Imperium

Sun Jul 12 07:20:02 CDT 2015

Kai, given my middling grasp of German, can you speak more about the
phrasing of the great sentence you've quoted (which I can read a fair
bit of). How does the super long paragraph with its frequent
semicolons and bracketed phrases sound to a native ear? It seems
super-Pynchonian to me but I'd love to hear how it parses in Kracht's
original.

On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 8:25 PM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> 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> 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> 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> 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. 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> 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>
>>>
>>> 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 ..."
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
>>
>
>
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