagonist in the first story. And this is where it is starting to get truly weird. A fictional character in the first story is the narrator of a later story. Therefore, that later story is fiction of fiction, it is, if you forgive me the jargon, metafiction. Indeed, in that story, we encounter somebody called Lara in a telephone conversation which she conducts from San Francisco, in America (why the location is important will become clear in a moment). Lara is a character who we know to be Leo's creation in one of his novels. So the fictional Leo writes a story (from the point of view of the reader, this story has revealed itself as a "metastory" on finishing Daniel's novel) in which he has his (meta-fictional) protagonist interact with another one of his (meta-fictional) characters, taken from a different meta-fictional novel.

And if that was not confusing enough, in the final chapter we encounter Leo again. In this chapter, however, he meets Lara, his own fictional creation, as she emerges from a tent, the scene set in an African country. Leo's girlfriend, who is with him, is surprised, as she thought Lara was in the US. So now we have the fictional Leo interact with his own fictional creation, and his fictional girlfriend referring to the fictional location that fictional character (Lara in the US) was identified to inhabit in a completely different chapter of Daniel's novel. So who's real now? Or better, who's fictional, and who is meta-fictional? Leo's fictional, and Lara is meta-fictional. But if that is so, how can Leo interact with her - he also needs to be meta-fictional. Which would be an issue, as in that case the fictional story in which his character interacts with him would be one further fictional layer removed, and become meta-square-fictional. And is his girlfriend fictional (as she interacts with Leo) or meta-fictional (as she interacts with Lara)? Who knows - she's both, really, she's in a state of superposition between fiction and meta-fiction.

This is a novel in which fictional and meta-fictional layers blend, fold in on themselves, separate and re-join like the neck of a four-dimensional Klein bottle. This is a masterful novel that plays with analogues of reality and fiction within a work of literature, and in doing so, reflects on the nature of reality itself. The only, minor, criticism that I have is that Daniel drops a needlessly heavy hint that this is what his novel is about in the final chapter. Without Leo's blunt reference to "stories within stories within stories" (p233 in my edition), Daniel's caleidoscopic journey through the ephemeral nature of reality would have been pretty much perfect.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

English: Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes
Kehlmann and me, we have a difficult relationship. As the title not-so-subtly suggests, this novel is told in nine chapters that can be read as singular short stories, but which are also connected as the main characters frequently appear as minor characters in other stories. Thus Kehlmann creates a narrative with a rhizomatic structure, and there's another level to this: Not only does fame appear as a leitmotif, the characters also change and switch their identities, fictional characters become real and the other way around. In order to achive the magical effects, Kehlmann often works with communication devices such as phones and computers that become enigmatic wormholes into different realities.

That sounds super ambitious and interesting, you say, a critique of destabilized identities in a postmodern world? Yeah, Kehlmann is just a very intelligent writer who does not shy away from ideas and plotlines that demand a lot of control and confidence (just look at Tyll - to sell such a wild concept would probbaly have proven impossible for an author of lesser standing, and then Kehlmann even managed to pull it off). But that's the issue I tend to have with this author's texts: They are extremely well-made and well thought-out, but they are so controlled that they somehow remain tame, that they make me long for a little unruliness, a little more edge.

I see how 48463836 students of literature can write their theses about this, but I'm glad I don't have to. Why are the (fictional) mothers of Thomas Glavinic (in Das bin doch ich) and Christian Kracht (in Eurotrash) asking their sons to write more like Kehlmann? (I get that it's a joke, but a particularly painful one.) I feel like I already forgot "Ruhm" although I just finished it - but you can wake me up at 2 a.m. and I'll answer you all of your questions about Kracht's work.

Haaa, I wish I could love Kehlmann more, alas, I just can't - except for Tyll.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extrem innovative Idee neun Kurzgeschichten derart zu präsentieren, dass die Nebenfiguren der einen Geschichte die Hauptfigur in einer anderen Geschichte bilden. So muss man sich nicht ständig auf völlig Neues umstellen und aus dem gesamten Buch wird doch tatsächlich so was wie ein Roman, der aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven erzählt wird. Dieses Konzept hat mir außerordentlich gut gefallen, genauso wie die Inhalte der Geschichten, teilweise völlig lapidare Ereignisse, die jedem von uns passieren könnten, und die Reaktionen darauf dann in wundervollen Psychogrammen der Hauptdarsteller geschildert werden.

Einen Punkt muss ich aber für die Geschichte mit dem 30-jährigen "verwirrten Internetblogger" (lt. Klappentext) abziehen. Hier hat der Verlag offensichtlich mangels Kenntnis dieser Szene total überzeichnet und übertrieben. Kehlmann hat keinen Blogger dargestellt, der sich ja in vollständigen Sätzen ausdrücken können müßte, sonst könnte er keinen Blog schreiben, sondern einen stetig nörgelnden Forumstroll mit starken Hygieneproblemen in der Realität, der nicht mal in Gedanken ganze Sätze zusammenbringt und diese in einer wirklich grauenhaft trendy Sprache formuliert, die ich, obwohl ich einige solcher Trolls persönlich kenne, noch nie gehört habe. Das war dann wirklich das iTüpfelchen zuviel der Fiktion in einem sonst so glaubwürdig arrangierten Werk.

OK heut bin ich mal offensichtlich sehr streng. Eigentlich sollten es 4,5 Punkte sein. Auf jeden Fall ein einzigartiges Werk, sprachlich, handwerklich und vom Plot her extrem gut gemacht.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kehlmanns Konzept, einen Roman in neun Einzelgeschichten zu porträtieren und jeweils Nebenfiguren der ersten Geschichte zu Hauptfiguren der Folgegeschichten zu machen, fand ich sehr großartig. Dadurch entsteht für mich allerdings kein stringentes Romankonzept, so ist's wohl auch gewollt.
Jedes Einzelteil greift Elemente der vorigen auf, so geht es beispielsweise oft um Tod, eine Reise, Ängste, schwierige Beziehungen und das Ausbrechen aus dem eigenen Leben, um jemand anderes zu werden.
Leider gefielen mir nur 3-4 der Geschichten wirklich. Manche sind sprachlich völlig über- oder untertrieben, da werden für einen Satz kaum mehr als 3 Wörter verwendet, was den Lesefluss extrem staccatohaft machte. Zudem existiert in gefühlt jeder Geschichte irgendeine wahllose, sinnlose Sexszene, die man einfach nicht lesen möchte. Animalisches Gehabe bei solcherlei Beschreibungen trifft leider nicht meinen Nerv.
Man kann es lesen, aber für mich war es keinerlei Offenbarung oder Novität. Sprachlich vor allem eher enttäuschend, Konzept des Ganzen aber spannend.

[Jan❕️Mikael · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5* Neun Kurzgeschichten, teilweise sehr gelungen, teilweise eher weniger. Schon irgendwie alle verbunden, deshalb noch lange kein Roman. Ich hätte das Buch "Identitäten" getauft.

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ich bin ja kein besonders großer Kehlmann-Fan: Seine Bücher sind gut bis sehr gut, aber mich stört, dass immer wieder postuliert wird, er sei der größte lebende deutsche Schriftsteller. Und in Interviews ist er mir auch nicht immer uneingeschränkt sympathisch.
Das sind außerliterarische und daher unangemessene Kriterien, aber seien wir ehrlich: Bewusst oder unbewusst nehmen wir die mit in die subjektive Lektüre.

