The Old Child and Other Stories

by Jenny Erpenbeck, Susan Bernofsky (Translator)

Written in spare, highly concentrated language, "a sustained feat of verbal economy" (Die Zeit), the one novella and four stories in The Old Child go beyond the limits of the expected, the real. Dark, serious, often mystical, these marvelous fictions about women’s lives provide glimpses into the minds of outcasts and eccentrics, at the same time bearing out Dostoevsky’s comment that hope can be found so long as a man can see even a tiny view of the sky.

Contents:
- The Story of the Old Child
- The Sun-Flecked Shadows of My Skull
- Sand
- Hale and Hallowed
- Siberia
- Light a Fire or Leave

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

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Jenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967 in East Berlin) is a German director and writer.

Jenny Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor.

From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994 (with a production of Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's Erwartung, Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and a world premiere of her own piece Cats Have Seven Lives. As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Aachen, Acis and Galatea at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Zaide in Nuremberg/Erlangen.

In the 1990s Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: in 1999, History of the Old Child, her debut; in 2001, her collection of stories Trinkets; in 2004, the novella Dictionary; and in February 2008, the novel Visitation. In March 2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her son, born 2002.

Reviews

[Betsy Robinson]

My book club picked the title story for our September meeting, so I bought this slim volume of stories. The writing is good, but the stories, for me, were so misery-inducing that had I not committed to read them, had I not bought the book, I'd probably have aborted my effort a few pages in. They largely dwell, itemize, and wallow in the thoughts and feelings of the disintegration of aging. I'm almost 70, still thriving, fit, and of sound mind, and this stuff felt like ingesting a sometimes fog and sometimes roiling swirl of dead skin cells. I just don't want it in my psyche.

These stories were first copyrighted in 1999 and 2001 when the author was 32. I note that because there is something interesting to me in the contrast between the material and her lovely youth at the time of publication. She is now 53, a well-known writer and an opera director (the stories do have an operatic quality), and I find myself wondering if her point of view on aging has changed with time.

Erpenbeck's talent is most definitely deserving of attention and her East German background and history are rich and valuable. But I'm not her reader.

[Jaclyn Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://wineandabook.com/2012/05/24/re...

"The girl used to be constantly looking around to the right and left to be sure of doing whatever the right thing was, but now that she can see more clearly and perceives the great variety of human beings moving all around her in a thousand different ways, she can no longer choose what is right, she no longer knows what the right thing is. Everything she does seems to her wrong even while she is doing it, so utterly wrong that she'd like to take it back again--never would she have wished to offer offense to anyone, but now she is forced to realize that there is virtually no action at all that is free of the possibility of causing offense. At the same time, this state of being prevented from acting cannot merely be described as a lack of independence, as is so often done by the girl's teachers with pedagogical intent, it is more like a paralysis. Even transforming a simple thought into action, such as, for example, wanting to lift one's hand, is becoming more and more impossible for the girl the longer she remains in the institution. If you lift your hand, you must, a moment before, have wanted to lift your hand, if you laugh, you must have wanted to laugh, if you say no or yes, you must have wanted to say no or yes, in other words every time you do something, you must have wanted, a moment earlier, to do what you are doing. The moment you do anything at all, your volition can be seen standing naked behind it, and this the girl finds so utterly embarrassing that she chooses to want nothing. She wants what all the others want, but there is no such thing. And the moment she realizes this, she realizes also that her strength is waning." (p. 65, The Old Child).

If Melissa Pritchard, Anne Carson and Herta Müller could somehow procreate, their child's writing might sound like Jenny Erpenbeck, which in my book is a wholehearted compliment.

In this collection of short stories and a novella, Erpenbeck's characters are hauntingly memorable and scenes vividly dreamlike.

