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Superabundance

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Alone in New York, separated from his girlfriend by the Atlantic Ocean, the nameless narrator of Heinz Helle's electric debut novel is sinking slowly into an invisible crisis.

He loves his girlfriend but finds himself attracted to every woman he passes on the street. Totally self-aware yet unable to change his behaviour, he wonders at the ease with which everyone else seems to cope with life. Worse, his brain won't stop its whirring analysis of the world around him, and it's making any human interaction - watching football with friends, drinking with work colleagues, comforting his girlfriend - all but impossible.

Superabundance's buzzing narration brings to life the philosophical struggles of everyday existence, and asks: how do we live when our relationships, our actions and even our own minds are filled with such heartbreaking mystery?

162 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

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Heinz Helle

4 books19 followers

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5 stars
28 (15%)
4 stars
55 (31%)
3 stars
63 (35%)
2 stars
20 (11%)
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11 (6%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
Profile Image for Emre.
290 reviews42 followers
August 9, 2018

"Kendimi bir taksinin yumuşak döşemeli arka koltuğuna atıyorum, bir adres söylüyorum, taksi şoförünün benden farklı bir ten rengi olduğunu fark etmemeye çalışıyorum, taksi şoförünün ten rengi sırf benden farklı diye, anlaştığımız miktar olan 60 doları çıkardıktan sonra cüzdanımı olabildiğince hızlı bir şekilde tekrar yerine sokmamaya çalışıyorum." Sf:11

"Saat kaç bilmiyorum. Yanımda biri yatıyor. O değil. Başım benim başım değil. O olmayan kadın aslında güzel. Hala sarhoşum. O olmayan kadın hala burada. Yorganı çekiyorum.O olmayan kadın hala güzel." Sf:35

"Başka kadınları sikmek istemem, onunla ayrılmak zorunda olduğumuz anlamına gelmiyor. Başka kadınları sikmek istemem, içinde yaşadığımız toplumun aşırı seksüelleştiği, reklamlarla manipüle edildiği, aptallaştırıldığı ve yüreklendirildiği anlamına gelmiyor. Başka kadınları sikmek istemem ne onun çirkin ne benim hasta olduğum ne de yaşamımızın sonuna kadar birlikte olamayacağımız ve birlikte, kol kola ölmeyeceğimiz anlamına geliyor. Başka kadınları sikmek istemem bunu yapmayı gerçekten istediğim anlamına bile gelmiyor, bunun daha muhtemel açıklaması, içimdeki bir şeyin başka bir şeyi sikmek istiyor olduğu, başka bir şey bilmediğim için de boş kalan yerleri ben ve kadınlar ile dolduruyorum. Başka kadınları sikmek istemem hiçbir anlama gelmiyor. Son derece normal bu. Hormonlar. Karbon. Su." Sf:95

"Dünyaya geldiğim ve onun hayatına girdiğim için üzgünüm. Beynim yaptığı şeyi yaptığı için üzgünüm. Şimdi bir de, bir Y kromozomuna sahip olduğum ve böylelikle içimde testosteron üretildiği için üzgünüm, bunun sonucunda bugünkü toplumsal normlara uymayan bir çiftleşme dürtüsü hissediyorum." Sf:118
Profile Image for Anne Goodwin.
Author 10 books64 followers
February 25, 2016
The unnamed narrator travels from Germany to New York where he’s enrolled as a visiting scholar at the City University. His subject is philosophy, his specialism consciousness, or the eternal question of what makes the ‘I’. Shortly before leaving, he’s hit a rough patch with his girlfriend, possibly precipitated by an unplanned pregnancy and termination, but not so rough that she doesn’t want to come out to visit him in New York. While she’s there, she enjoys doing the touristy things, but becomes increasingly frustrated with our narrator’s failure to connect. He, pondering such impenetrables is what constitutes a thought, struggles to distinguish between his own relevant and irrelevant cognitions and to filter out the superfluous.
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/...
Profile Image for Lars.
460 reviews15 followers
November 19, 2015
Eher kürzeres, aber trotzdem tief- und hintergründiges Buch – so mag ich es. Der Autor fasst diverse Themen an, besonders prominent ist der (scheinbare?) Gegensatz von Liebe und Triebe. Wer es noch etwas philosophischer mag, findet auch viele schlaue Gedanken zum Thema Bewusstsein. Mich hat das Buch in weiten Teilen insgesamt eher bedrückt, so unveränderbar verloren und in der Menge einsam scheint der Protagonist zu sein. Was nicht heißt, dass ich den Roman schlecht finde, ganz im Gegenteil. Lieber bedrückt, als gar keine Emotionen vermittelt zu bekommen.

