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| Literature
Life in Austria
Since the beginning of the 90´s there is a new literature trend
called "post-modern" in Austria - certainly not in Austria alone,
it is a European phenomenon - but there are some specific shapes,
I think.
The left-oriented socially critical literature of the 70´s and the
80´s lost most of its political power and relevance for society.
The "Forum Stadtpark" in Graz, which was founded in the early 70´s
was the centre of this movement. The most important writers like
Peter Handke, Peter Turrini, Wolfgang Bauer and so on, were connected
to "Forum Stadtpark". Their aim was to influence the society. To
create a new consciousness through their literary work. Their magazine
"Manuskripte", which is published by Alfred Kolleritsch was the
most important literary magazine for German literature. These authors
mostly wrote about the Holocaust and its consequences. They wrote
about social discrimination with a strong autobiographic component.
These are still important topics of Austrian literature but now
- as you will see - we have found another way to handle these themes
in literature.
It depends on the political and social modifications taking place
in the late 80´s. The Cold War came to an end and so the post-world-war-structures
of political thinking didn?t work anymore. After the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the damage of real-life socialism in the former
states of the Warszaw-Pact-Countries and the beginning of the war
in former Yugoslavia it became quite clear that there were no left
or right political systems which have the power to bring peace to
the peoples. Only capitalism was left - and it still is.
To find new answers to a new order of the world you have to go right
back to the beginning - some of the new Austrian writers thought.
The beginning was mythology. In 1988 Christoph Ransmayr?s second
novel The Last World was published and went straight up to the top
of the bookselling charts in Germany and Austria. Since then it
was translated into more than 20 languages and was a best-seller
in the USA. The Last World is the story of Cotta, a Roman citizen
who went to Tomi at the Black Sea to search for Ovid and his Metamorphoses.
Ovid was banned from Rome and sent to the end of the world, to Tomi,
a village of iron. Before he left the capital of the Roman empire
he destroyed the last copy of the Metamorphoses (which is certainly
not true, but Ransmayr takes a little literary freedom at this point).
Cotta tries to get the lost poem, but all he finds are strange people
who seem to come right out of Ovid?s stories. It is a novel about
the borders of elevated and barbarous cultures and about time and
story-telling. It is not only for poetic reasons that there is a
bus station in Tomi, that there is an open-air cinema show in Tomi.
You don?t know the time in which the story takes place. It is a
hybrid time, which means that time is just an illusion - all things
take place now.
Michael Köhlmaier also goes back to Greek mythology and he also
deconstructs the idea of linear time. He retells the Odyssey. He
says that the war in Troy reaches out trough the centuries to our
time. The hero of his novel is not Odysseus but his son Telemachus.
Athena tries make a warrior out of the young man. Telemachus resists.
He ignores every attempt of the goddess to convince him that it
is necessary to use brute force to succeed. On his journey he meets
a lot of friends and companions of his father?s and he hears the
stories about Menelaus and Agamemnon and all the other warriors.
He sees that they have all failed. Only Nestor, who is an opportunist,
comes back to his country and nobody does him any harm and you can
say he was the winner of the game.
The gods stand for ideologies and they try to bring Telemachus to
their side, to play the game of war and struggle. But he recognises
that the way of gods never leads to heaven - or what Telemachus
think heaven should be - but to nowhere. Nestor tells him such strange
stories about his father. In these narrations Odysseus is not the
great hero but only a man full of hatred and fear. Telemachus takes
a trip to Lakedaimon (which looks like Los Angeles indeed) to see
Menelaus. All he found is an old junkie hunted by the demons of
war. But he also found love on this journey. Polykaste the daughter
of Nestor shows him the happiness of the lucky life in lovely sunlight
- and that is all he ever wants.
The message is clear - Make love not war. Sounds a little bit simple,
but nevertheless it is the truth. In other words: The meta-narration,
the -ism, the ideologies are broken up and we have to find a new
way to see things. Mythologies also don?t work anymore, so you have
to crack them up and build a new story. This is a very political
book in its own way.
Similar to Robert Menasse, another Austrian writer, Köhlmaier goes
deep down to the basics of our life. Menasse takes Hegel?s Sinnliche
Gewißheit (Certainty By Senses) as the starting point of his construction
of society. And he comes to the end, that only this certainty by
senses is sure. First and foremost, Kohlmaier?s novels are very
cool and funny. It is a pleasure to read his books. And the same
is true for Manfred Maurer?s novel Furor, which talks about the
Celtic tradition of Austria.