The title novella, The Old Child, tells the story of a young girl, found standing in the street, devoid of memory, with an empty bucket in her hand. The girl is then taken by the authorities to an children's institution where all possessions are communal, and she finds comfort in the anonymity of routine and procedure. Throughout the novella, the reader watches the girl gain, then lose, discover then reject parts of her authentic self as she struggles to find her place among the other children. The telling of the story was so nuanced and the character of the girl so complex...I have a feeling I'll discover something new with each reading, which is the mark of true craftsmanship on the part of Erpenbeck. I keep coming across the phrase "verbal economy" associated with Erpenbeck's writing, and it's an apt one; what she is able to accomplish in 120 pages, lesser authors spend 300+ pages attempting.

Other highlights:

Hale and Hallowed: The story of a woman who pays an unexpected nighttime visit to the woman she shared a hospital room with at the birth of her son, and the pace/cadence of this story was phenomenal.

Light a Fire or Leave: Erpenbeck is supremely skilled at dropping right in to the core of the matter in a way that just reverberates for the rest of the story. The first few lines: "That I was going to die, this I always knew. Already at ten, at twelve, I could see myself lying there: in the deepest forest, in a puddle, unburied, my body a home to vermin. What I didn't know is that I could grow old. My life seemed to me only a rough draft, a sketch to which I could keep applying the eraser, it seemed to me I was simultaneously at home in all my ages, I saw the phases of my life sitting in a circle around Death, the way the twelve months in the fairy tale sit around the fire. I never believed age could really drive two people apart, I thought everyone knew everything at all times, and the only difference was in the concrete shapes this knowledge assumed. I always felt I had plenty of time." (page 117).

Rubric rating: 9. Reading this collection was like taking a master class. Erpenbeck is ridiculously talented and I'm absolutely going to read everything of hers I can get my hands on, such as Visitation and The Book of Words.

[Muaayad Shamali · Rating 4 out of 5]

شخصية غرائبية ، مسالمة حد الغباء ، تمضي في الحياة بلا هدف واضح سوى العيش بسلام فج
لا تنتظر شيء ولا شيء ينتظرها
تغرقك بتساؤلات هل حقا يخلق الرب مثلها بيننا .
الفتاة .. حتى هي بلا اسم ، بلا ماض ، وبلا بحث عن مستقبل
الرضا والحركة الشبه سلحفائية
والاستمتاع المتوفر بالاشياء من حولها هي كل ما تبحث وترضى عنه
جيني ابينبيك الالمانية العتيدة ، ترسم وتشرح نفسا انسانية بكر ، وتغوص بك بمشاعر تمسك من الاعماق ، لدرجة التعاطف المحزن
وهنا لا احداث تنتظر ، فقط هي الفتاة تقص ايامها بسردية عذبة
وبنهايات غير متوقعه صادمة
،،،
مؤيد.الشمالي

الكتاب: حكاية الطفلة العجوز
تأليف: جني إربنبك
ترجمة: محمد جديد
عدد الصفحات: 108
إصدار: قدمس للنشر والتوزيع 2008

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s easier to appreciate than to admire, but partly that’s because Erpenbeck deliberately holds the audience at arm’s length throughout. The stories are written passively which means you have to focus a lot more on trying to engage with them, but also means they can frustrate with their chilly tone after a while. It’s beautifully written, and the way she jumbles themes and obsessions throughout all the stories works brilliant because of how subtle it is, but you don’t particularly feel warmly to a book that has precisely zero warmth

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost skipped reading this, but I'm very glad I didn't. It's all really striking and compelling. The translation is great; I haven't read the German so I can't speak to accuracy, but the English retains a very strong voice and style that is somewhat rare for works in translation, at least in my experience. This is actually a quick read even though it is 'literary' in style. The stories circle around aging, childhood, inheritance, inflected by trauma but always in the background.

Most of these are very short stories, though "The Old Child" is a novella. "The Old Child" is like a modern gothic/grotesque version of Bartleby, with the child presenting a more embodied and...consequential?... version of the classic "I would prefer not to." I loved it, though I can't say I fully "got" the ending.

