Im Stein

by Clemens Meyer

Clemens Meyers zweiter Roman: Ein großes Gesellschafts-Epos unserer Zeit.Ein vielstimmiger Gesang der Nacht: Prostituierte, Engel und Geschäftsmänner kämpfen um Geld und Macht und ihre Träume. Eine junge Frau steht am Fenster, schaut in den Abendhimmel, im Januar laufen die Geschäfte nicht, die Gedanken tanzen ihn ihrem Kopf. »Der Pferdemann«, der alte Jockey, sucht seine Tochter. »Der Bielefelder« rollt mit neuen Geschäftskonzepten den Markt auf, investiert in Clubs und Eroscenter. »AK 47« liegt angeschossen auf dem Asphalt. Schonungslos und zärtlich schreibt Clemens Meyer in seinem großen Roman von den Menschen, den Nachtgestalten, von ihrem Aufstieg und Fall, vom Schmutz der Straße und dem Fluss des Geldes. Mit großer Kraft und Emotion erzählt er die Geschichte einer Stadt, die zum Epochen-Roman unserer Zeit wird.

Genres: German Literature, Fiction, Germany, Literary Fiction, Novels, 21st Century, Literature

560 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 16, 2013

About the author

Meyer was born in 1977 in Halle an der Saale. His studies at the German Literature Institute, Leipzig, were interrupted by a spell in a youth detention centre. He has worked as a security guard, forklift driver and construction worker before he became a published novelist.

Meyer won a number of prizes for his first novel Als wir träumten (As We Were Dreaming), published in 2006,[2] in which a group of friends grow up and go off the rails in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He received the Rheingau Literatur Preis in 2006.

His second book, Die Nacht, die Lichter (All the Lights, 2008), was translated by Katy Derbyshire and published by independent London publisher And Other Stories in 2011.[3] It won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2008.

Since then he has published his third book, Gewalten (Acts of Violence), a diary of 2009 in eleven stories, and a second novel called Im Stein (In Stone) in 2013 which was long-listed for the German Book Prize.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 5 out of 5]

English: Bricks and Mortar
Shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2013
Longlisted for the Booker International Prize 2017
Finalist for the Best Translated Book Award 2019
If you like Genet, Burroughs, and Fauser, you will love this. While the book deals with the sex trade as one of the capitalist industries conquering the former GDR after 1989, it is neither voyeuristic nor a moral tale. What makes Clemens Meyer’s writing so compelling is his immense empathy for his protagonists who are portrayed with great dignity. As outsiders in the midst of historic turmoil, they are trying (and often failing) to come to terms with the reality they live in. Meyer refrains from putting pimps, prostitutes, and policemen in boxes like “good”, “bad”, “criminal”, or “victim”. Rather, they are complex and often ambiguous, just like the world they live in.

This idea is also reflected in the book`s style, which is cut-up, intertwined and multidimensional, orchestrating many voices and scenes. And while you are busy putting the pieces together, the story punches you in the face again and again.

If you read Meyer before, this will not come as a surprise: His declared goal has always been to challenge and unsettle his readers – “literature has to hurt”, as he puts it. Judging by this standard, “Bricks and Mortar” is Meyer’s masterpiece. The book breathes disorientation, disconnectedness and melancholy, but the protagonists constantly struggle to uphold their personal integrity and dignity. It is indeed painful to read – if you do not feel like either puking or crying after reading the chapter written from the perspective of a child forced into prostitution, you are probably not human.

I am always stunned by the intensity of Meyer`s work. I can physically feel his texts, and that’s a very rare thing. So if you enjoy reading stories about people who normally tend to be overlooked or stereotyped, and if you are not afraid to dissect and reassemble a living text, go for this book, it is truly amazing!

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about atmosphere more than plot. It is a series of interwoven stories with each story told non-linearly. Some chapters are relatively straightforward story-telling. Some are stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes the two mix in the same chapter. Sometimes a chapter relates two or three different events or has two or three different narrators without ever telling you that. At times, it can be difficult to keep track of who is talking or whose story is being told. As you would expect, the overall affect of this structure is disorientating.

Clearly, this is a book that makes the reader work. It does not offer much help in terms of clarification. But then the author is quoted as saying he writes "literature that hurts".

The subject matter is not comfortable, either (which is what I think the author was actually referring to in the quote above): an examination of the German sex industry seen through the eyes of various participants. I hope my wife does not check my internet browsing history any time soon as, in my innocence, I had to look up some of the abbreviations and terms used. We hear from prostitutes, landlords who run the flats they work from, sex club owners, a radio DJ who talks about the prostitutes, a man searching for his lost daughter, a girl forced into child prostitution and a few others. Perhaps the main character is the former football hooligan who moves into the sex industry and becomes powerful there until people turn against him. That’s sort of the plot, but only in the most tangential way because the book isn’t really concerned with plot and saying all that about it isn’t in any way a spoiler: it is, as I started off by saying, about atmosphere. It feels very filmic at times: you can picture the camera switching from vignette to vignette as people’s lives play out around the city.