Das hier hat aber wirklich großen Spaß gemacht: Das Spiel mit Identitäten, die verschiedenen Charaktere, die wiederholt auftauchen, das Spiel mit Fiktion und Realität, die Ironie… das macht Freude und ist klug komponiert. Und es schürt auch immer ein bisschen die perfide Neugierde, wer denn nun Vorbild für die Figuren gewesen sein könnte, für den neurotischen Schriftsteller Leo Richter beispielsweise, oder für den eitlen Schauspieler Ralf Tanner (Til Schweiger?) oder Miguel Auristos Blancos (doch sicher Paulo Coelho, auch vor dem Hintergrund das eine andere Geschichte in diesem Buch „Rosalie geht sterben“ heißt (vgl. "Veronika beschließt zu sterben") und sich diese Rosalie als literarische Erfindung von Leo Richter herausstellt). Vermutlich foppt uns Kehlmann hier, wenn er uns auf solche Fährten lockt, aber es ist sehr vergnüglich zu lesen.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ooh. This was an exciting book. Not perfect and not totally even, but exciting, different, unpredictable. A bit Ned Beauman, a bit David Mitchell; nothing like the only other Kehlmann I've read, the tense horror novella You Should Have Left, which makes me wonder what the rest of his oeuvre is like...

Fame is, as the subtitle tells us, 'a novel in nine episodes'. It seems, at first, like a series of interlinked stories. In the first, 'Voices', Ebling starts receiving phone calls and messages clearly meant for someone else. When he realises he can get away with imitating this other man, he starts to feel he is stepping into another life. He wonders if the 'Ralf' whose calls he's getting is the well-known actor Ralf Tanner. The next story also mentions the actor; a later story is about an author namechecked in both; then there's a story about the real Ralf; even later, we'll also meet the man responsible for the mix-up with the phone numbers.

But there's something more going on here. That much is particularly apparent in the third story, 'Rosalie Goes Off to Die'. This is a story about an elderly woman with incurable cancer making the decision to end her life at an assisted suicide clinic. But it is also about Rosalie's creator, Leo Richter, and his experience of writing Rosalie, and what happens when the character seems to rebel against his plans for her. It's a story about what stories are; a meta-story.

Leo Richter appears in several of the stories, and might be describing Fame itself when he says, in the first of two stories titled 'In Danger':

'A novel without a protagonist! Do you get it? A structure, the connections, a narrative arc, but no main character, no hero advancing throughout.'

So characters reappear in various guises, coincidences abound, and paths cross; but there also seems to be no limit to the ways in which fiction and fact bleed into one another. The standout story is 'The East', in which Maria, a writer of detective novels, joins a delegation of journalists (standing in for Richter at the last minute) to an anonymous Eastern European country. A series of mishaps, playing out like Jonathan Coe meets Kafka, leave her stranded and unable to prove her identity. The premise is quite terrifying, and the story very believable; I was swept up in Maria's plight, heart in my mouth, and at the end I was haunted by thoughts of what might happen next, unwilling to leave this character behind.

Only one story really struck me as a misstep: the seventh, 'A Contribution to the Debate'. It's meant to be someone's post on an internet forum, but it reads more like it's been written by an alien who learned English from reading 90s cyberpunk books. I found it extremely difficult to understand, and I wonder if the way it was written in the original German, which must have involved a lot of colloquialisms and neologisms, was difficult (impossible?) to translate accurately.

Fame as a whole, though, is a very satisfying concoction. I was continually surprised and delighted by its imagination and inventiveness.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[hannah🪷 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wer auch immer die Idee hatte dieses Buch als Pflichtlektüre in der Oberstufe einzuführen sollte eingesperrt werden.

[Kingofmusic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kurzmeinung folgt.

[Jenni · Rating 3 out of 5]

1) "Stimmen": kreative Geschichte mit Hang zur Kritik an der Informationsgesellschaft, erinnert mich an Poetry Slam, 4 Sterne

2) "In Gefahr": konventionelle Story, Klischee-Charaktere (der immer-depressive, unselbstständige Autor, an seiner Seite die starke, im Leben stehende Entwicklungshelferin). 1 Stern

3) "Rosalie geht sterben": Wechselspiel zwischen Handlungs- und Metaebene, Story leider etwas konventionell geraten (Sterbehilfe ist irgendwie ein ausgelutschtes Thema), 2 Sterne

4) "Der Ausweg": Geniales Spiel mit Realität und Fiktion, clevere intertextuelle Bezüge auf die erste Geschichte, 5 Sterne

