Herr F

by Momus

The devil has given Herr F eternal fame in exchange for his eternal soul. But Herr F, knowing that everything living forever is sooner or later screaming forever, is determined to squelch and squander this fame, return to obscurity, and die. Herr F, the take of infamous musician and writer Momus on the Faust legend, is an experimental narrative about bargaining for immortality soaked in abstracted ideas of “German-language literature,” drawn mostly from English translations of twentieth-century figures like Brecht, Kafka, Rilke, Klee, Fassbinder, and Adorno. Behind the narrative is also, of course, Goethe and his (worked and reworked) Faust.

ebook

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Nick Currie, more popularly known under the artist name Momus (after the Greek god of mockery), is a prolific songwriter, blogger and former journalist for Wired. Most of his songs are self-referential and many could be classified as postmodern.

For more than twenty-five years he has been releasing, to marginal commercial and critical success, albums on labels in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. In his lyrics and his other writing he makes seemingly random use of decontextualized pieces of continental (mostly French) philosophy, and has built up a personal world he says is "dominated by values like diversity, orientalism, and a respect for otherness." He is fascinated by identity, Japan, Rome, the avant-garde, time travel and sex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momus_%2...

Reviews

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed Momus's updating of the Faust archetype in his latest novel. It's a work of dandyism, in the best sense of that word. It's a funny, obsessively dismissive (and metaphysically dismissive) novel. Everything must go. Culture. Divinity. Success. Sex. The novelist and the novelist's best intentions. All sales are final. It's a bit of a pantheon novel where German authors are first enshrined, then summarily dismissed. I suppose a few stay enshrined, if they were themselves exceedingly dismissive (ex. Handke, Brecht). If Baudelaire had turned novelist, he would probably have written something like this (just with a different pantheon).

[Alex Sarll]

An increasing tendency towards a very European flavour of abstraction has made me less fond of Momus' music in recent years, but I enjoyed this short novel animated by the same complex of interests. It's a Faust riff in which Momus' Faust realises that, if his infernal pact is guaranteed to make his book a huge success anyway, he may as well really take the piss. And so an avant-garde book about moss becomes a bestseller, ubiquitous as it is unread, while Herr F finds that fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. This book is arid, perverse and self-regarding, ultimately swallowing its own tale altogether. None of which is intended as criticism.

[Antonomasia]

FAO the few other Momus fans on my friendslist (MJN sorry for telling you this twice) - his new ebook is free at the moment on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0...
Also on the publisher's site: http://fiktion.cc/book/herr-f-2/ (English & German versions)
NB I still haven't read any of his fiction (though heard most of the lyrics) and I gather it's pretty bizarro.

[Nirvana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant, playful, random and violent, at first glance Herr F is precisely what one would expect from a novel written by the prolific cult songwriter; yet he defies expectations.

Best Kindle freebie ever.

[Susi · Rating 3 out of 5]

ich habe nur die Hälfte geschafft, die Schreibe ist toll, der Story fehlt aber einiges.