And at last, let us mention Peter Hennisch with his novel Morrisons
Versteck. It´s just a little piece of new-mythology cause the story
is about Jim Morrison. Hennisch says that Morrison is a vampire
and he lives in a castle in southern France. It is a book about
the power of shamanism, of the new coming of the god Dionysos and
of the fascination of rock ´n roll. We learn that mythological thinking,
or wild thinking, as Claude Lévy-Strauss would say, is still right
here in the middle of our society and we have to face it. To understand
actual problems we don?t have to discuss socialism, communism, capitalism
or fascism. It is necessary to learn about mythological structures
which influence our daily life. If you try to understand the fascination
of political leaders you have to read Frazer?s The golden bough.
But there is also another literary tradition still alive in Austria.
The criticism of language has its origins in the work of the Vienna
Circle in the early 20th century. Ludwig Wittgenstein shows that
language is not an adequate instrument to describe reality. That
the language always stands between man and world. So you cannot
describe the world as it really is and you cannot tell the hole
story - as Robert Musil said. There is a tradition of deconstructing
traditional story-telling. These poets have their roots on one hand
in philosophical schools like the Vienna Circle and on the other
hand in literary traditions like DADA and the Vienna Group (Oswald
Wiener [Improve Middle-Europe], Friedrich Achleitner, Gerhard Rühm,
Konrad Bayer [The sixth sense] and H.C. Artmann). It is a struggle
with language which is sometimes funny, sometimes hard to understand,
and the greater part of this literary production could not be translated.
With the so-called post-modern poets there came a new consciousness.
For Michael Köhlmaier, Christoph Ransmayr and so on the needs of
the reader and the needs of narrations seem much more important
than any political message. The political message is still there
but it is not the first reason to tell a story. The first reason
is to tell a story and to entertain the readers. These books are
selling very well, and those who write them can earn their living.
For a young writer it is hard to break even. You have to find a
big German publisher - not an Austrian. And the publishers are all
in fear of failures. Such a failure costs up to 200 000 DM and even
for a big publishing house this is a lot of money. The other way
to get money by writing is to write for TV. There are a lot of private
TV-stations and they are always in need of good stories. Good in
this case means thrilling and full of suspense and sex. And now
we have to face the big paradox. Few writers do this job, because
the say they don?t want to write pulp. I think there is another,
much bigger problem than aesthetic reasons. It is hard to tell a
chilling story - believe me. And most of our writers know nothing
about the art of story-telling. To prove it you only have to go
into a bookstore and pick up a novel - don?t look at the cover,
the title or the name of the author, read the first page, if you
stand it read the second. In ninety percent of the books your hair
would immediately turn white. Readers know this. So they buy books
by Salman Rusdhie, Toni Morrison, Isabell Aliende and by some Austrian
writers like Köhlmaier who know how to tell a story.
The last point: How to get famous in Austria? Provocation is a very
good way to get the attention of the public. Like Werner Schwab
who acts like a punk and destroys traditional theatre with his plays.
Theatre is a good place for scandals. Nowhere else newspapers write
so much about theatre scandals as in Austria. When Thomas Bernhard?s
Heldenplatz took place at the "Burgtheater" it was the headliner
at the news. At the same time there was a big conference about the
Middle-East in Vienna. It was in the second place in the national
news.
Now at the beginning of the new century you not only have to be
a good writer but also a PR-manager of your own. Like everybody
else you have to create an image and you have to find your unique
sales point. You have to make good contacts with publishers and
journalists. It is important to be in the society columns of the
magazine, much more important than to be in literary magazines.
Maybe internet-publishing will become important in the future, but
at the time it is not. You can contact publishers, your homepage
might make you a little bit better known in the subculture of Austrian
literature, but I don?t think you will win the first prize by publishing
your work on the internet - unless your name is Stephen King. The
internet is a good thing for bookstores. But if you are not famous
nobody will search for your book at an Internet bookstore, as they
wouldn?t do it even at a normal one.
E-books and internet might be a needful thing for scientific writers.
But for literature it is only a funny gimmick, because you can?t
take a computer into the bathtub.
At last: The most important phenomena of Austrian literature in
the last ten years are the impact of post-modern writers who reconstructed
mythological topics and connected them with actual political and
social developments in Europe.
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