Schwierigkeiten hatte ich manchmal mit der Sprache, die in ihrer Rastlosigkeit recht gut zur Thematik des Getriebenen passt, mir aber oft zu umständlich war. Wenn ich einen Satz dreimal lesen muss, um ihn zu verstehen, erhöht das nicht unbedingt meine Aufnahmebereitschaft. Auch das präzise Beobachten von Worten und Gesten seitens des Protagonisten, vor allem der Partnerin, artet manchmal in ein schriftstellerisches Ausdiskutieren aus, was dann zu einigen wenigen eher platten und trivialen Stellen führt. Insgesamt trotzdem ein sehr interessanter und ehrlicher Autor, den ich sicher nicht aus den Augen verlieren werde.
66 reviews5 followers
August 4, 2023
Well, I really enjoyed this. A very personal, uncensored account deep inside the introverted thinking of the protagonist. It is understated, but moving and endearing.

My biggest thought about this book that was it read, and seemed like basically a pretty faithful unembellished and un-doctored account of the author's own experience. Which fascinated me partly because of my own very autobiographical writing ideas, but also because - if so - the writer is exposing so much of him/herself - including the most unedifying moments. For example, p32, the narrator has a one night stand with someone and the morning after has sex with the woman whilst she is still asleep.

"She who is not her does not wake up and as I slip on the condom I am reminded of a picture I saw at a restaurant once of Indians with buffalo heads sneaking up on a grazing herd. She who is not her still does not wake up . He who really doesn't do this kind of thing carries on."

I cannot shake the belief that this is the author's own experience. On the one hand it is brave of him to include it, in 2014. I wonder if it would still make the final edit 10 years on...

The publisher's blurb in the inside cover says: "Alone in New York, separated from his girlfriend by the Atlantic Ocean, the nameless narrator of Heinz Helle's electric debut novel is sinking slowly into crisis." - almost as if partly to give Helle plausible deniability of the actions described in the book.

Other than this, especially for anyone of a philosophical/existentialist/introverted bent, this book is a pleasure to read, and ultimately a beautiful poetic, perhaps quietly tragic, account of the isolation and disconnectedness so many face in our current age.
8/10

Quotes
p1 "They're coming out, they're running up the basement steps in their blue-and-yellow and their green-and-white jerseys, the boys, they're eight or nine years old, and you watch them because you like it when members of a species have something that matters to them, when there is something in their lives to fight for, without weapons or violence."

"He is still just a boy. He is in goal. It's the first time he has been in goal, and he is thinking, all right, if you want me to be in goal, I'll be in goal, I don't mind."

p13 "And then I think that sooner or later it had to come to this, that here I am once again thinking about whether the fact that I am thinking about a random women means that she and I no longer have a chance, that I don't really want her any more, without knowing it, or can't want her, or don't want to be able to want her, and it seems to me that wanting isn't something you can control, no matter how hard you try."

p30 "My problem is the fact that it sounds cool to say I'm a philosopher so I study philosophy. My problem is that I'm drunk and I want to fuck, but I'm a philosopher and so really problems like consciousness and experience should be more important to me than women. My problem is that I love a woman but I think that I will at some point stop loving her and I renounce a world in which that is possible."

p32 "She who is not her does not wake up and as I slip on the condom I am reminded of a picture I saw at a restaurant once of Indians with buffalo heads sneaking up on a grazing herd. She who is not her still does not wake up . He who really doesn't do this kind of thing carries on."

p35 "...I realise that I am only here to see past her acne and to prove to her that it is possible for someone to find her beautiful and to prove to myself that someone wants to be found beautiful by me."

p69" As the doors close I keep looking in her direction because I assume she will turn around and I don't want her to turn around and see that I am no longer looking. And so I look. She doesn't turn around."

p71 "Later that evening, we're lying on the sofa watching TV, and taking turns nodding off. When at last we're both awake at the same time, we decide to go to bed."

p74 "We're at her mother's, and we decide to terminate the pregnancy. Her mother decides this. Her father stays out of it, and I'm too proud and numbed to do anything at all, too proud and numbed by the unconditional commitment I made to her a few days earlier, by my solemn oath to stand by her, no matter what she decides. We'll get through this, together, we'll raise a child together or pull a child out of your body and throw it away, whatever you want, darling."

p86
p87

p89 "We're waiting for our friends from Munich, they used to be her friends, now they are our friends, friends with whom she once shared a great many experiences and with whom we now never experience anything....

p94"I refuse to apologise for being a man, in the biological sense. I will not go on denying that I want to fuck every - and I mean every -woman under the age of fifty who weighs under eighty kilos and has a halfway attractive face. I object to the implication that my love for her is less real just because of this boring, unalterable fact.

The fact that I want to fuck other women does not mean that we have to break up. The fact that I want to fuck other women does not mean that the society we live in is hypersexualised, manipulated by advertising, or dumbed-down and debauched. The fact that I want to fuck other women does not mean she is ugly, or that I am sick, or that we couldn't live happily ever after and die arm in arm. The fact that I want to fuck other women doesn't even mean that I really want to fuck other women, but more likely just that something in me wants to fuck something else, and since I don't know anything else, I fill in the blanks with I and women. The fact that I want to fuck other women means absolutely nothing. It's completely normal. Hormones. Carbon. Water."

p97 "She let's go of my hand and puts her other arm around my hips, she holds me tightly, and I hug her back. I'm taller, and I am careful to hold her tightly enough to communicate love, but not so tightly that she feels trapped. In response, she squeezes me even more tightly. I feel trapped."

p98 "But what purpose do you see in what you do, besides the desire to prove to yourself that you can do it? You don't care about philosophy. You don't care about me, either. You basically don't care about anything.
I don't not care about anything."

p99 "I feel her nodding. She nods slowly and breathes carefully, as if something might break, and she nods and breathes and nods and breathes, and suddenly her head on my chest feels very small and wet."

p111 "I don't think you even know what love is, she says, running her fingernail across the fitted sheet and looking at the books on the floor beside the bed, and I look at her fingernail, then at the books, and I think, of course I don't know what love is, and I say: Of course I know what love is. Love is what we feel for each other."
Profile Image for Angie.
89 reviews14 followers
July 25, 2016
This is human experience LAID BARE. Heinz Helle's is a mind fascinating in both its individuality and its universality. He has an uncanny clarity of perception and a true gift for articulating thoughts which for most of us would barely pierce the surface of consciousness. A fabulous philosophical read. Dense but quick. Read it and learn loads about both yourself and humanity in general.
Profile Image for Andrey zz.
126 reviews3 followers
June 7, 2017
Где про футбол, там хорошо. Где про любовь - терпимо. Остальное - вяло как-то
Profile Image for Conny.
616 reviews87 followers
December 17, 2016
Ich bin mir nicht ganz sicher, ob das, was Helle hier in einem Gedankenstrom von sich gibt, besonders tiefgründig und entlarvend sein soll oder einfach nur selbstironisch. Leider tendiere ich zu ersterem. Wenigstens ist es angenehm und schnell zu lesen.
Profile Image for Thomas Heimgartner.
Author 6 books1 follower
August 2, 2015
Smarte Prosa, zuverlässige (Unter-)Kühlung. Nach einem hochtourigen Beginn tuckert der Motor zwischendurch etwas gar gleichmäßig.
Profile Image for Çağatay Boz.
126 reviews17 followers
June 7, 2019
Hemingway sadeliğinde bir "felsefi" roman. Pek bir felsefe yok içinde bana kalırsa; okumak için yanlış bölüm seçmiş şımarık bir Alman çocuğunun New York'ta yaşadığı hayatı, birinci dünya problemleri ve hezeyanları.

İki ile üç yıldız arasında kaldım lâkin üç yıldız verdiğim diğer kitaplara haksızlık olmasın diye ikide karar kıldım. Birkaç noktası güzel, yalan yok. Sıkıcı bir kitap da değil (en azından son 30 sayfa hariç), ama okumasam da hiçbir şey kaybetmezmişim.

Madem bu kadar yazdım, şunu da iliştireyim buraya:

"Dürtülerimden kaçmak için dine veya hastalığa değil de bilgisayarın önüne yönelmeyi kötü olarak görmeyi reddediyorum. Biyolojik anlamda bir erkek olduğum için özür dilemeyi kabul etmiyorum. Elli yaşın ve seksen kilonun altında olan ve biraz da olsa güzel bir yüzü olan her kadını, gerçekten her kadını sikmek istediğimi artık inkâr etmeyeceğim. Ona olan sevgimin bu sıkıcı ve değiştirilemez gerçek yüzünden daha az değerli olduğu savına isyan ediyorum."

Poor Man's Bulantı.

