Imperium

Wed Jan 7 12:38:17 CST 2015

I understand the skepticism. He does seem mercurial in his interviews. I have seen the one for “Ich werde hier sein…”. Still, it’s what this relatively reliable source says, even though the citation is untrackable. I agree that it is strange to think that, if it truly is the case that he literally writes the book in English first, he wouldn’t just release those versions instead of hiring translators. It is still conceivable that he gets a very rough version of the book down in English. Then he might really be writing in German when he puts Stift to Blatt, if you’ll excuse my danglish. I’m not really sure what to think about this datum, now, honestly. 

	-PG

> On 07 Jan 2015, at 13:28, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> Thank you so much! 
> 
> The sentence before seems important here too. "Insbesondere die angloamerikanische literarische Sozialisation prägte ihn: Seine Bücher seien auf Englisch verfasst, aber auf Deutsch niedergeschrieben." So, because of Kracht's literary socialization the books are 'composed in English but written down in German.' Don't know about you, but I still have difficulties with imagining this. Sure, Kracht spend time in anglophone countries and studied at Sarah Lawrence.  He also is influenced by English and American writers like Pynchon, Conrad, Brett Easton Ellis, Lovecraft, or PKD. But is it really plausible that he literally writes a first draft in English and then switches to German when he's polishing the text for publication? Hardly. Perhaps single passages that are written along the lines of the mentioned influential authors. If whole drafts in English were existing, Kracht's first three novel, all published in many languages, would be on the market in English editions too, I assume. The publishing house would not even have to pay a translator. I couldn't find the source cited - Leeds 2012 - in Matthias N. Lorenz' "Christian Kracht - Werkverzeichnis und kommentierte Bibiliographie der Forschung" (2014), but could imagine that this is from an interview with Kracht. He tends to put people on in interviews and is always covering his real thoughts. In a TV interview Kracht gave when "Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten" came out, he said about his plans for the future, that he wanted to move to Buenos Aires and win back the Falkland Islands for Argentina. If necessary by military means. Well, he moved for some time to Buenos Aires, but he didn't go politically for the Las islas Malvinas ...  Kracht has been called a dandy and an aesthetic fundamentalist. And whether these characterizations are right or not, he certainly does a lot to justify them.   
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9qy1HlmPJw <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9qy1HlmPJw>
> 
> 5.59-7.03
> 
> And here's the trailer for "Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten", directed by Kracht's wife Frauke Finsterwalder ("Finsterworld"), where you can hear the author reading from his novel:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhqsTkg6yyM <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhqsTkg6yyM>
> 
>  
> On 07.01.2015 18:03, Paul Gaver wrote:
>> Yeah, I read it in KLG (Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur) but I think the website requires a membership? I have it through school. Here’s a screenshot.
>> 
>> “Seine Bücher seien auf Englisch verfasst, aber auf Deutsche niedergeschrieben” is about halfway down the page. And this was from 2012 it looks like, which is when Imperium was published. In either case, I agree with your assessment of Kracht’s German; it is often sublime. 
>> 
>> <Mail Attachment.png>
>>> On 07 Jan 2015, at 09:16, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> > I think it was originally composed in English
>>> 
>>> Though I spend a lot of time reading Kracht and related research, I've never heard that. Got a source? Care to explain? Since Kracht's language is so elaborated - G. Seibt called it "the most beautiful German one can read today" -, it is of course possible that he cooks this up while playing around with other languages. As far as I know you're the first person to utter such a speculation.
>>> 
>>> Here's Kracht playing Ukulele at the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island:
>>> 
>>> https://www.facebook.com/57740086757/photos/a.90807176757.92559.57740086757/10153333895421758/?type=1&theater <https://www.facebook.com/57740086757/photos/a.90807176757.92559.57740086757/10153333895421758/?type=1&theater>   
>>>   
>>> 
>>> On 07.01.2015 13:59, Paul Gaver wrote:
>>>> I can also highly, highly recommend Imperium. One of the better fictionalized parodies of the romantic fever dream, next to, well, you know...
>>>> 
>>>> I think it was originally composed in English and then translated too, so the English might be nice. 
>>>> 
>>>> -PG
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> 
>>>> On Jan 7, 2015, at 6:18 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Check this shit out! I've read it four times so far. 
>>>>> Definitely the straight dope --
>>>>> 
>>>>> Kracht is influenced by Pynchon. In "Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten", his third novel from 2008 which is alternate history and imagines Lenin wasn't allowed to return to Russia and thus made the revolution in Switzerland which then became the globally acting Swiss Soviet Republic, 
>>>>> the protagonist is an high rank soldier with African roots who in the end leads his people back to the African countryside. The inspiration by Enzian from "Gravity's Rainbow" is here obvious. "Imperium" now not only covers the time span of "Against the Day" but also samples genres the way Pynchon did there, as the Kracht scholar Johannes Birgfeld (Südseephantasien. Christian Krachts "Imperium" und sein Beitrag zur Poetik des deutschsprachigen Romans der Gegenwart, in: Wirkendes Wort 62, 2012, Heft 3, pp. 457-477) pointed out. Presenting a personal observation, I can add that Kracht learned from Pynchon how to write good slapstick scenes.   
>>>>> 
>>>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>>> Imperium
>>>>> 
>>>>> A Fiction of the South Seas
>>>>> 
>>>>> Christian Kracht; Translated from the German by Daniel Bowles
>>>>> 
>>>>> Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
>>>>> <mime-attachment.jpg> <http://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9780374175245.jpg> <http://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9780374175245.jpg>
>>>>> An outrageous, fantastical, uncategorizable novel of obsession, adventure, and coconuts 
>>>>> 
>>>>> In 1902, a radical vegetarian and nudist from Nuremberg named August Engelhardt set sail for what was then called the Bismarck Archipelago. His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to found a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was forty-three years old.
>>>>>      Christian Kracht’s Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt’s life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. Engelhardt is at once a sympathetic outsider—mocked, misunderstood, physically assaulted—and a rigid ideologue, and his misguided notions of purity and his spiral into madness presage the horrors of the mid-twentieth century.
>>>>>      Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales like Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Kracht’s novel, an international bestseller, is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant—sometimes all on the same page. His allusions are misleading, his historical time lines are twisted, his narrator is unreliable—and the result is a novel that is also a mirror cabinet and a maze pitted with trapdoors. Both a provocative satire and a serious meditation on the fragility and audacity of human activity, Imperium is impossible to categorize, and utterly unlike anything you’ve read before.
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://us.macmillan.com/imperium/christiankracht <http://us.macmillan.com/imperium/christiankracht>
>>>>> 
>>>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>>> "Unter den langen weißen Wolken, unter der prächtigen Sonne, unter dem hellen Firnament, da war erst ein langgedehntes Tuten zu hören, dann rief die Schiffsglocke eindringlich zum Mittag, und ein malayischer Boy schritt sanftfüßig und leise das Oberdeck ab, um jene Passagiere mit behutsamem Schulterdruck aufzuwecken, die gleich nach dem üppigen Frühstück wieder eingeschlafen waren. Der norddeutsche Lloyd, Gott verfluche ihn, sorgte jeden Morgen, reiste man denn in der ersten Klasse ..."
>>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 

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