Imperium

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Happy to hear that from you!

Kracht's novel is indeed "very Pynchonesque," and when I said earlier 
that "Imperium" covers the time span of "Against the Day" let me now add 
that it also has a "Gravity's Rainbow" spin. The real August Engelhardt 
died in 1919, but Kracht takes the story beyond WW II. Why? Because this 
is not only about Germany but also about America and the way the century 
which first looked as if it would become a German one then became an 
American one which also changes the way Germans themselves look at their 
history. This becomes obvious in the novel's last paragraph, which I'm 
not gonna tell about here because some of you believe in 'spoilers,' but 
of which I can say that it gives the whole narration a /cyclical/ 
structure. All the things happening earlier in the novel and, 
especially, the way they are told shine in the light of Engelhardt's 
final transformation, too.

When American soldiers find Engelhardt in a cave, they give him a white 
T-shirt, an encouraging slap on the back (--- "this is now the 
Imperium"), and kinda Eucharist initiation in US culture: He, who had 
not eaten the meat of animals or industrial sugar for decades, gets fed 
a hot dog and some coca-cola. Popular music --- "enigmatic, heavily 
rhythmic, but not at all unpleasantly sounding music" --- is played by 
the radio. This is, crystallized into an allegory, the story of the 
Americanization of (West)Germany. The US installed a "dispositive." 
According to Foucault, a dispositive produces knowledge in the bodyminds 
of those living under it. Soft power under our skin. And the author of 
"Imperium" is aware of that, aware of the fact that his meditation on 
Germany takes place in a world, where the media epistemologies are made 
on the other side of the big water.

The inspiration for the Eucharist part of the scene - in Kracht's case 
it's definitely more about Political Theology, though - comes, I guess, 
from Philip K. Dick, an author Kracht knows very well. Earlier this year 
I reread "VALIS" and recognized the idea in chapter 12. There it is 
described how the protagonist baptizes his son and then celebrates 
Eucharist with him. Not the traditional way but with hot chocolate and a 
hot dog. "First I had fixed a mug of hot chocolate. Then I had fixed a 
hot dog on a bun with the usual trimmings; Christopher, young as he was, 
loved hot dogs and warm chocolate./ Seated on the floor in Christopher's 
room with him, I ---or rather VALIS in me, as me--- had played a game. 
First, I jokingly held the cup of chocolate up, over my son's head; 
then, as if by accident, I had splashed warm chocolate on his head, into 
his hair: Giggling, Christopher had tried to wipe the liquid off; I had 
of course helped him. Leaning toward him, I had whispered,/ 'In the name 
of the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit.'/ No one heard me except 
Christopher. Now, as I wiped the warm chocolate from his hair, I 
inscribed the sign of the cross on his forehead. I had now baptized him 
and now I confirmed him; I did so not by the authority of any church, 
but by the authority of the living plasmate in me: VALIS himself. Next I 
said to my son: 'Your secret name, your Christian name, is ---' And I 
told him what it was. Only he and I are ever to know; he and I and 
VALIS./ Next I took a bit of the bread from the hot dog bun and held it 
forth; my son --- still a baby, really ---  opened his mouth like a 
little bird, and I placed the bit of bread in it. We seemed, the two of 
us, to be sharing a meal; an ordinary, simple, common meal./ For some 
reason it seemed essential --- quite crucial --- that he take no bite of 
the hot dog meat itself [Do note Kracht's significant variation here! 
kfl]. Pork could not be eaten under these circumstances. VALIS filled me 
with the urgent knowledge./ As Christopher started to close his mouth to 
chew on the bit of bread, I presented him with the mug of warm 
chocolate. To my surprise --- being so young he still drank normally 
from his bottle, never from a cup --- he reached eagerly to take the 
mug; as he took it, lifted it to his lips and drank from it, I said,/ 
'This is my blood and this is my body.'/ My little son drank, and I took 
the mug back. The greater sacraments had been accomplished. Baptism, 
then confirmation, then the most holy sacrament of all, the Eucharist: 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper." (PKD: VALIS and later Novels. The 
Library of America, pp. 365-366). Germany opened her mouth like a little 
bird, too ... That all epistemological matters remain unclear in "VALIS" 
may also say something about "Imperium."
And here comes this one very long sentence from "Imperium" in original; 
it could - mutatis mutandis - also be a part of "Gravity's Rainbow:"