I have to admit that books and films with interwoven stories are very appealing to me as are non-linear narratives, so this has a lot in it to please me. At times, though, it does feel a bit too much and I did find my brain sometimes almost switching off because of the complexity of the time jumps and mixed stories. But the writing is very vivid and good enough to keep you going even in the difficult passages.

I’m not sure if I will ever get round to it, but I think this is a book that would reward a second reading. Working through it again, with a knowledge of where some of the stories are heading, would, I think, reveal a lot more connections and a lot more detail that escapes you first time.

There’s an interview with the translator of the English version here which is interesting as it describes some of the decisions and changes she made when translating the book: http://lovegermanbooks.blogspot.co.uk...

UPDATE: I have been reviewing my ratings for all the MBI Longlist books and this one is getting bumped up to the full 5 stars.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award, two years after its longlisting for the 2017 Man Booker International.

The markets and marketplaces are becoming more and more linked, steel and concrete town halls, the meat markets expanding, the bricks and mortar, sticks and stones, the rock growing, in a red-lit circle where everything’s linked, the rubbish truck, the fat woman, the Coke, the Viagras, the blockers, uppers and downers, lost cats, the right to sexual self-determination, scraps of memory like old police badges, the Angels on their motorbikes, peat mosses, flyovers, sixty-six municipal brothels in 1865, trade chronicles, he burrows in the old files, real estate on silver strings leading all the way to Italy, and the fall of the real-estate boss Silvio Lübbke, three bullets, boom, boom, Dead Peepers Alley, houses for pocket money, clues, clues, the country air so clean and pure, soon they’ll be building here but we’ll stop the diggers, the question is, who brings three bodies out to this mire, this swamped puddle, where everyone knows they won’t decompose, when you can dig holes in the sandy ground of the heath or drive out to forest lakes like the ‘Blue Eye’, and there must be anglers there who discover the remotest of lakes, the woods arching around the north-eastern belt of the suburbs and incorporated villages to the south, all of it flat as a pancake.

Clement Meyer's Im Stein has been translated into English by Katy Derbyshire, who in addition to being an accomplished translator has an excellent blog on translation and German literature. The novel's English title Bricks and Mortar is slightly different to the German and Derbyshire explains her choice here: http://blog.fitzcarraldoeditions.com/.... While I am not convinced of her argument, the explanation is helpful and highlights the issues and choices faced by translators.

In the blog love German books she describes this as "the best book I’ve translated, so far", and and as

a playful, ambitious, neo-modernist, Marxism-tinged exploration of the development of the east German prostitution market, from next to nothing in 1989 to full decriminalization and diversification in the present day. Not everybody’s cup of tea.

That is a fair summary, including the last sentence as while this perhaps has a shot at the overall prize, it just wasn't to my personal taste.

Derbyshire's reading list to aid the translation also gives a rather good feel for the novel:

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes

Let's Sing Together

The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary

It's all part of the job. Deutsch für die Polizei

A Dictionary of Marxist Thought

Karl Marx: Capital

Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz

Bobby Cummines: I Am Not a Gangster - Fixer. Armed robber. Hitman. OBE

William T. Vollmann: Whores for Gloria

Rachel Aimee, Eliyanna Kaiser, Audacia Ray (eds.): $pread. The best of the magazine that illuminated the sex industry and started a media revolution

Wolfgang Hilbig, I (trans. Isabel Cole)

David Peace: Tokyo Year Zero

Skip the Games: Escort terms, sex definitions and abbreviations in escort ads

Meyer’s story features multiple perspectives and different voices, told in a non-linear fashion. But Meyer deliberately adds layers of complexity. We’re not always clear who the narrator is and even within a given narrative points of view and times shift. Characters “reminisce” about the future (later someone got shot there, but I had nothing to do with that. I can't know about that yet.) and drop seamlessly into the past, we’re often clear if the events described are happening or imagined, even at time if the characters are alive or dead, or indeed dead but now alive again.

The issue I has is that there are two ways to read this type of book. Either read it very carefully, cross-referencing back to piece together the story, or let the polyphonic voices wash over you. The problem either way the book is 400+ pages too long – my interest level was waning after 200 pages.

The comparison to Hilbig and Peace is well made but the novel shares many of the flaws of the latter, and doesn’t, for me, approach close to the heights of the latter (see my review of Sleep of the Righteous https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

Overall - 3 stars - an average of 5 for the literary merit and the brilliance of the translation and 1 for my personal reading experience.

[Hendrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein wirklich schwieriger Roman insofern er dem Leser ungeteilte Aufmerksamkeit und gedankliche Mitarbeit abverlangt. Denn der Plot präsentiert sich als wüstes Trümmerfeld, das es mit viel Aufwand erstmal zu ordnen gilt, bis sich überhaupt ein Verständnis der Zusammenhänge einstellen kann. Das Credo nach dem Clemens Meyer hier verfährt, hat er selbst in einer seiner Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen prägnant formuliert:

DIE ÄKSCHN GMBH […] SPIELT MIT ERINNERUNGEN, DIE DIE EINZIGEN WAHRHEITEN SIND, UND WIDERSPRICHT SICH PERMANENT UND AKZEPTIERT KEINE WAHRHEITEN UND LÄSST SICH ÜBERRUMPELN UND TRAUT NUR DEN TRÄUMEN.

Auf diesem Leitsatz fußt, so scheint mir, der ganze Roman. Ein riesiges Verwirrspiel in dem die Akteure sich nach und nach selber völlig verlieren und nicht mal mehr ihren eigenen Erinnerungen trauen können. Das ist in weiten Teilen großartig gelungen, zuweilen aber auch ziemlich anstrengend. Das Geschäft mit der Ware Sex wird in allen Facetten dargestellt, ob nun aus Sicht der Prostituierten, Kunden, der Hintermänner oder der Polizei. Dabei wird klugerweise auf jegliche moralische Wertung verzichtet. Denn:

DIE ÄKSCHN GMBH IST KEINE MORALINSTITUTION! DIE ÄKSCHN GMBH IST NUR EINE BEOBACHTENDE INSTITUTION.

Ein ambitioniertes Buch, dass im positiven wie im negativen Sinn geradezu überwältigend ist.

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clemens Meyers once said that books "need to hurt." Bricks and Mortar is an agonising read in several ways—it does "hurt," both in ways the author must have anticipated and those he likely did not, so that readers who go looking for plot will experience it one way while those who dive in for a neo-modernist whiff of atmosphere will feel rewarded, and richly at that. My preferences—expectations—were middling when I picked this up, hence the considerably poor rating of what I will nevertheless go on to describe as a stellar literary achievement.

Bricks and Mortar explores the development of sex trade as an industry in the former GDR, from next to nothing before 1989 to its full decriminalisation and development into the present day (German policymakers legalised prostitution in 2002, foreseeing the massive tax revenue awaiting them). While inherently critical of capitalism and its myth of competition the story does not moralise, instead putting the reader in the midst of a grand, almost hallucinatory polyphony, complex and ambiguous, cutting into the interwoven and multidimensional narratives from across the milieu: pimps, policemen, 'guests', a girl forced into child prostitution, an ex-jockey looking for his drug-addict daughter, several sex workers, and more, each character and voice struggling to uphold their personal integrity while coming to terms with a changing world.

In this kaleidoscopic novel, the 'protagonist' is ostensibly AK; whose rise and fall from football hooligan to large-scale landlord and service provider to the city's sex workers threads in and out of the multitudinous narrative; although only tangentially, for the pieces Meyers makes the reader put together are each a haze of stories—sometimes straightforward, sometimes streams-of-consciousness, and often switching between styles and narrators in a way that breathes disorientation. Time skips forward and back, dead people come to life, characters and scenes often blur into one another. While this lends the novel its atmospheric quality, I often found it impenetrable and myself breathless from the struggle to keep up.

Given that this novel is over 600 pages long, I felt considerably weighed down by the lack of linearity, although those are precisely the two factors that make this book so commendable. Perhaps my lack of enjoyment also owes itself to the fact that I was far more invested and involved in the narratives of the women as compared to the pimps, landlords and club-owners, who sadly were the voices that recurred the most. I did admire Meyers' trenchant sense of irony in these latter episodes, wherever I could spot them, of course—for instance, the way AK's development into a real-estate baron (through political connections, and of course, an MBA) personifies the economic development of the former GDR.

What kept me reading, in the end, was the writing, or "the elastic way in which [Meyers] uses language" as translator Katy Derbyshire calls it. Indeed, every time my brain seemed to shut down it was the wordplay—humourous, ironic, fluid and almost poetic—that brought me back. I also found it interesting how the author inverted and linked popular German fairy tales like those of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White (and also Mother Trudy, which I am unfamiliar with) to the narrative in general and the 'red-light industry' in particular.

On the whole, I believe an opinion of Bricks and Mortar (Im Stein or "In the Stone" in German) can only be summed up, as it is on this site, in the stars: 4 for the literary achievement I can recognise it to be, 2 for my personal reading experience. Although it is a daunting 600+ pages, I believe this is a book that would greatly benefit from a second reading. Perhaps a do-over would "hurt" just right.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

19th book of 2023. Artist for this review is German surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944).

Bricks and Mortar is a chaotic, literary kaleidoscopic portrait of Berlin's underworld, particularly through the lens of prostitution around the collapse of the Wall in '89 to the first decade of our current century. Every chapter spins us into a new character, a new perspective; it is quite often that you do not know who is narrating each chapter, or there are only clues once you've made it part way through. Meyer moves from first to second to third person, sometimes sentence to sentence. Generally, it didn't feel necessary to me, at all times, to understand where I was in the novel's nonlinear structure or who was speaking. By reading some things later became clearly, or in other cases, never became clearer. There are prostitutes talking about their childhoods, their clients, what they offer in sex, what they like and don't like. There is a detective investigating bodies. There is a man looking for his lost daughter. We move around seedy Berlin, jump forwards and backwards in time, in and out of characters' heads. The blurb likens the book to David Lynch and Alfred Döblin. I've read a collection of Meyer's stories prior to this, which is considered his masterpiece, and found those as abstract and distant as this. Generally you bob along slightly detached from the events and the characters but slowly a semblance of the narrative and certain emotions begin to reach you. Some events are alluded to or happen in the wrong order and you only realise pages and pages later. Or two pieces fit together with great digressions between them. The seediness is unceasing: the piss, the sex, the dirty streets, the smoky train stations, the drugs. I don't know if I'd ever recommend it to anyone but I found it to be an interesting read, if not for the wild structure, the variety of voices and styles and the look into former GDR. Interesting that Meyer chose all these pimps and prostitutes to tell his story, but it was something different, so why not? Novels give voices to the voiceless, after all.


Folly Square, 1931

[Totarota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dieses Monument von einem Buch bildet das ostdeutsche Rotlichtmilieu nach der Wende bis in die Gegenwart in zahlreichen Facetten ab. Wir begegnen Sexarbeiterinnen jeden Alters und den Männern im Hintergrund (von „Zuhälter? Nein. Nein.“ bis „Zuhälter? Ja. Ja.“).
Der Autor verzichtet dabei dankenswerterweise auf jegliche Wertung oder Moralisierung.
Es gibt keine chronologisch erzählte Handlung. In jedes Kapitel muss man sich beim Lesen neu einfinden. Stil und Sprache wechseln ebenso schnell wie die im Mittelpunkt stehenden Charaktere, sowie Zeit und Ort der Szenen - häufig nur Bewusstseinsströme.
Was konstant bleibt, ist die Atmosphäre, die unglaublich stark aus jeder Zeile dieser 558 Seiten heraus erzeugt wird.
Dieses Buch geht dahin, wo es wehtut. Und wird mir noch lange im Gedächtnis bleiben.

[Cynnamon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nicht mein Typ von Buch.
Leider konnten mich weder das Thema noch der Stil überzeugen....

[Roos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant. Clemens Meyer wrote no less than a masterpiece, a neo-modernist novel that reminds me of Alfred Döbling, John Dos Passos and David Lynch. He drags you down into the crags of '25 years of sex trade' in a former GDR city (Leipzig), from just before the wall fell until around 2011.
There is a narrative arc, but you have to work for it. Nothing is straightforward in this book. Meyer shifts between time and space without giving one a hand. But ooooh what a ride...
Fitzcarraldo Editions is definitely one of my favourite presses: high end hardcore literary fiction.

[Snorri Vignisson]

þetta er bara andrúmsloft og ekkert annað. Fáir eitthvað sérstaklega hrifnir af þessari en þetta er ein af bókum ársins hjá moi

[Simona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books from category 'it's not you, it's me'. The story is primarily a portrait / social commentary of Germany after the fall of the wall. The author's focus is on prostitution (its legalization and regulation), human trafficking, corruption. migration ... all through the prism of money / capitalism. Chapters switch in point of view, between past and present and sometimes is difficult to follow who is the narrator (and where). I appreciate the ideas, but writing style doesn't quite suit me, although I have to say - that the author perfectly captures the atmosphere of marginalized people.
The novel is in some way constructed as a series of connected short stories, which are told as inner states of consciousness, and as a dialogue with an invisible listener / reader and the common point of all the protagonists is the life on the margins of legality and society.

Why is worth to read it - because of the perfectly captured atmosphere. Author doesn't moralise and social problems are presented through personal experience / everyday life of people without preaching, as part of a world that is neither black nor white.

