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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 11, 2017
I've been a fan of Max Goldt for a long time now, but apart from listening to the one or other of his readings once in a while, I haven't read him for years. This voluminous compilation and remix album (it's a book, but with Goldt's background in music as one of the steady members of early 80's new wave group Foyer des Arts it's not improper to use these musical terms here) is a good opportunity to catch up again. Everything I liked about Goldt still holds: He is a humorist who writes essays that are worth being considered seriously. He's a writer who records observations minutely, but also surprises with far-flung associations, absurd deviations, witty puns and some artistically crafted old-fashioned sentences.
A reviewer recently called Max Goldt the Jean Paul Friedrich Richter of our times. I should re-read Jean Paul for sure, for I currently don't remember his works well enough to comment on this comparison. Yet, I have another one that could make sense, too: Maybe Goldt is the German Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Chesterton was more offensively conservative, but the way Goldt unites pop literature and high-brow art and the way that he resists many short-lived modern trends could put him into a newly created category of "modernized and moderately progressive conservative". Although he himself would refuse this label: "Das, weswegen es sich lohnt, konservativ zu sein, müßte erst einmal begründet und aufgezogen werden" ("That, what makes it worth being conservative, would first have to be founded and raised"), he writes on p. 437, though putting the statement into a hypothetical context, which prohibits taking it for the author's unfiltered opinion. The same is true for the following line, yet this one also works well to characterize the book, the style and its author: "Ich bin ein durch und durch philanthropischer Kulturpessimist. Daß das ein Paradoxon ist, hoffe und fürchte ich in geschmeidiger Abwechslung." ("I'm a philanthropic cultural pessimist, through and through. I hope and fear in smooth alternation that this is a paradox.")
Fandom restored.
A reviewer recently called Max Goldt the Jean Paul Friedrich Richter of our times. I should re-read Jean Paul for sure, for I currently don't remember his works well enough to comment on this comparison. Yet, I have another one that could make sense, too: Maybe Goldt is the German Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Chesterton was more offensively conservative, but the way Goldt unites pop literature and high-brow art and the way that he resists many short-lived modern trends could put him into a newly created category of "modernized and moderately progressive conservative". Although he himself would refuse this label: "Das, weswegen es sich lohnt, konservativ zu sein, müßte erst einmal begründet und aufgezogen werden" ("That, what makes it worth being conservative, would first have to be founded and raised"), he writes on p. 437, though putting the statement into a hypothetical context, which prohibits taking it for the author's unfiltered opinion. The same is true for the following line, yet this one also works well to characterize the book, the style and its author: "Ich bin ein durch und durch philanthropischer Kulturpessimist. Daß das ein Paradoxon ist, hoffe und fürchte ich in geschmeidiger Abwechslung." ("I'm a philanthropic cultural pessimist, through and through. I hope and fear in smooth alternation that this is a paradox.")
Fandom restored.
March 14, 2020
Max Goldt zeigt ein faszinierendes Fingerspitzengefühl, wenn es darum geht, Umgebungshandlungen und Zwischenmenschliches zu formulieren.
Leider verliert diese Qualität jedweden Charme, wenn die Wertung der Situation beginnt: Was beim ersten Blick als spitzbübisches Augenzwinkern aufgefasst werden könnte, ist bei weiterführender Lektüre nur eine Ansammlung verbitterter und zynischer Erzählungen.
Ecce: Die enorme Deutungshoheit eines maßlos überhypten Intellektuellen, der sich an der Belanglosigkeit der Gewohnheiten aus seiner Sicht minderer Geschöpfe ergötzt.
Leider verliert diese Qualität jedweden Charme, wenn die Wertung der Situation beginnt: Was beim ersten Blick als spitzbübisches Augenzwinkern aufgefasst werden könnte, ist bei weiterführender Lektüre nur eine Ansammlung verbitterter und zynischer Erzählungen.
Ecce: Die enorme Deutungshoheit eines maßlos überhypten Intellektuellen, der sich an der Belanglosigkeit der Gewohnheiten aus seiner Sicht minderer Geschöpfe ergötzt.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews