The BURIED Book Club discussion

Wollschläger translated Ulysses and (avec Schmidt) Poe into German. He's also got this BURIED novel, Herzgewächse oder Der Fall Adams. Fragmentarische Biographik in unzufälligen Makulaturblättern. Erstes Buch. In otter words, TRANSlate bitte!

Thanks to Michael for the good word.

There was a time when there were good bookshops even in small towns like Eutin (and no Amazon or even WWW). I still attended secondary school when HERZGEWÄCHSE appeared in one of the shelves at Buchhandlung Hoffmann. I saved allowances for four months, then Herzgewächse became mine. Nothing compares to the first time you hold such a book in your hand. Until then it was Hesse, Kafka, Sarte and Camus; Joyce´s DUBLINERS, but no FW. And even Arno Schmidt was some years away for me. So HERZGEWÄCHSE was probably my first book which would become a buried one later. Alas, if you are 20 years old, this won´t cross your mind.

Wollschläger was working for the Karl May Verlag, Bamberg, and that´s why he got in contact with Arno Schmidt. Soon the younger became the "Kronprinz" of Schmidt, who advised him in many ways. Wollschläger wrote polemics, books against the church, essays and many translations. HERZGEWÄCHSE remained his only novel, and the second part was never finished.

Yesterday I got a Wollschläger/Schmidt translation of several Poe short stories from my library. I vaguely knew the name Wollschläger from reading around Schmidt, but didn't know that he was a writer himself. They have Herzgewächse at my library too, so I'll have a look at it soon. Thanks for the tip!

Wow, HERZGEWÄCHSE in einer öffentlichen Bibliothek, das gibt es nur in einer Großstadt! Ein sehr schönes, aber nicht einfaches Buch, hoffentlich hast du viel Freude daran.
Wollschläger ist ein herausragender Stilist, da ist es manchmal gar nicht so wichtig, worüber er schreibt / spricht. Am beeindruckendsten fand ich, dass er im Gespräch sich nicht weniger brilliant ausdrückte als auf dem Papier. Außerdem war er ein begnadeter Musiker.
Als Lesetipp, falls du erst einmal behutsam einsteigen möchtest:
VON STERNEN UND SCHNUPPEN, ein sehr schöner Essay-Band.

Ja, ist die Hamburger Zentralbibliothek, die wirklich hervorragend sortiert ist. Den Essayband gibt es aber leider nicht.

Speaking of Wollschläger: I wanted to read James Joyce's Ulysses soon. So if anyone (Michael?) knows it, I would like your advice on whether to read the English original or Wollschlägers translation.

That depends on how good your English is. Each of the 18 chapters has it's own idiom, Ulysses is a travel through the english language in time and space. Some chapters are rather easy to read while others are extremely difficult.
Since Wollschlägers translation is the best non english Ulysses you can get and since you will read it probably more than one time I would suggest to start with the german edition. If you like this monster of a book you certainly will return to it. If you have already developed an idea of what the Ulysses might be about you then will enjoy the original language.

Fantastic, thanks! This is good advice. I would have dared to read it with my English skills, but someone has to read all the translations so that they stay in pay.

Wollschläger's heirs will be forever grateful ;)

Gott--in the city of C------, there may yet be Macphers'nic folk in the Transladers Fo'c'sle. The three of you learned gents up for it yourselfs? I'd like it to have in an English unmodernized (cowcombres, please. Don't touch my Milton, damn Eds.).