[Bellezza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Each chapter is a different voice telling a different version of the same desperate story: sex trade in a former East German city from 1989 to the present. It makes you ache at the loneliness and despair, while at the same time feeling horror at the choices these people have made with their lives. For surely becoming a prostitute, or a pimp, or a “guest” (a word preferable to the women than “customer”) is a choice, is it not?

How adept Clemens Meyer is at assuming the point of view of each person in his tale. I feel I am listening to the 30-something woman as she prepares to leave her warm flat in January for the unknown darkness awaiting her in a hotel room; I feel I am listening to the taxi driver who says to her, with a sweeping flourish of his arm, “Your car, madame.”

The irony, the pain, is piercing.

Yet at the same time, I can’t help but feel a little slimed while reading this. There is more than I want to dwell on about the darkest sides of human nature, the way sex is twisted into anything but love, the way that money and drugs and power are more important than a person’s heart.

Surely what Meyer writes about must be based in truth somewhere. Surely this is a world not entirely of his own creation, and who am I to judge? But 124 pages in feels like enough, at least for tonight. There is more than enough sorrow in these pages to last me until page 672.

What do you think? Should the subject matter of a book effect the way it is scored?

[Tonymess · Rating 4 out of 5]

German Fairy Tales (or Märchen) take on various forms, we’ve all heard of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘Snow White’, probably less so ‘Mother Trudy’, but Clemens Meyer’s “Bricks and Mortar” picks the threads of these classic tales, mentioning a few by name, and then represents them in the reality of modern Germany, from the period just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall to (possibly) the current day. But the tale of a developing, changing Germany is told through the eyes of the sex industry. Can “Little Red Riding Hood” be linked to the “red light industry”? Is “Mother Trudy”, one of the tales recalled by our first narrator, a sex-worker, a metaphor for all female sex-workers?

And this is no short fairy tale, running to 653 pages, it is a long work indeed.

In this novel the character’s blur, the dead talk, people take the lead role and then move back into the shadows, time is not linear, we have one character talking about 9/11 and it is 1999!!! Told in a multitude of voices, you are not always certain who is the narrator, nor their role in this kaleidoscope, rest assured things do draw together the further you travel into this melting pot.

An exploration of capitalism, economies, a unified Germany (and sex), this book, at no stage, enters cliché mode, the football hooligan who becomes a landlord for the apartments used by the prostitutes, gives economic rants about the number of workers, the rooms, euros and then refers to Stanisław Lem’s “Solaris”. An alcoholic ex-jockey spends his nights looking for his young daughter who has become a street worker, a policeman who works on a cold case of three bodies found in the bottom of a peat bog;

For my full review and the Grimm Fairy tale "Mother Trudy" visit https://messybooker.wordpress.com/201...

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

A choir of voices of those involved in the burgeoning GDR sex industry once the Berlin Wall came down. I found the stories of the women more involving than those of their pimps/ organised crime lords, who unfortunately were the recurrent voices rather than the women. The details of the changes wrought on the former Communist half of Germany were interesting, but overall not as much as I hoped for as a novel. It was 3.5 stars really, but that isn't an option

[Gwendolinepeepingtom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Viel zu viel Geplapper. Es ging mir zu oft der rote Faden verloren. Als ich dann alle Puzzleteile zusammen hatte war ich von dem Ergebnis nicht so begeistert, dass es die Qualen des Lesens wert war.

[Kathrin · Rating 1 out of 5]

zäh und langweilig. schlechtestes buch seit langer zeit.

[Katy Derbyshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

His best yet. Read it.