"She feels at the moment when she is being given a shove that nearly makes her fall down...a great sense of relief at occupying this lowermost place that no one will fight her for, a place that does not require extreme expenditures of effort to attain and hold, all that is needed is a meticulous forgetfulness and the meticulous stupidity that results from it.... While the others no doubt know what is owed to them by Life: Life owes them freedom, and freedom lies outside the walls of this institution, the girl knows that in truth freedom is this: Not having to shove anyone yourself, and this freedom exists inside the walls of the institution and nowhere else. And if she simply allows herself to be shoved, she will keep her place in the institution forever and will never have to get anywhere, not even ninth grade."

I also liked this from another story:
"All his mother's qualities that pleased him so much were swallowed up by his father, his father who appeared to be nothing but a big, deep, silent hole, a garbage depot. And this he found infuriating, the son: to watch how this man, through his silence, turned all his wife's gifts into garbage."

It's all good tbh. The language is so compressed and portrays so much with so few words.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still struggling to figure out what I think about this - the stories are obscure, foreboding and full of mysterious symbols whose meanings I feel like I never quite grasp. This is a much more challenging book than Visitation, and one that I got less out of. The use of language is precise and occasionally surprising and their are sharp moments when a turn of phrase or a small twist hits home, but it really felt a bit like a lot of what Erpenbeck was doing here was passing over my head.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like wearing swim goggles that fit just right

[Stephen Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of Jenny Erpenbeck's The Old Child and Other Stories (in translation)

My second encounter with Jenny Erpenbeck in translation (after Visitation, which held me in sway, about which I realise now I have not written a review, but I hope to re-read or read it in the German). I'd love to meet her in person really!

As I slowly read through the first story (The Old Child), it constantly occurred to me that the visual vocabulary I have been deploying in my reading consisted in the flow of images and tropes from the few Fassbinder films I've so far experienced (especially perhaps The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, or I Only Want You to Love Me, or Katzelmacher).

Erpenbeck's language in all her stories is insistent on the internal voice of her characters (and they're almost always a her), the diegetics always revealing something that could no longer be touched even by the development of narrative, and the relations complex and simultaneous. The reader will get in the flow, or in the drift, without necessarily discovering that there is a shift taking place in her reading, except that nothing else in the stories have really shifted except the reading by which the stories unfold for the reader. This imperceptible shift applies to the set as a sequence of stories.

The experience could be as if in the dwelling upon a painting in a gallery, the looker begins to grasp the nuances to the perception the looking brings. In my own reading, it was not so much the obsessive characters and their transformations which moor me to their jagged rocks. Rather it was Erpenbeck's anchor of perception, an acuity of old time that is young again, for having in its kaleidoscopic vision to observe the broken pieces create a pattern sometimes at once spectacular yet also beyond reach of kintsukuroi.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fable, and the story is rather like 'Benjamin Button,' but in reverse, and way more reflective. The plot is scant. It was well written, but I found it occasionally repetitive, and I thought the writer would have done as well by lopping off 25-30 pages. I enjoyed Erpenbeck's Visitation more.

[Kassandra McKay · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars. This small but beautifully dense book carries a lot of weight. Such strange imagery, such as a granddaughter whose grandmother places stones into her mouth: “so my tongue will learn to curl its way around all obstacles” whilst learning the art of speaking.

These stories are a sort of counterirritation—it feels like chewing on ice when you have a toothache, that strange satisfaction of pain against pain. Uncanny. Emotionally restrained. Sharp. Child interiors and doll-logic. A collapse of time. An obsession with words and dream-like scenarios.

“The girl’s sentences lie in her stomach like a heap of scrap metal, they cannot take root inside her, and sometimes she even looks down to see whether one of these sentences isn’t poking out of her side.”

This is for Elspeth Barker, Ingeborg Bachmann, Fleur Jaeggy, Clarice Lispector, and Shirley Jackson fans.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The long title story is the real gem here. Erpenbeck's elliptical style works best when allowed to slowly accumulate micro-effects. Susan Bernofsky also deserves praise for her poetic, highly readable translation.