NOT: Bilinç akışı iyi güzel lâkin üslûptan mıdır, yoksa bazı yazarların yazıda devrimci olmak için götünü yırtmasından mıdır bilmiyorum ama, Allah kitap aşkına " kullanın, zor değil. Konuşan sen misin, susturamadığın penisin mi, bilincin mi, kız arkadaşın mı, çoğunlukla hiç anlaşılmıyor.
Profile Image for Petya.
300 reviews23 followers
October 25, 2019
Schmerzhaft echt und ehrlich an manchen Stellen, ich musste es ein paar Mal weg legen deswegen, ein paar Mal vertieft über das Frauengefühl und die Wahrnehmung von Frauen nachdenken, auch über das undefinierbare Bewusstsein und das wildwuchsige, überwältigende Erleben, über die Suche nach Sinn und die Suche nach Gründen für die Suche nach Sinn, und auch über den alltäglichen Trost der alltäglichen Dinge wie Fußballspiele zum Beispiel musste ich nachdenken, und es hat mir Spaß gemacht, bzw. ich konnte mich nicht davonreißen, weil es mich bewegt hat, sehr bewegt hat.
Großartig außerdem die Sprache, wie ich sie "Eigentlich müssen wir tanzen" kennen gelernt habe.
Direkt als Geschenk bestellt für einen Mann, dessen Gesicht ich beim Lesen die ganze Zeit vor Augen hatte...
Profile Image for Joe Eddy.
12 reviews1 follower
January 14, 2023
I am writing this review, there is a bed with green covers and a desk that is black, I am writing this review about a book that is average. It taught me about philosophy in a very abstract way. I'm not sure whether I understand philosophy more or less now. I think that while I was reading the book, I thought the author must have been crazy or that the character in the book that is never named is crazy. I've just realized there is no names, only 'I' and 'her' and 'them' and 'famous philosopher'.
Profile Image for Kamil.
171 reviews
March 7, 2020
Benim problemim, her şeyi neden deneyimlediğimiz sorusu. Benim problemim, son derece kompleks bir alımlama ve işleme aparatına sahip bedenlerimizin, bütün o alımlama ve işlemeye ek olarak bir de neden, ah, ben olmak, burada ve şimdi olmak ve tam da bunu yapmak veya işte yapmamak gibi şeyler üretiyor olduğu. Benim problemim, bilincimizi açıklayan bir bilimsel teorinin nasıl görünmesi gerektiği sorusu. Benim problemim, ben bir felsefeciyim, yani felsefe okuyorum demenin kulağa iyi geliyor oluşu. 
Profile Image for Gijs.
175 reviews8 followers
April 5, 2021
De ikfiguur in Heinz Helles debuutroman reflecteert in een stream of consciousness o.a. over de vraag wat bewustzijn en het "ik" inhoudt. Bij tijd en wijle boeiend en vervreemdend, maar vaker clichématig. Bovendien is het verhaal zelf nogal dun.

En om echt te mierenneuken: een taalpurist had graag een genitief ipv "von" + datief gezien.
Profile Image for Ksenia Gordeeva.
1 review
November 5, 2016
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Vgifch vuvucycvuibhchch hchch j m j jvhch j k kvjvjvucuch j jvucuvuvuvuvuf hcucvuviv uvuvufuvi jvytxtd jvjbiuf jvcycyc ucjhvjv uvu
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Profile Image for Chris Wilby.
646 reviews
January 17, 2023
His brain and ours, what's going through it artistically written.
A shorter book but you get the idea.
Profile Image for Devin.
84 reviews
August 3, 2023
Dark and depressive, annoying but in a good way, like an ear worm but big enough to make you want to chase it down and keep it as a pet.
Profile Image for Greg.
7 reviews1 follower
March 18, 2016
Dry and knowing. The narrator is something of a narcissist and yet this only makes for an even more compelling read. Sharing so much and yet finding some of his views so jarringly off from my own. Not everyone has to be agreeable.
Profile Image for Brian Doak Carlin.
99 reviews5 followers
May 2, 2016
Imagine James Joyce with the vocabulary and style of Hemingway. Rampant monologue. Trapped in short descriptive sentences inside the thought processes of the protagonist.
Profile Image for Andy Yeomans.
3 reviews1 follower
June 19, 2016
Not sure what i think about this book. Its different to anything ive ever read before, its not a happy book, and i found it difficult to read.
Profile Image for Thomas L.
88 reviews1 follower
July 10, 2016
Nun denn, wer philosphischer Gedankengänge über Beziehungen liebt, dann vielleicht, ansonsten ein klares Nein
Profile Image for Ian Williams.
27 reviews
December 2, 2016
I enjoyed the book but was not particularly enthralled. The narrative voice keeps the reader at a distance, presumably by design.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews

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