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complice il periodo non proprio brillante attraversato, esco da questa lettura protratta più del dovuto piuttosto stremato anche se non deluso. Il sogno infranto di un futuro radioso post-riunificazione, a cavallo tra gli anni ’90 del secolo scorso e il primo decennio del secolo attuale, è letto dal particolare punto di vista dei sex-workers, cioè di tutto il mondo che ruota attorno alla prostituzione, attraverso il confine labile tra morale e immorale, legale e illegale, lecito e criminale, ma compiutamente integrato nel sistema capitalistico e sempre teso verso il profitto. Confine già attraversato da Bertolt Brecht nel bellissimo Il romanzo da tre soldi e su cui ironizzava anche Karl Marx nell’ Elogio del crimine scrivendo che “Il delinquente non produce soltanto delitti, ma anche il diritto criminale, e con ciò produce anche il professore che tiene lezioni sul delitto criminale, e inoltre l’inevitabile manuale, in cui questo stesso professore getta i suoi discorsi in quanto “merce” sul mercato generale. Con ciò si verifica un aumento della ricchezza nazionale, senza contare il piacere personale, come [afferma] un testimonio competente, il professor Roscher, che la composizione del manuale procura al suo stesso autore.”
Caverne racconta la prostituzione diventata professione legalizzata, organizzata e sindacalizzata, disciplinata da contratti di lavoro, o esercitata in autonomia, in appartamento o case d’appuntamento, in stretto connubio con il mercato immobiliare, ”Io lo so che molte delle mie colleghe preferiscono lo status di lavoratrici autonome, e non c’è proprio nulla da eccepire in merito! La strada per arrivare all’autonomia era ed è spesso il primo passo! Se tuttavia fosse disponibile un’adeguata alternativa all’interno di un rapporto di lavoro regolare, che prevedesse uno stipendio base… uno stipendio minimo garantito, come è già stato discusso in svariate sedi con diverse proposte di modelli…”
Ma la tutela e la protezione dei sex workers è anche un appiglio per aumentare gli introiti statali, ”Stando alle stime, in Germania lavorano attualmente nel settore ca. 400.000 donne, sebbene gli insider ci dicano che siano oltre il mezzo milione, alcune fonti sostengono che sfiorino persino il milione. Con 9.125 miliardi di euro di fatturato. Come vedete, si tratta di cifre che dobbiamo porre sotto il nostro controllo, non vedo come potremmo fare altrimenti. Se lo Stato non può assumere il monopolio per motivi economici, giuridici, organizzativi e morali, allora, cari i miei signori, care le mie signore, la nostra direttiva può essere una sola: che il racket continui a esistere, ma noi dobbiamo battere cassa! (Intendenza di finanza I, sezione B2, stanza 001)”
La parte più interessante del libro e anche più faticosa da seguire è la sua struttura. Nonostante l’arco temporale della storia sia racchiuso in una ventina d’anni, la molteplicità dei personaggi, caratterizzati da una marcata solitudine, la non linearità della narrazione con i suoi salti temporali e il cambio improvviso del narratore e del protagonista su cui in quel momento si accendono i riflettori, l’alternarsi di ricordi, sogni, e visioni alla realtà, conferiscono una dimensione mutevole e sfuggente, che si scompone e ricompone continuamente.

[Gabriele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ambiziosa opera, ancorché non perfettamente riuscita, della letteratura tedesca contemporanea, meritoriamente portata in Italia da Keller, nonostante la mole e la difficoltà nel trasporre un testo tanto complesso, per stile e specificità dei riferimenti a programmi, canzoni, cultura di massa e aspetti tipici della vita quotidiana nell'ex-DDR (a tal proposito, risulta imprescindibile l'ottimo apparato di note predisposto dai curatori).

L'ambientazione è quella della Germania post-89, in un andirivieni di piani: temporali, tra anni Novanta e primi Duemila; spaziali, tra Est (soprattutto) e Ovest. Le tematiche di fondo: prostituzione, speculazione edilizia, corruzione, sfacelo morale... il mercato capitalistico, trionfando, fagocita tutto: politica, paesaggio, corpi, carne, libido.

Tale quadro generale viene delineato e scandagliato attraverso capitoli spesso conchiusi in sé stessi, di fatto auto-sufficienti, senza che sia sostanzialmente possibile seguire alcuna trama, e che però insieme concorrono a evocare un'atmosfera cupa e opprimente, ma - allo stesso tempo - quasi anestetizzata, priva di pathos e disperazione. Astrattamente crudele.
Alla rapsodia della struttura tiene dietro uno stile tutto giocato sul flusso, paratattico fin quasi all'epigramma o, più spesso, procedente a briglia sciolta. L'intersecarsi di piani temporali, contesti, situazioni, memorie, citazioni, jingle e quant'altro, tuttavia, non è sempre lucido, così che il testo finisce talvolta per perdere chiarezza e comprensibilità. Esito forse inevitabile, in un caleidoscopio di quasi 700 pagine, ma non di meno un poco estenuante.

Un esempio:

Aveva corso a schiena china, l'aria ora fredda ora umida, porte di ferro, bivi, e sempre un groviglio di tubi, tubi ai muri, e cilindri, rubinetti con misuratori, tubi grigi di zinco, tubi rossastri di rame, l'aria ora calda ora fredda, senza pozzi di aerazione, ogni qualche metro la luce fioca di una piccola lampadina dietro il vetro opacizzato di una lampada con la grata, poi all'improvviso una luce dall'alto che si muoveva ondivaga sul pavimento davanti a lui, un grande lucernario rettangolare, AK guardò lo stagno da sotto, l'oblunga vasca d'acqua davanti al crematorio perché più avanti non poteva essere arrivato, vide attraverso la torbida acqua verdastra il cielo serale che si muoveva a sua volta screziato di rosso, erano pesci o uccelli, quelli che giravano sul pelo dell'acqua?, o aeroplani più in alto, dirigibili che lo stagno, che l'acqua gli mostrava grazie alla strana traiettoria della luce fratta come attraverso varie lenti... sentì scricchiolare il vetro sopra di sé, "Torna dentro, comincia a far freddo. Sta per piovere".

