For a very small book, you need a very short text. “Auf ein Maoam mit Otto” fits in your pocket or handbag, and anyone who wants to be cheered up a bit in gloomy times and enjoys language games should put it there. But even students who, for example, are preparing to interpret texts shortly before their Abitur can learn something here – actually in a fun way.
Because this literary experiment without any plot from the small Munich publishing house Schillo, invented by the Munich linguist and literary scholar Bea Michl and the Passau linguist Emil Bach, approaches technical terms such as palindrome, metaphor and semantic re-analysis. But it is also about Dadaism and horoscopes, Thomas Mann or space keys. Specifically: Based on a mini-story about an elderly gentleman named Otto, 123 very different terms are explained here – simply because a nice, silly original scene of a pensioner in front of a shelf is constantly being modified in a new and meaningful way. And so here on every page there is a new question – and implicitly its answer.
Question number one: “‘What is a palindrome anyway?’ Otto, the retiree next door, asked me as I was taking Maoam off the storage shelf.” A palindrome, as this scene plays out, is a word that makes the same sense read forwards and backwards. Question number two: “‘What actually is an alliteration?’ Otto, the omnipresent grandfather from above, rattled when I just located fruit substitutes.” Question number 30: “‘What actually is intertextuality?’ Otto asked me, neither lady nor nice from next door, when poor Tor was just taking Maoam off the shelf.”
And so it goes on merrily. The authors give their monkey sugar or the self next to pensioner Otto Maoam for Maoam. This is also the fuel for questions about terms that have recently popped up, as in number 103: “‘What is mansplaining?’ Otto, the older gentleman next door, asked me before he explained to me how I could get the Maoam off the shelf even better could take.”
But before this little text about a little book gets longer and longer: In short, this experiment is fun. Number 47: “‘What actually is minimalism?’ Otto asked.” End.
Bea Michl, Emil Bach: On a Maoam with Otto. A literary experiment in 123 variations. Schillo Verlag Munich, 136 pages, 6.90 euros.