This is why I despise German literature

I finally overcame my physiological and mental (spiritual as well?) impediment of not being able to grab a piece of German literature - say, a novel -, open it with my bare hands and read it from beginning to end, or just a couple sentences in the middle or whatever. This was due to a confluence of coincidences that recommended Irmgard Keun's 'Das kunstseidene Mädchen' aka 'The Artificial Silk Girl". And when I eventually stumbled upon it in one of the Foukisens bookshelves, I read the first two pages and was very intrigued. And indeed, it was not a total waste of time. It was funny and sad enough to go on reading it all to the end. But surely not the literary epiphany I hoped for. At least it broke the spell.

Then I picked up another book that I thought might be interesting and which I bought a couple of years back when the movie came out and Kate Winslet got away with one of her two Golden Globes that year. And now read this:

"Was sind die Zeiten der Krankheit in Kindheit und Jugend doch für verwunschene Zeiten!" or this

"Schließlich hatte ich alles zusammen, Hannas Adresse in einem Gefängnis in der Nähe der Stadt, in der ihr der Prozeß gemacht und sie verurteilt worden war, ein Kassettengerät und die Kassetten, von Tschechow über Schnitzler zu Homer numeriert. Und schließlich schickte ich das Paket mit dem Kassettengerät und den Kassetten auch ab." or this

"Die Sehnsucht nach Hanna wurde so stark, daß sie weh tat." or this

"Das Gesicht war eigentümlich alterslos. So sehen Gesichter aus, die geliftet worden sind. Aber vielleicht war es auch unter dem frühen Leid erstarrt - ich versuchte vergebens, mich an ihr Gesicht während des Prozesses zu erinnern." or this

"Als ich selbst zu schreiben begann, las ich ihr auch das vor. Ich wartete, bis ich mein handschriftliches Manuskript diktiert, das maschinenschriftliche überarbeitet und das Gefühl hatte, jetzt sei es fertig. Beim Vorlesen merkte ich, ob das Gefühl stimmte. Wenn nicht, konnte ich alles noch mal überarbeiten und eine neue Aufnahme über die alte spielen. Aber ich machte das nicht gerne. Ich wollte mit dem Vorlesen abschließen. Hanna wurde die Instanz, für die ich noch mal alle meine Kräfte, alle meine Kreativität, alle meine kritische Phantasie bündelte. Danach konnte ich das Manuskript an den Verlag schicken.
Ich habe auf den Kassetten keine persönlichen Bemerkungen gemacht, nicht nach Hanna gefragt, nicht von mir berichtet. Ich las den Titel vor, den Namen des Autors und den Text. Wenn der Text zu Ende war, wartete ich einen Moment, klappte das Buch zu und drückte die Stop-Taste."

And I now push the stop-button as well, because if I wouldn't, I would have to retype the whole novel (short of about 5 (!) sentences that contain at least an interesting metaphor) as an example of really bad writing. If you haven't gathered yet, I am talking about Bernhard Schlink's 'Der Vorleser' aka 'The Reader'. And it doesn't help that he actually comes from my hometown. And it also doesn't help that this is 'literature' that is taught in German schools. By the way: the movie is also pretty shitty. An aside: I just saw this novel was one of Oprah's picks as well and consequently hit the New York Times bestseller list pretty hard. And although I want to personally apologize to all the people of the U.S. of A. for this wretched piece of German Export I can hardly be held responsible for Oprah.

What he does - Schlink, that is - is taking the Holocaust and employing it to his sentences - this is the genocide of language. Every single word or metaphor is flat and dead. Stale, as if exposed to poisonous gas for too long. It is at the far other end of writerly expression as Anthony Burgess once wrote:

'And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning.'

There is no atmopheric dust in Schlink. This is not literature at all. And I want to see it's worth in terms of dealing with the Holocaust but all I can think of is why is he writing so very poorly? This novel is a prime example of what can happen if you only tell and never show - and of course, if you also have no writing skills whatsoever. It has about the same literary quality as Charlotte Roche's novels. The only good thing about it is that you can learn a lot from so many bad choices of another writer. It should not be used to talk about the Holocaust, it should be used in creative writing classes. But then again, German schools don't offer creative writing classes. And this seems to be an essential part of the whole problem.

Just to give you an anchoring point: I started Foer's 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' today to prepare for and distance myself from this week's 9/11 10th anniversary mass-media-coverage-overkill. And this is a real page-turner and it makes me remember how much I loved every single sentence in Everything Is Illuminated and that I do not see any German writer ever achieving what Safran Foer did in that novel. Do they not dare writing like this about the Holocaust or are they just not apt to do it?

Here is the thing: This one sentence of 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' has more literary value than there is in the whole of Schlink's 'Der Vorleser'. It belongs to a man who gradually lost his speech, but not his words, which is why he starts to write down everything he otherwise would have said:

'and instead of singing in the shower I would write out the lyrics of my favorite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.'