5) "Osten": etwas zu sehr konstruierte Story, trotzdem beklemmend, 3 Sterne

6) "Antwort an die Äbtissin": Kehlmann widersteht erneut nicht dem Drang, seine Figur bis (fast) ins letzte Detail direkt zu charakterisieren ("Sein graues Brusthaar war feiner als früher, seine Figur aber trotz seiner vierundsechzig Jahre durchtrainiert, der Bauch so flach, wie man es nur bei Leuten sieht, die einen persönlichen Fitnesstrainer beschäftigen...") Einzig allein die Naturbeschreibungen sind gelungen ("Die Sonne war gesunken, rote Flammen zerliefen im Wasser, die Gipfel funkelten in kaltem Glanz, und zwischen den Favelahütten sah er die Schlangenlinien der ungepflasterten Straßen."). 1 Sterne

7) "Beitrag zur Debatte": Was für eine anstregende Geschichte. Die Idee ist ja ganz nett, aber Kehlmann übertreibt total (oder wie er sagen würde: "voll Container"). Einfach nur nervig. 1/2 Stern

8) "Wie ich log und starb": trockene Bestandsaufnahme des Lebens in einer Informationsgesellschaft, konventionelle Story-Idee, dafür aber bedrückende Gedankengänge, 3 Sterne

9) "In Gefahr": Quasi-Fortsetzung der zweiten Geschichte, die die Klischeehaftigkeit der Charaktere immer noch nicht aufzuheben vermag. Dafür aber referriert die Geschichte auf das gesamte Werk und seine Konstruktion: "Geschichten in Geschichten in Geschichten. Man weiß nie, wo eine endet und eine andere beginnt! In Wahrheit fließen alle ineinander. Nur in Büchern sind sie säuberlich getrennt." 3 Sterne

FAZIT: Die Kurzgeschichten sind teilweise unspektakulär und kommen nicht immer ohne Klischees (sowohl in Bezug auf Charaktere wie auf die Story) aus. Gelungen sind dagegen die Verflechtungen der Geschichten zu einer einzigen. Das macht das Buch lesenswert.

[uk · Rating 4 out of 5]

eine ebenso kurzweilige wie kluge und gelungene postmoderne fingerübung, in der geschichten in geschichten zur geschichte werden, fiktionale charaktere ihre fiktionalität leugnen und der erzähler teil seiner erzählung ist.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a solid “OK”. Much better than “meh” and not as good as “I really liked it”. Given the notoriety of the author if you haven’t read this novel yet, you might take a gander at it or certainly one of his other books. Kehlmann has written 6 novels and this was his third. First book was “Measuring the World” (2006, winner of the Heimito von Doderer prize), then Me and Kaminski (2008) followed by this work of fiction in 2009 (translated by Carol Brown Janeway into English in 2010). Then three more: F. A Novel, (translated by Janeway in 2014), You Should Have Left (translated by Ross Benjamin in 2016) and his most recent this year, Tyll (translated again by R. Benjamin). “Tyll” is wildly successful as was his first novel (it was the world's second best-selling novel in 2006).

This novel consists of 9 episodes and some of the protagonists recur throughout the episodes and some do not. Normally I love this sort of style…in which there is a collection of short stories that are intertwined. But this one wasn’t as good as some others that have used this approach in my pompous opinion (enough of this “in my humble opinion!!) —such as Winesburg Ohio (Sherwood Anderson), Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout), and Revenge (Yoko Agawa). I got the impression the central theme of the episodes was fame, from the title of the book, and the synopsis in the inside front cover of the book, but that wasn’t the case in all of the episodes.

Anyhoo here are the titles of the 9 episodes, my comments, and my grades.
1. Voices: Clever, a person has the same cell phone number as somebody else and soon he starts pretending he is the other person, and throws that other person’s world into some disarray) — 4 stars
2. In Danger: Involves a famous fiction writer, Leo Richter, and his new girlfriend, Elisabeth, and they pop up in more than one episode — 5 stars
3. Rosalie Goes Off to Die: one of the famous fiction writer’s characters who pops up repeatedly in his novels has pancreatic cancer and is scheduled to die off at an assisted euthanasia center, but the character does not want to die! — 4 stars
4. The Way Out: somebody’s veracity is questioned because an impersonator has come on the scene and is quite a convincing impersonator – so much so that the real person is believed to be the impersonator. — 2 stars
5. The East: Author at a conference in a foreign country gets separated from the rest of her group and she ends up in a nightmare where nobody can speak her language and her money is worthless and her passport is expired….aye-yi-yi. — 3.5 stars
6. Replying to the Abbess: A famous writer pens a letter to a nun and says life is meaningless which is antithetical to all of his past life-affirming books. He decides to commit suicide to stupefy his many millions of fans who he has told life is meaningful. Does he or doesn’t he? — 3 stars
7. A Contribution to the Debate: - some young dude (a Generation Z'er) who works for a cell phone company and who talks weird (in the novel) runs into Leo Richter, the famous author, (Episode 2) at a conference and wants Leo to write about him. The dude seems to be a grade-A jerk and flames people on the Internet. He also mentions reading about Rosalie (Episode 3) and the writer of the life-affirming books (Episode 6). - 3 stars
8. How I Lied and Died: Man is married and has kids but his family lives in a different city than where he works, and he starts an affair in the city where he works, and life gets so complicated for him that he begins to lie to everybody about anything and everything. — 5 stars
9. In Danger: A last story that picks up from Episode 2 (In Danger)…maybe my brain was getting fried but it was getting hard to follow 9 episodes and a surfeit of names so forgive me! — 3.5 stars

Notes:
Book was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

Review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... The reviewer, Edmund Gordon, argues that Fame is a collection of short stories, rather than a novel as it presented on the front cover of the book: a novel in nice episodes. The reviewer then goes on to say that Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is clearly a novel, and Anagrams by Lorrie Moore is clearly not a novel (but that is what she called it, a novel), so I don’t know who is right. I’m staying out of it. 🙃

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Daniel Kehlmann hat mit der "Vermessung der Welt" einen großartigen Roman hingelegt. Würde er sich damit nicht messen lassen müssen, könnten es vielleicht auch 3 Sterne sein.

Im Endergebnis haftet diesen 9 Kurzgeschichten aber nichts an, was dauerhaft im Gedächtnis bleiben wird, ein paar interessante Charakterstudien und eine manchmal unterhaltsame Art Autoren mit ihren literarischen Figuren interagieren zu lassen, dabei aber zu viel gewollte Komik, die nicht zündet und viele literarische Ideen, die man schon mal an anderen Orten gelesen hat.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beliebig.
oder:
Literatur für Anfänger.
oder:
Ach wirklich?!
oder:
Ich hab's verstanden, und ich bin froh drüber.
oder:
Schreibt der jetzt ECHT über Coelho?
oder:
und.

[Petya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories about stories, but this one I liked.

I think of myself as short story intolerant, because I have a hard time getting and keeping a feeling about a plot, and if it's a short one, there are usually lots of missing pieces too, so it gets even more confusing... horrible. On the other hand, if it turns out to be a good short story, I feel too lousy when it ends so quickly.

But these stories are joined together. Not only are there interrelations among their protagonists, but they are also inseparably connected to reality, so that reality and irreality lose their inherent meanings and suddenly, everything is a story. They are places of imagination that exist multiply - like in that movie The Cube (but without the murders) - like countless cubical spaces connected to each other through one another, some real, some not, and moving constantly, changing the constellation. And while we are in any one cube, we cannot say where it is in the big picture. Nor can anyone tell us if we are characters, writers or readers, because everyone is in this same cube with this at any given time.

Something like that. It's fun to read, it's liberating in the presumption that we can choose our reality - just as some say they can alter and steer their own dreams.

