ND Das Literarische Quartett

[Otto]

"Schlecht ist schlecht, und es muss gesagt werden."
http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/0,1518,172705,00.html

Nika, fine post . . .

Of course you're right in much of what you say about MRR, in an earlier post
to this list I have called him "our own national Oprah"-- well, sort of. I
think your ranting is ok, much of what MRR did has been exactly that too.

MRR really did not care much for real important writers and books, in fact
he loves the good ole stuff (and everything on the Holocaust), so no wonder
that one of the books they spoke about last night has been Johann Wolfgang
Goethe, "Die Leiden des jungen Werther", according to the schedule. Nothing
against the book (apart from the fact that I have given up trying to read it
after several attempts), but the actuality is at least questionable.
Therefor I'm a little sad having not been able to watch it last night, but
they will repeat it on Dec 23 morning at 3Sat-TV. Maybe MRR is able to give
me the decisive clue to get into Goethe. On all this "old" stuff he is quite
good.

You are right about "pynchon, stephenson, gibson, gaddis" & postmodernism at
The Literary Quartet: MRR hates it dislikes Grass, Jelinek, Handke etc,
Karasek is too dumb and the only lady in the original club, Sigrid Löffler,
had left some time ago because MRR had called her, well . . . I don't know
how to put this into English, in German we say "frigide" (or better, we
don't say things like that anymore, but MRR did) in a discussion on Haruki
Murakami. She'd been the only one I remember who "defended" pomo-writers
like Harry Mulisch or Paul Auster.

http://www2.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/2000/08/18/ak-ku-li-16354.html
Any Japanese-speaking p-listers around? "Nomiso ga tokero kurai" has been
the sentence Mrs Löffler had been critising, for which MRR called her being
generally against sex (in a way).

"Ich guck' mir das schon ewig nicht mehr an"
http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/0,1518,172361,00.html

another one:
http://www.die-leselust.de/lq/literarisches_quartett.htm

I fully agree to you on Germany's "cultural administrators" and
"bildungsbürgertum" in that show.

Kurt, they could have spoken about "Gravity's Rainbow" too as the
Werther-example proves, and I remember that they've spoken about Fontane,
Dostoyevski, Gorki and others who were long gone. But the fact that they've
missed "Mason & Dixon" indeed has been an unforgivable fault.

Otto

  Nika wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Otto wrote:
> The last episode of Germany's most famous literary show will start in
> about half an hour.
>
> http://www.zdf.de/wissen/quartett/55806/index.html

never mind if you didn't catch it. you didn't miss much.

the only sad thing about the end of this show is that now people will
even be less aware of what literature could do, how it could matter. not
that this show spurned out anything more than merely populistic
approaches to literature, but at least it was something. to remind
people that there's more to life than television. i can't even express
how much i'm sick of those "cultural administrators" in this country
here, germany. don't know much about the situation in other countries,
but i don't really see many writers that really *matter* here, people
like pynchon, stephenson, gibson, gaddis... come on, all we get is to
suffer from the umpteenth reincarnations of the german
"bildungsbürgertum", most recently offered with
toppings of nice/young/female faces, who even proudly admit that they
haven't got anything to say. of course there are better writers, even in
this country, but they just don't get through. and in a way, the
"literarisches quartett" embodied all there is to hate about this
"phoney-ness" of those highbrow intellectuals who believe they know
everything, not realising how dead they actually are, and who'd openly
admit they never heard of postmodernism - and feel not
ashamed to say so. they are the ones that keep interesting people from
getting interested in literature ('cause no clever kid really would want
to end up like them ;), and this is what upsets me.
so, maybe there's hope for better things to come, still.

sorry for ranting (shouldn't watch Marcel Reich-Ranicki on beer ;),
best,

Nika

KWP:
Thomas Pynchon was never a subject of discussion in the "literarisches
quartett", right? F. e. "Vineland" or "Mason & Dixon" which were published
during the times the lq existed (since 1988). But it was the show of Marcel
Reich-Ranicki - Germany's most popular jew, imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto,
later member of the Polish secret service, later the most beloved and most
hated critic/reviewer in W-Germany, sometimes a faultfinder and hack
critic...

Kurt-Werner Pörtner