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Jenny Erpenbeck - Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces by Jenny Erpenbeck: summary, description and annotation

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Jenny Erpenbecks highly acclaimed novel Go, Went, Gone was a New York Times notable book and launched one of Germanys most admired writers into the American spotlight. In the New Yorker, James Wood wrote: When Erpenbeck wins the Nobel Prize in a few years, I suspect that this novel will be cited.On the heels of this literary breakthrough comes , a book of personal, profound, often humorous meditations and reflections. Erpenbeck writes, With this collection of texts, I am looking back for the first time at many years of my life, at the thoughts that filled my life from day to day.Starting with her childhood days in East Berlin (I start with my life as a schoolgirl my own conscious life begins at the same time as the socialist life of Leipziger Strasse), Not a Novel provides a glimpse of growing up in the GDR and of what it was like to be twenty-two when the wall collapsed; it takes us through Erpenbecks early adult years, working in a bakery after immersing herself in the worlds of music, theater, and opera, and ultimately discovering her path as a writer.There are lively essays about her literary influences (Thomas Bernhard, the Brothers Grimm, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), unforgettable reflections on the forces at work in her novels (including history, silence, and time), and scathing commentaries on the dire situation of America and Europe today. Why do we still hear laments for the Germans who died attempting to flee over the wall, but almost none for the countless refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean in recent years, turning the sea into a giant grave?With deep insight and warm intelligence, Jenny Erpenbeck provides us with a collection of unforgettable essays that take us into the heart and mind of one of the finest and most exciting writers alive (Michel Faber).

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NOT A NOVEL Also by Jenny Erpenbeck The Book of Words The End of Days - photo 1
NOT A NOVEL

Also by Jenny Erpenbeck


The Book of Words

The End of Days

Go, Went, Gone

The Old Child & Other Stories

Visitation

Copyright 2019 by Jenny Erpenbeck Translation copyright 2020 by Kurt Beals All - photo 2

Copyright 2019 by Jenny Erpenbeck

Translation copyright 2020 by Kurt Beals

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Picture 3

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published as a New Directions Paperbook (ndp1484) in 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Erpenbeck, Jenny, 1967- author. | Beals, Kurt, translator.

Title: Not a novel : a memoir in pieces / Jenny Erpenbeck ; translated from the German by Kurt Beals.

Other titles: Kein Roman. English

Description: New York : A New Directions Book, 2020. | Originally published in German as Kein Roman. Identifiers: LCCN 2020021691 | ISBN 9780811229326 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780811229333 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Erpenbeck, Jenny, 1967 | Authors, German21st centuryBiography.

Classification: LCC PT2665.R59 Z46 2020 | DDC 833/.92 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021691

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

For my father

Contents
  1. Preface
  2. LIFE
  3. At the Ends of the Earth
  4. Open Bookkeeping
  5. The Pressure Cooker
  6. John
  7. Homesick for Sadness
  8. Hope
  9. Time
  10. LITERATURE AND MUSIC
  11. Literary Role Models
  12. Suction and Suggestion
  13. In Another World
  14. My Favorite Fairy Tale: Clever Hans
  15. How I Write
  16. Among People
  17. On The Old Child
  18. On The Book Of Words
  19. Speech and Silence
  20. Becoming Myself
  21. Hans Fallada
  22. Will I Come to a Miserable End?: On Thomas Mann
  23. Ovids Metamorphoses
  24. Walter Kempowskis Novel All for Nothing
  25. SOCIETY
  26. How Are You? Good?
  27. Blind Spots
Preface

Many different eras are collected in this volume.

I remember one summer in a house in the countryside, a house that hasnt been our house for a long time now: I was sitting at the electric typewriter, writing a seminar paper on a fairly obscure topic, but one that had provoked me to intensive reflection and obsessive writing. I hadnt even chosen the topic myself, it was my professors suggestion. That was the first time that I experienced how someone else could open a door for me into my own reflections. I typed, looked out at the lake, typed some more. Whenever I wanted to change some part of the text, I would take scissors and cut it up into individual paragraphs, shuffle them around on the floor until the collage was just right, and then reach for the glue. A long-forgotten approach to writing, it was 1992, a time we now refer to as the last century. When my friends came to visit, they left me alone with my work in the morning, in the afternoon we would go for a swim together, cook, talk, lie in the sun. I was in my mid-twenties.

I bought my first computer in 1994 and used it to write my first book, The Old Child. When the book came out in 1999, I was living in Austria, working at the opera in Graz, Id only recently started directing my own productions. After the book was published and the first positive reviews appeared, I started getting requests for short stories. Id never written a short story. I said yes. Twelve pages seemed like a good length. The desk in my study was so high that I could sit on a bar stool and look straight out the window at an enormous mountain. I sat there between rehearsals and on the weekends and wrote, the vaulted ceiling above me was more than 400 years old, the window opened outward in the typical Renaissance style. My publisher and I collected the stories in a volume that appeared in 2001, my second book.

Now people were asking me if Id like to write about an East German word that had been forgotten, if perhaps Id like to write a travelogue, if Id like to write about what literary associations I had with the word suction. Yes, I would. Writing was a game in which I encountered myself. I moved back to Berlin. The time that I had for writing now was Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. the hours when the nanny took our son out for a walk. My husband worked in another city. I wrote The Book of Words, which appeared in 2004. The solicitations were starting to pile up; this or that journalist, editor, writer, or publisher wanted to know: Would I like to write about my favorite fairy tale? About my literary role models? About what motivates me to write? About my childhood? Or about what music means to me? Of course I would. These projects and ideas, conceived by other people, revealed stories that were waiting within me, brought memories to the surface that were entirely my own. My child was growing up, now my writing hours stretched from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. unless I was working on a stage production. Could the kindergarten in Nuremberg find room for an extra child while I was in town for six weeks of rehearsals? I started writing my first longer novel, Visitation, which appeared in 2008. That was the same year that my mother died. I received a prize for the book and gave an acceptance speech. The date of the speech fell during my period of mourning.

I received another prize, then another. Often the prizes have names. Names of authors who are familiar, but sometimes other names that arent familiar. What does this or that author have to do with me? Have I ever read the authors works? I read the author again, or for the first time, I spend three weeks, four weeks, six weeks reading. Browse through my own library. Discover the self I used to be in my old notes and annotations. The genre of the acceptance speech offers a great deal of freedom, except in one respect: When you get the prize, you have to give the speech. Is there a new novel on the way? A friend asks me if Id like to write her a screenplay. Another friend asks if Id write a text to go with her photos. And do I like the Beatles? An author asks if Id like to participate in a series of events on the topic Living and Writing in the Age of Competitive Society. I load and unload the dishwasher, hang the laundry out to dry, bake cakes for my childs birthday. I wonder if the boxes from my mothers apartment will sit in our hallway forever, waiting to be unpacked.

In 2012, my novel The End of Days appears. The University of Bamberg invites me to give a series of lectures on poetics. How long is a lecture? 40 to 50 minutes, they say thats about 20 to 25 pages per lecture. There are supposed to be three lectures. At least half a year of work. Are you writing another novel yet? I go on reading tours to cities in Germany, and also abroad. I pack suitcases. Who will take care of the guinea pigs? What hotel am I staying in, anyway? Am I interested in the topic Landscapes of Childhood? Yes, very much so. I receive a prize, and another, and another. The prize money helps me get by. The namesake authors are interesting. I stand at my bookshelf pulling out this or that book, reading this or that passage. The date for the award ceremony is already set. Would I like to tell high school graduates in Saarland what I think is the most important thing in life? Thats a hard one. What

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