thank you max for getting me out of my reading slump.
the way that he uses and bends the german language to his liking has me so in awe, i have to write this review in english out of reverence.
some things really stuck with me (especially "Die Kündigung"), as Max Gruber has always employed themes of identity and non-identity that i heavily relate(d) with - most evidently in 2021/2022, when both his album Exit Strategy and this book came out. i think he was the first one to put into words the feeling of "seeing yourself in the mirror without recognising what you see as yourself", in a way that i understood what was going on with me.
and it's funny, i feel like i have heard all these stories before, probably because Max really likes his themes and often returns to them in different forms, and i like them and the way he uses language to explore them just as much, so i devour every singular version.
it really bugs me how much bad german lyrics exist out there, as it is such a beautiful and endlessly versatile language. whoever says that german is ugly has not yet read or listened to the right thing.
this book also gave me hope for my own writing, because I always thought, how could it ever be enough to just write poems and one-pagers? but in "Doch" it was enough, it was exactly right. and i, too, write mostly autobiographically, i can't seem to come up with anything. if i do, it sounds like it's coming straight from the roots of my own life, and every character is actually myself. but well, now i've seen it working, why shouldn't it work for me?