In addition, this is my second read by Kehlmann and I really like his writing style, even though Measuring the World handled a completely different theme. Here he simply amazes me, he doesn't get anything confused and messed up, he is consequent, disciplined and yet so very inventive and unconventional. The stories becomes so present that it doesn't matter whether Rosalie, Lara Gaspard or Kehlmann are real (because he speaks in the first person in two stories but as an author and then as a protagonist) - they could be here, I could have seen them, I could be them. He himself explains it best near the end of the story about Rosalie which is also my favourite one :)

---------

Rereading. Loving every word. Want to meet Kehlmann and pinch his cheeks and bake him cakes and let him read to me in bed!

----------

Another update: Met him on July 1, 2014. He signed a book for me and we wished me luck with my writing :) <3 I ran to the restrooms and cried, and then I stole the poster for his lectures off the wall...

[Martina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kehlmann's "Fame" is absolutely brilliant. First off, the idea is superb. I'm a sucker for both unusual premises and unusual compositions, and it's no wonder I liked the book so much. The idea of a novel consisting of stories is not overly employed, so it felt like a breath of fresh air in my usual reading menu. I loved how the protagonists of each story are linked to each other, so loosely and finely, but you are squealing with delight while you are uncovering the connection. And that, I daresay, is a prime example of Hemingway's iceberg theory, which is the ultimate proof of how excellent a writer Kehlmann is. He never insults a reader by using info dumps, that deadly sin of the writing profession, of similar cheap techniques. Instead, he delivers just enough information about his characters and does a fine job of slipping hints about future characters, and references about past characters.

Another fine point of the novel is the order of the stories. They are not laid out in a boring chronological order; rather, it's all arranged in a sort of circle, but with more cool elements thrown in - notably, stories within stories, and the final blurring between fiction and reality. To top it all off, there is the humor, which is most notable in the first story, "Voices", and cunning stabs of irony I loved how Miguel Auristos Blancos, a certain author of self-help books full of aphorisms, lived in Rio de Janeiro... which made me think, do I know a Brazilian author who writes books full of aphorisms, and has turned to doling out self-help stuff in the last years? I bet I do, and I bet you do too :).

I could give the book no less than five stars. How else could I rate a book which made me almost forget that I was supposed to get off the bus, where I was reading it?

[Jörg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kehlmann has written nine stories to form one novel. Reading each story on its own, they lack the oomph of short stories. A unique twist, something funny or astonishing. But there are elements reappearing and linking each story to one or more other stories in this book, distinguishing it from a collection of short stories.

Some of the stories are stronger. I liked "Ein Beitrag zur Debatte" best in which an internet troll describes on a message board how he met Leo Richter, a prominent author. This author appears in most stories and also is essential in creating layers. Characters from books of Richter show up in other stories as protagonists, even interacting with Leo Richter himself and characters from other stories. On the other hand, he very likely acts as an alter ego of Kehlmann.

Kehlmann breaks the fourth wall to the reader by writing this fiction which is fiction. Most notably, one of the characters is deliberately delineated as a fictitious character, directly addressed by the author and told that he will let her die in this story. She begs the author for mercy which he denies.

There is one piece of plot, that links most of the stories together. In a telecommunication company, employees make a mistake by giving existing mobile numbers to new users. This links an unremarkable employee to a famous actor as well as to the head of the team responsible for this process and the internet troll who works in that department.

The actor and the department head share one common trait. They play with their identities. The first wants to lose his identity, the second has two identities, one for his family and one for his lover.

All nine stories are about identity in some form with an additional meta level by Kehlmann breaking the fourth wall. The question of identity is enhanced with thoughts about fiction. More specifically identity in fiction. Then, there is the title Fame which has to be considered as a creation of an identity which mostly doesn't match with the famous person itself.

