It is said that work is half life. You like to ask yourself what the other half is. At least that’s what the Munich-based author and philosopher Lukas Hammerstein does in his essay “Don’t work – cry”, which is published in the current issue of Noise culture is to be read. The Munich literary magazine is dedicated to the topic of “work”, which has been intensified in the past Corona months and in some cases has moved to the center in a new way. While some found themselves involuntarily self-employed in the familiar, unfamiliar home office, “others were sitting at the checkout in the full supermarket or at the steering wheel of a truck in a traffic jam,” as Hammerstein writes. And for a short time they were celebrated as “heroes of work”. In the long run, it is difficult to say who is the winner or the loser. Didn’t the home workers or short-time workers prove by staying at home that they are relatively dispensable for the system? These are just a few thoughts from Hammerstein’s essay, which also deals with your own writing. This is also a current topic, with Carolin Amlinger’s sociological treatise “Writing” and the anthology “Bread Jobs & Literature” recently published two books on the subject of writing and / as work that are well worth reading. In the 272-page issue No. 22 of the Noise culture As always, there is also a lot that is worth reading, divided into essays, poetry and, above all, prose. The prose miniatures by Garielle (formerly Gary) Lutz are a highlight right from the start. They have an enthusiastic readership in the USA, but because of the alleged non-translatability, none of them was available in German so far. Wrongly, because Christophe Fricker has translated Lutz’s virtuoso twisted sentences and original word creations impressively. The content is about outsiders with boring office jobs, which is of little importance, because the actual event is the language.
From writer to truck driver
The text “Lone Star” by Mary Miller is even a world premiere. In it, the American author tells with wonderful sarcasm about her encounter with a German film team that may see her as a “genius” or even just an “ignorant American in cowboy boots” . Also previously unpublished were two of the three letters from Jörg Fauser in which the German Bukowski (or optionally Chandler) reports on his being torn between bread jobs, for example as a night watchman, and his actual paperwork. What is real or just a pose is unclear. Rudolf Proske was sometimes compared with Bukowski before he mutated into a truck driver in the mid-1990s. In two old, unearthed prose texts, he tells about painting in a paint shop and brewery. And in new poems he dissolves his everyday working-class blues and shit in beer and cigarette smoke.
The unemployed are called “duvets” in the dystopian story “after work”
The office story “Das Loch” by Daniel Krauser is a successful Kafka paraphrase. Sara Klatt cleverly brings together the required traffic turnaround and Holocaust remembrance in “B for Resistance” and the South Korean Cheon Myeong-kwan tells in “Feierabend” of a dystopian future full of unemployed people called “duvets”. There are also extracts from the novel, for example from “36 Hours” by Jörg Martin Dauscher, a somewhat half-baked-looking alcohol smuggling story. Julian Witzel’s description of a German teen pop star existence in “Brüder” reads rather bland. And in an excerpt from Katja Kulin’s autofictional novel “Halbe Heimat” (Halbe Heimat), a daughter reports very sensitively about her dead father, a truck driver. As a child, he was a hero to her. Only later did she recognize him as the poorly paid guest worker. So one of those who under Corona were often among the heroes we applauded.
Krachkultur No. 22/2021, “The workbook”, Krachkultur Verlag, 272 pages, 15 euros