[Milica Grujic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Čudna mešavina 'Ja' Volfganga Hilbiga i '2666' Roberta Bolanja. Majeru nedostaje talenat obojice ali tu falinku uspešno nadomešćuje pripovedačkom upornošću. Pročitala sam bezbroj kritika koje se svode na to da je roman dosadan i naporan. Jeste. Da nije, ne bi bio ni pola onoga što nekako uspeva da bude. Sasvim, sasvim dobar i veran priči koju priča.

[Tass · Rating 4 out of 5]

deserves a reread because i took a very large pause exactly halfway through & i feel i didn’t entirely comprehend the method of writing during that first half. some narrators much more compelling than others (but that’s just the same with people) & couldn’t help wishing the women’s perspectives were privileged slightly more. remains a phenomenal undertaking & very moving piece of work - not quite the same calibre as while we were dreaming, for me.

[Counterfuture · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting for 250 pages, then it become a drag.
Complicated narrative style that does not serve the purpose of the story.

[Paul Niklaus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das zieht sich, ist episodisch und am Ende bleibt nur wenig von der Stimmung hängen. Kurzgeschichten kann er besser.

[Stujallen allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

a look into east Germany and post-cold war Germany using a brothel

[Sarah]

Unconvinced I know what happened even though I read the whole thing

[Tina Ger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Roman wie eine Tretmine. Du schlägst das Buch auf und stehst plötzlich mitten drin in tausend Puzzleteilen, die du dir selbst zusammensetzen musst. Das soll keine Kritik sein. Ich liebe die Abkehr vom linearen Schreiben. Das offeriert mir die Gelegenheit, mir mein eigenes Lesen zu kreieren und das finde ich gut.

Hin und wieder tut sich ein Riss auf 'Im Stein' und dann blitzt da doch der berühmte rote Faden auf, dann scheint Meyers Welt stärker verwoben, als auf dem ersten Blick angenommen, dann keimt des Lesers Wunsch auf, Durchblick zu erlangen, doch verweigert sich der Autor sogleich, scheut wie ein bockiger Esel und verwirrt auf's Kommando mit Zusammenhanglosem. Dann lässt er seine Handlungsträger mal wieder um viele Ecken denken und schert sich einen Dreck darum, wer noch mitkommt.

Für mich hat er mit Hans aber doch einen Protagonisten geschaffen, mit dem ich langsam warm geworden bin. Ohne zu viel verraten zu wollen, bin ich als Fan der schönsten Lars van Trierschen Manipulation, nicht unbeeindruckt von diesem Kunststück.

Die Engel, die Bengel, wer hat den größten Schwengel. Die Milieustudie der Aktie Rot konnte mich immer dann in Lesefreude versetzen, wenn Meyer sich für mehr als einen Atemzug auf eine Erzählstimme einließ. Dann entstanden Atmosphäre und Emotion. Dann spürte ich die Hoffnungen durch die Figuren schimmern, dann wurden da Bilder und Menschen lebendig, die mich anziehen wie abstoßen konnten, die Meyer - und das macht ihn für mich aus - mit seiner sehr eigenen Schreibe zu liebenswerten Outlaws macht. Selbstbewusst und stark, aber auch verletzlich und ängstlich.

Einmal 'Im Stein' immer 'Im Stein'. Wer einmal drin ist, kommt nicht mehr raus, da wird gemordet und gemeuchelt, da überleben nur die ganz Harten, da fallen die Hüllen, da haben die Hühner ausgelacht. Ganz ohne die manierierten Klischees der vielzitierten Tatorte, kommt dieser Text mit Figuren aus, die dir ihr Leben zeigen. Einfach so. Mit allen doppelten Böden und dreifach verspiegelten Wänden. So ist das eben 'Im Stein'. Mir hat es gefallen. Ob das jetzt gesellschaftlich relevant oder der Wenderoman ist, spielt für mich dabei keine Rolle. Die Metaebene findet ja doch erst statt, wenn du das Buch zuschlägst.

Da ich finde, dass ich einen Autor an sich selbst messen darf, entscheide ich mich für vier Sterne, da ich Meyers "Als wir träumten" immer noch besser finde. Das liebe ich einfach abgöttisch und so weit würde ich für Kraushaar & Co jetzt nicht gehen.

[Røbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big read in many ways, tackling modern life post-German-unification through a non-judgemental focus on the sex industry, in many pages with many viewpoints and many voices. I'm writing this a couple of months after finishing the book, but I still have a strong impression of letting the language wash over me and being swept through the book.

The subject may be queasy for some (and in my innocence I learnt a few bits of interesting terminology) but there is lots of energy and life in all its ups and downs which has wider purpose exploring a sudden onset of capitalism, legalisation of prostitution, and broader picture of European interactions. There's a lot of humour too -- the sex industry being as subject to the seediness of accountancy, taxes, and property prices as any other business.

In all its richness, translator Katy Derbyshire has done a grand job of bringing it to English readership, and as usual it is a small independent publisher bring us new daring writing, in this case the incomparable Fitzcarraldo Editions. Fans of great boundary-pushing writing should read this and explore the publisher's other books.

[Jake Indiana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great read at all - wildly committed to its own form of prose which is nearly impossible to read like a normal person. Interesting story drowned by poor writing.

[Helena (Renchi King) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Preskočite..!

[Evie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have found two comments which best describe ‘Bricks and Mortar’: first, the blurb’s claim that it ‘finds inspiration in the films of Russ Meyer, Takashi Miike, Gaspar Noé and David Lynch’. It is disconcerting to start a book by an author about something as gendered as prostitution whose cinematic forebears are all men who have been accused of misogyny and have famously used women’s bodies and, often draw out and even titillating, portrayals of physical/sexual violence against them as lynchpins to create cheap emotional payoffs. Thankfully, this brings us to the second comment: its translator, Katy Derbyshire, writes that ‘this is a book with a lot of bathos’. Despite their puerile and blunt wholes, the rape scenes in, for example, Miike’s ‘Ichi the Killer’, Noé’s ‘Irréversible’ and Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ were genuinely visceral and upsetting, but I cannot recall feeling anything while reading ‘Bricks and Mortar’, except for mild annoyance at the repetition of the phrase ‘pendulous breasts’ (‘hängenden Brüste’).

Nonetheless, just as I have sometimes found personal and artistic merit in these filmmakers, Meyer sometimes does write well, such as in the final chapter, ‘I’d like to get a horse, one day’, Meyer, with Derbyshire’s astute translation, subtly shows how much advertising has infiltrated the very thoughts of its narrator. Further, there’s a particularly interesting line where a character is looking at some fridge drawers and Meyer writes that they are opened or closed, an incredibly obvious detail which highlights how much everything at once is and is not in this book, where the nonlinear structure and constant shifting of time mean that everything is and was and will be all at once.

Through a feminist lens, this could have absolutely fascinating thematic ramifications about the conception of women as Schrödinger’s whores and what being a whore actually means when women are consistently under immense economic and misogynistic pressure either to actually become prostitutes or their ‘respectable’ equivalents, wives, or both, and to be both punished and rewarded no matter the ‘decision’. In such a reading, the nonlinear aspects might also reflect on the centrality of misogyny to women’s experiences and indeed, the necessity of sexism in the creation of the very category ‘woman’, such that ‘women’ always were, are and will be linked to misogyny. Thus, a commentary on the oldest conception of women as whores.

But for a 600+ page polyvocal book about prostitution, Meyer really doesn’t seem all that interested in the complexity of women’s interiorities at all. Not to unfairly compare everything to Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’, but it is concerning that I have a far better sense of Dolores as a person in a book told exclusively from the perspective of her pedophilic rapist than any one of the women whose inner monologue the reader is actually granted access to. It would have been so interesting to read about the impact of capitalism, an otherwise overarching theme which is often strangely dropped in the women’s sections, and the fall of the Wall on the transwoman in the chapter ‘Transfer (Bye-Bye, My Ladyboy)’, especially when the GDR had far better trans healthcare than its Western counterpart, but instead there’s just a clichéd narrative about her transphobic father and her idolisation of Audrey Hepburn that makes the reader wonder why Meyer even bothered to include it at all.

As with David Lynch’s derivative films (watch Cecelia Condit and Maya Deren), I was often left wondering whether Meyer had lost control of his own narrative in favour of a poor, if recognisable, facsimile of other, better experimental authors, such as Joyce, Döblin, even Céline, a morally reprehensible author whose mordant writing is still preferable to this purportedly ‘neutral’, washed out presentation of an intrinsically political industry. In the end, when asking what Meyer’s use of experimental techniques actually achieves, one can definitively say it does not create a compelling exploration of prostitution around the fall of the Berlin Wall.