"Er sah staunend allerorten sympathische schwarze GIs, deren Zähne, im 
Gegensatz zu seinem eigenen, ruinös verfaulten Trümmerhaufen eines 
Gebisses, mit einer unwirklichen Leuchtkraft strahlten; alle erscheinen 
so außergewöhnlich sauber, gescheitelt und gebügelt; man gibt ihm aus 
einer hübschen, sich in der Mitte leicht verjüngenden Glasflasche eine 
dunkelbraune, zuckrige, überaus wohlschmeckende Flüssigkeit zu trinken; 
emsige Kampfflugzeuge setzen im Minutentakt auf Landebahnen auf und 
starten wieder (es lächeln die Piloten, winkend, aus den im Sonnenlicht 
strahlenden Glaskanzeln); ein Offizier hält sich mit verzückt 
lauschendem Ausdruck eine kleine perforierte Metallschachtel ans Ohr, 
aus deren Inneren enigmatische, stark rythmische, doch überhaupt nicht 
unangehmen Musik dringt; man kämmt ihm Haare und Bart; zieht ihm ein 
makellos weißes, baumwollenes, kragenloses Leibchen über den Kopf; 
schenkt ihm eine Armbanduhr; schlägt ihm aufmunternd auf den Rücken; 
dies ist nun das Imperium; man serviert ihm ein mit quietschbunten Soßen 
bestrichenes Würstchen, welches in einem daunenkissenweichen, länglichen 
Brotbett liegt, infolgedessen Engelhardt zum ersten Mal seit weit über 
einem halben Jahrhundert ein Stück tierisches Fleisch zu sich nimmt; ein 
anderer Soldat, der deutschstämmige (schon seine Eltern waren ihrer 
Herkunftssprache nicht mehr mächtig --- sie ist im E Pluribus Unum 
assimiliert worden) Leutnant Kinnboot, der sich hemdsärmelig und überaus 
freundlich anschickt, ihm für eine Zeitung gleich Dutzende von Fragen zu 
stellen, kommt aus dem eifrigen Staunen nicht mehr heraus, da Engelhardt 
sich nun der über die Jahrzehnte rostig gewordenen englischen Sprache 
entsinnt und zu erzählen beginnt, erst stockend, dann zunehmend munter, 
von der Zeit vor dem Weltkrieg, nein, nicht diesem gerade glücklich 
beendeten, sondern noch von jenem davor." (pp. 240-241)

A hell of a sentence!



On 11.07.2015 17:20, Bekah wrote:
> It's on my wish list. Lots of great-sounding books coming out in the 
> next couple months.
>
> Becky -
> have word-mangling iPad will travel
>
> On Jul 11, 2015, at 9:51 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com 
> <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> Thanks much Kai...going to get....heard of it no other way but from you.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Jul 11, 2015, at 8:05 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:sundayjb at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>> Loving what I've read of this excerpt so far - very Pynchonesque: 
>>> http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780374175245
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 9:27 PM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen 
>>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>     On 07.01.2015 22:44, James Kyllo wrote:
>>>
>>>>     English version not out until July it appears though..
>>>
>>>     Out now!
>>>
>>>     > After a long and remarkably fruitful translation process,
>>>     Farrar, Straus and Giroux of New York finally publishes
>>>     "Imperium US Edition <https://www.facebook.com/Imperiumnovel>. A
>>>     Fiction of the South Seas" in English, available as of now. This
>>>     is Christian Kracht`s very first English language translation.<
>>>
>>>     Kracht will discuss his novel in Los Angeles on Tuesday (7/14):
>>>
>>>     19:30 (PDT)
>>>
>>>     Skylight Books
>>>     1818 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles 90027
>>>
>>>     Skylight Books, publishers Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the
>>>     Goethe-Institut of Los Angeles and the consulate of Switzerland
>>>     present Christian Kracht discussing his book "Imperium: A
>>>     Fiction of the South Seas".
>>>
>>>     https://www.facebook.com/mr.christiankracht?fref=nf
>>>
>>>>
>>>>     On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 11:18 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
>>>>
>>>>         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>>         "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 ..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     -- 
>>>>     http://www.last.fm/user/Auto_Da_Fe
>>>>     http://www.pop.nu/en/show_collection.asp?user=2412
>>>>     http://www.librarything.com/profile/Auto_Da_Fe
>>>>     http://www.thedetails.co.uk/
>>>>     http://big-game.tumblr.com/
>>>
>>>

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