Arno Schmidt

Walter Eggers, ein Büchersammler und hervorragender Kenner (bis in die numismatischen Details) der hannoverschen Landesgeschichte, mietet sich im niedersächsischen Ahlden bei Familie Thumann ein. In ihrem Haus vermutet er rare statistische Handbücher. Eggers hat Erfolg: Er fängt ein Verhältnis mit Frieda Thumann an, und er findet die gesuchten Bücher. Mit Karl Thumann fährt er, weiterhin auf Büchersuche, nach Berlin. Er wohnt bei dessen Freundin Line Hübner im Ostteil der Stadt, was ihn veranlaßt, die Folgen der Spaltung Deutschlands zu beobachten und zu bedenken. Nach der Rückkehr bereitet er seinen Abgang vor, aber der Fund eines Goldmünzenschatzes in dem ergiebigen Haus eröffnet ihm Aussichten auf eine Zeit gelehrten Müßiggangs, und er beschließt, einstweilen zu bleiben. 'Irgendwann, in der zweiten Hälfte dieses Jahrhunderts, wird die Ostzone des Steinernen Herzens für neue Leser gleichberechtigt neben der phantastischen Interzone des Romans Naked Lunch von W. S. Burroughs stehen.

This is the last in a four volume edition of the early fiction of one of the most daring and influential writers of postwar Germany, a man often called the German James Joyce due to the linguistic inventiveness of his fiction.Among Schmidt enthusiasts, scholars, and fans, the two novels stand in sharp contrast to one another, the first belonging to his early, more realistic phase, and the second introducing his later, more experimental phase. But the hairs are not worth splitting.Taking place in 1954, "The Stony Heart" concerns a man gathering documents for a study of a historian, and in the course of his search he gets involved with a woman who is married to a man who is involved with a woman, etc. "B/Moondocks" has parallel stories, one played out in a rural German town in the late 1950s, and the other on the moon in 1980 (the book was first published in German in 1960).At the heart of both is an absolute commitment to two things: freeing language from its commonplace prose functions, and Schmidt's ongoing savage attack on the German mind-set and attitude that gave us two world wars in this century.

This is the last in a four volume edition of the early fiction of one of the most daring and influential writers of postwar Germany, a man often called the German James Joyce due to the linguistic inventiveness of his fiction.Among Schmidt enthusiasts, scholars, and fans, the two novels stand in sharp contrast to one another, the first belonging to his early, more realistic phase, and the second introducing his later, more experimental phase. But the hairs are not worth splitting.Taking place in 1954, "The Stony Heart" concerns a man gathering documents for a study of a historian, and in the course of his search he gets involved with a woman who is married to a man who is involved with a woman, etc. "B/Moondocks" has parallel stories, one played out in a rural German town in the late 1950s, and the other on the moon in 1980 (the book was first published in German in 1960).At the heart of both is an absolute commitment to two things: freeing language from its commonplace prose functions, and Schmidt's ongoing savage attack on the German mind-set and attitude that gave us two world wars in this century.

The early fiction of one of the most daring and influential writers of postwar Germany, a man often called the German James Joyce due to the linguistic inventiveness of his fiction.

Schuber

cpl. in Kassette

Schuber