Fame is cleverly constructed, a bit too clever to touch more than the brain. Like Calvino or Borges. Which to most would be high praise. I'm not into them that much. After a handful of the stories, I was lukewarm on this one. But the sum is more than the parts and the construction finally won me over.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein gutes Buch, aber nicht ganz hypewürdig. Manche der neun Geschichten sind überragend, andere eher durchwachsen. Insgesamt hätte es eine etwas rundere Sache sein können. Es wurde mir unter anderem mit "wie Inception , nur besser" angepriesen und das kann ich überhaupt nicht unterschreiben. Zum einen nicht wie Inception, zum anderen ist auch "nur besser" schwierig. Da finde ich sicher noch etwas von Kehlmann, das mir mehr zusagt.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis

As the narrator(s) say:

”intricate short stories full of complicated mirror effects and unpredictable shifts” (22)

"Stories within stories within stories. You never know where one ends and another begins!” (173)

(invented) ‘Famous’ people appear as narrators, revealing, and confessing their human flaws, and then, in totally different, short stories, the same famous people are characters in seemingly unrelated narratives.

• Leo Richter (with companion, Elisabeth (164) and lead character- Lara Gaspard 120). Both are doctors.
• Ralf Tanner , actor and look alike (a funny story that recalls the famous Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest featuring the man himself (and more recently, Dolly Parton)).
• Miguel Auristos Blanco (author- The way of the self to the self)(15)(98)

Highlights

• Voices: a Kafkaesque journey that follows a series of wrong number phone calls and the consequences. Very Hitchcock, very Auster.
• Rosalie Goes Off to Die: assisted dying. So many unanswered questions.

Recommendations

I have only read one other Daniel Kehlmann novel: Measuring The World and this book of short stories is a completely different style of writing. That’s admirable. For the time pressed, and lovers of short stories, this is a good example of the genre.

[Anna Carina]

Letzten 2 Geschichten lasse ich aus. Das ist nix für mich. Hab noch nicht mal gerafft, dass er die Figuren immer wieder auftreten lässt 😒 Mein Namensgedächtnis ist ne Vollkatastrophe.

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terminally ill elderly lady chooses euthanasia and on the way to the last shelter meets the Creator. The writer goes to a Central Asian country, replacing a colleague, and what comes of it. The clerk is seconded by the boss to the symposium, where he must make a presentation. By an amazing coincidence, his favorite writer is giving a press conference in the same hotel on the same day-I would like to tell him about myself, maybe he will insert it into a book.

Interesting? Rather, yes. Did you like it? Probably not. A complete work does not grow out of disparate fragments sewn on a living thread, and the characters do not become overgrown with flesh, are not filled with pulsating blood. The author's cameo more often harms the story than it benefits. However, Tatiana Zborovskaya's translation is good.

Симулякры
«Настоящее»! Это слово значит так много, что в конечном счете не значит ничего.
Немного постмодерна от самой большой надежды немецкой литературы, почему бы нет? Можно рассмотреть с первым словом в качестве ключевого, и умилиться как немного - всего 170 страниц. Можно со вторым, отметив, что некоторый эмоциональный гандикап постмодерна обычно компенсируется избыточной интеллектуальностью. Можно взять словосочетание "большая надежда" в буквальном смысле и тогда это будет знакомство с многообещащим автором, а можно как идиому в диккенсовом смысле - куда более спорном. И наконец "немецкого", в мире, где рулит англоязычие, прочие европейцы должны поддерживать друг друга. Ну, вы понимаете.

В полном жанровом соответствии, девять историй, составляющих девять частей "Славы", не то, чтобы вовсе никак не связаны. Скорее их связь намечена пунктирно. О Кельмане говорят, как об испытывающем серьезное влияние латиноамериканского магического реализма, так вот, скорее Кортасар, чем Борхес. И скорее Кубин, чем Кафка, если искать соответствий среди его соотечественников.

Человек, после долгого безнадежного противостояния социальным нормам, сдается и покупает первый в своей жизни мобильник. И оказывается участником чужой. Звонки и сообщения, которыеон принимает, явно адресованы кому-то другому. Кому-то более успешному, богатому, знаменитому, осиянному славгой. Скажете. не бывает такого? Вот и в службе поддержки сотового оператора то же ответили. А я скажу бывает, еще как. Мой билайновский номер тоже оказался "с прошлым", правда принадлежал не суперзвезде, а девице, набравшей кредитов, все время, пока пользовалась им, была осаждаема коллекторами.

