Ewald Arenz has been experiencing his “big summer” as a writer for a few years. There came the novel of the same name (2021) and “Alte sorts” (2019), two soulful and elegant titles that became bestsellers, won over critics and readers alike and were translated into several languages. Both hits were published by Dumont. Before that, the Franconian, born in Nuremberg in 1965, had been published by the small Franconian publisher Ars Vivendi for more than 20 years. It speaks for Arenz that the next coup of the sought-after best-selling author can now be presented here, probably out of old solidarity.
Of course, “My Little World” is not a new major project, neither a novel nor a collection of unpublished stories. Rather, it is a bundling of columns that Arenz wrote between 2007 and 2009 for the Nürnberger Nachrichten. For the first time there are these “family stories”, as the book is called in the subtitle, together, a few unpublished ones are also included.
The lyrics are always charming. This is due to Arenz’s sparkling love of storytelling, his precision in formulating and the credo: “Punch before pedagogy”. So it is above all the ubiquitous humour, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes politically incorrect, always self-deprecating, that makes the miniatures a pleasure to read. An example: “Cinema is a wonderful invention for people without children. For parents, on the other hand, cinema is usually just one step further on the way to social isolation.”
Humor has never been the worst companion in life
At the center of the 66 stories, Arenz’ alter ego Heinrich is fighting a hopeless battle. The fight to protect his wife Juliane, their three children Theo, Philly and Otto and last but not least himself from the small catastrophes of everyday life. In the end he ends up in a motorcade with a cat on his head, almost becomes a drug dealer, gives a graffiti sprayer private lessons, unsuspectingly destroys a work of art, or ends up with his little son in a striptease bar on the Reeperbahn.
In the foreword, the author writes: “It wasn’t so clear to me before, but after a dozen novels and countless stories, I finally know: without my family, they wouldn’t exist. The family is always the source of my literature, and above all this is most evident in the stories at hand.” Maybe the amusing insights (Arenz calls them “vignettes”) will help one or the other family a little bit out of the pandemic blues. That would be great. Humor has never been the worst companion in life.
Ewald Arenz: My little world – family stories, published by Ars Vivendi, hardcover, 216 pages, 20 euros