[Geret · Rating 3 out of 5]

“... kool on koht, kus peab eksima, et sellel üldse mingi mõte oleks, kool on parandamise koht ja halb hinne ei too endaga midagi tõelist kaasa, hinded on ebatõelised, tasu nähtamatu peasisemuse eest.”

[Asa_Campion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talented writing, evocative prose, imaginative stories. Nod to the translator's deft work.

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing, but in the best kind of way.

[Gail Kennon · Rating 2 out of 5]

certainly well written but i really don't understand what she's saying and stories left me untouched.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this novella and short stories as I am a huge fan of Erpenbeck's writing, but it was too obtuse and hard to get into. Her later works are so much stronger!

[Kevin S · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 (the title story, which is the longest of the pieces, is especially memorable)

[pievava]

familiar (con)fusion
was waiting for something till the last page - the train didn't arrive but i travelled other ways
lol i have something for books with fucking weird covers apparently

[McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Karen Carlson]

I liked Go Went Gone so I'd like to read this.

[Lucile Barker · Rating 2 out of 5]

3. The Old Child and other stories by Jenny Erpenbeck
I found this collection very depressing and in some ways it was flat, but this may have been the fault of the translator. The title story, more of a novella, features a pudgy, seemingly stupid child, who is found on the street and says that she does not know who she is. I found the nameless child irritating, passive and very unsympathetic. I also hated the use of “it” to refer to her. The answer to the mystery of her origins is more aggravating than enlightening. Some readers have seen this as an allegory about the former East Germany but I think that is a stretch. In another story, a girl is trained to be an elocutionist by her grandmother who is a popular entertainer. She takes over from her grandmother and watches her spiral down into dementia. In Siberia, a mother returns from exile and throws her husband’s new mistress into the street. None of these stories really resonated for me.

[Chiara Coletti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so impressed with Jenny Erpenbeck's very strange novella Visitation, that I immediately got hold of The Old Child and Other Stories. It is equally strange, but like Visitation, it has an underlying truth. The old are young, the young are old, and we always channel qualities of those souls who are much older and much younger than ourselves. Our grandparents and our children live within us. Although these stories are challenging, not easy to understand, they all bring with them a sense of deep underlying truth.

[Camilla Monk · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the back cover: “A girl is found at night on a street, carrying an empty bucket. It is neither pretty nor ugly; it bears no name, comes from nowhere, and nobody knows who its parents are, not even the child itself.”

Quotable: “On closer inspection, you get the impression that her body, for no reason, simply piled up everything that was shoved into it, as if, from a misplaced sense of greed, it refused to let go of anything, as if this body was one gigantic, random pile, a storage space, one whose instruction manual was, however, missing, you got the impression it was an abandoned mass, living, yes, because bodies are necessarily alive, but still somehow dead.”

Too big, too quiet, too indifferent: a found girl is placed into an orphanage where she watches the life of others unfold, even as her own remains an inscrutable fog. There's a secret, tucked into the opaque, passive layers of her resistance to the world surrounding her, and her story will stay with you long after you've turned the final page.

[Matthew Wilson]

Interesting, but I prefer her more recent books.

[J. Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvelous prose that carries both sadness and forebodding, this little book is a quick read and the title story is from a narrative perspective. Can't wait for more.

[Sheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Even if I'd sensed what might be coming, I never could have predicted how powerful it would be. Jenny Erpenbeck is such a good writer. Such a very, very, very good writer.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

if robert walser and thomas bernhard had a daughter tutored by isaac babel, this extremely dense, rhythmic, allegorical voice could very well have been the result.

[Patrick Cottrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

felt a gray harshness as i read. rigorous. some of it made me laugh out loud.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 3 out of 5]

...would be a great short story...not a novel...

[Kieran · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in primary I got in trouble for bullying a classmate. My mother cried in front ov me when she found out.