Смертельно больная пожилая дама выбирает эвтаназию и по дороге к последнему приюту встречает Творца. Писательница едет в центральноазиатскую страну, подменяя коллегу, и что из этого выходит. Клерк откомандирован начальником на симпозиум, где должен провести презентацию. По удивительному совпадению, в том же отеле в тот же день дает пресс-конференцию его любимый писатель - вот бы рассказать ему о себе, может вставит в книжку.

Интересно? Скорее да. Понравилось? Скорее нет. Целостного произведения не вырастает из разрозненных фрагментов, сшитых на живую нитку, а персонажи не обрастают плотью, не наполняются пульсирующей кровью. Камео автора чаще вредит истории, чем идет на пользу. Однако перевод Татьяны Зборовской хорош.

[Henk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a big fan of interconnected stories, leading to a overarching metastory, so this book pleasantly suprised me! The individual stories drag you in very quickly and sketch unsympathetic but convincing characters. Besides some intertextuality the stories are also connected by a sense of alienation and the feeling of being an outsider to real life.

[Karen· · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kehlmann calls this a novel in nine stories, but I’m afraid that he lays claim to creating something new and original which he does not succeed in achieving. They are short stories: connected, yes, entertaining, yes, but nothing terribly astounding. Unfortunately he raised expectations with me that he could not satisfy. Naturally I was looking out for how he would create a novel out of these separate stories, and at least at the beginning I was fairly disappointed: the links seemed facile and cheap. There were more, and better links later, but I’m afraid he’d lost my goodwill by then. Another disappointment for me was the humour: don’t get me wrong, I like humour in books. What I really appreciate in Kehlmann’s other works is the subtle irony, but here the humour is not subtle, it is the laid-on-with- a-trowel, the hits-you-over-the-head-with-a-mallet type of humour. The stories themselves all centre round the question of doubling your life, choosing, or being forced into a completely different life, and how this can be aided and abetted, or maybe hindered by modern communication technology. Entertaining, but not great.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

the ending was good again. im gonna have to think about the rating. :D it's structurally a bit like cloud atlas, but less authentic and more meta.
(and its also somehow got this melancholy tone that im not sure i like. like its so easy to do that. why not make it more humoristic? i guess i just like deep stuff disguised behind a layer of humor and wish it was done more)
(but i think that's just not kehlmann's thing? and its ok)
(so i didnt end up liking all the stories but like two or three of them were Great, like, totally amazing. the one where a dying old lady begs the narrator for her life and the one where a famous actor makes himself a new identity were. really awesome. i also liked the last one a lot)
(but more coherent review later/in a few weeks)

[♡ Marie]

Ich habe das Buch in der Schule gelesen. Leider konnte es mich nicht ganz überzeugen, da ich die Kurzgeschichten teilweise echt langweilig fand und diese nur zum Ende hin etwas spannend wurden. Es waren auch ein paar Geschichten dabei, die mir echt gut gefallen haben, die meisten waren allerdings eher mittelmäßig. Die Verbindungen der Geschichten fand ich wiederum richtig gut durchdacht. Der Schreibstil war leider nicht meins.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metafiktionale Spielereien, die nervig sein könnten, wenn sie nicht so lustig und leichtfüßig daherkämen.
Tun sie aber, und deshalb verblasst bald die erste Irritation, um was es hier eigentlich gehe.
Der Teufel tritt einige Male auf, außerdem die Theodizee und der Statthalter Paulo Coelhos.
Sowie immer wieder die Frage, wo Identität und Gewissheit enden.
Den Titel kapiere ich nicht ganz. Ruhm stand für mich nicht im Mittelpunkt. Aber who knows, its ja meta, so...

[Jacqueline :) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das Spiel von Realität und Fiktion in diesem Roman ist einfach nur genial.

[Ole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vanskeli å rate. Artige idea, men ikke heilt sekker på om dæ e nå meir te dæ enn et par triks mæ perspektiv og fourth wall shenanigans. Va gøy å læs da. Kapittel 3 "Rosalie geht sterben" va nok favorittkapitlet mitt, men likte og "Beitrag zur Debatt"