reading: the wall & novecento & exploring libraries

my current reads are: a book i started in November and probably won't finish & a book i found in the library and finished in 2 days

The Wall ("Die Wand") by Marlen Haushofer
I first heard about "The Wall" through a cinema feature on a new German indie movie based on an apocalyptic story of the reflective kind. The trailer looks fascinating, and somehow when visiting my parents, the conversation turned to the film and the book, and they gave me their copy of it.
The author, Marlen Haushofer, is from Austria - and sadly, she isn't alive anymore to see the film and to witness this late popularity of her book that was first published in 1963, but could also be a new release.

Here's the official book note: "First published to acclaim in Germany, The Wall chronicles the life of the last surviving human on earth, an ordinary middle-aged woman who awakens one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal. This novel is at once a simple and moving tale and a disturbing meditation on humanity."

I plan to see the film, which looks amazing and premiered at the Berlinale - it has many direct passages of the book included in narrative voice (here's a clip: The Wall/Die Wand), so i might only read half of the book and leave some freshness for the film.

Novecento by Alessandro Baricco
Last week, i visited the library - i havn't been there in a while, and missed its atmosphere, the browsing of books. I found one i didn't know of: "Novecento" by Alessandro Baricco, a lovely short novella with a philosophic touch, about a piano player who was born on an ocean liner and never left the ship: "Novecento". There don't seem to be an English version of the book - but the story was turned into a movie with the title: "Legend of 1900".

& a library visit and a far-borrow of Frozen Time
While at the library, i also asked about the "Fernleihe"-option they announce on their website: to borrow books indirectly through them. from the large library in Stuttgart city. "No problem at all, just write down the title and author, we check back and call you when it's here. This great extra-service comes at 2 Euro per order and lets books travel from library to library, to local reader, and then back to the home library.

On the way now for me is a book for the upcoming 7 continents reading challenge (more below) "Frozen Time" by South Korean author Anna Kim who lives in Austria and explores the backtracing of family history in this book, in a story that leads to war-torn Yugoslavia.


*****
Previous reading blog entries are collected here: bookshelf: currently  reading... there also is a visual bookshelf, just click it to get there:


Reading Challenge 2013:
7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books (Link)
The idea of this reading challenge is to explore the world by books from different continents and countries, and by visiting various world lists while planning the reads, to encounter the one or other unknown angle and fact about our world.

the crossing line to violence

interesting question up in The Rumpus, as ending note of Ryan Boudinot's essay about the BaaderMeinhof film:

“The questions I’m left with after watching this fine film are, where’s the line that gets crossed that leads to domestic guerilla warfare? How close are we to that line?”

i mailed about the film with a friend in December, and now added a comment with a take on the film in germany, and some latest revelations about the start of the RAF: the years of bloodshed were probably induced by an agent provocateur from East Germany, here a copy&paste of the comment:

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"The problem with machines guns is that they tend to not be too articulate.”

you hit a point with that line. the Baader Meinhof film actually received very mixed reviews here in germany. the main critic point was that the film tries to cover a long and eventful period of time, with the focus more on the happenings (‘the action’) – which leaves not enough space for the politic backgrouds / discussions of that time, and resulted in overly simplifying things to make all fit into the film length and keep the “cinematic arc”.

i just looked at the german and then the english wiki page, i think the english one doesn’t include that aspect, while the german page is running rather long with all viewpoints: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Baader_Meinhof_Komplex

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“where’s the line that gets crossed that leads to domestic guerilla warfare?”

good question.

there’s a fact about the german student’s movement that isn’t included in the film, as it only was discovered recently – and it is directly connected to the crossing-line to violence:

one key scene/date for the student movement was the death of a student in a non-violent demonstration in Berlin in 1967: Benno Ohnesorg, who was shot by the police in the back of his head. this event changed the mood in germany, and let students and liberaly sympathize with the radical left-wing / RAF. it also was the crossing line to violence on the student’s side (‘if they kill us, we have a right to fight back’).

now, all those years later, files were found in the archives of former East Germany that document that the policeman who shot Ohnesorg was a spy, and might have had the order to act as agent provocateur, to try and destabilize West Germany.

i just looked, here’s an NY Times article: “Spy Fired Shot That Changed West Germany“ –

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additional note:

i was a kid at the time the RAF-members were caught and imprisoned. as it turned out, one of the judges lived in one of the towns of this region, and one of our teachers knew this judge, and later told us about this time, how there was a wall built around the judge's house, with hourly police patrols to check on his and his wife's and children's security. that's one of the memories i still have: this dark realization that there are people out there who walked so far off from the rules of society that they would go and kill a judge. people who claim to fight for a better world. their symbol: a machine gun.

(and no. so far none of the RAF-members commented on the fact that they might have been instrumentalized by the secret service of a communist regime that followed its own agenda of guerrilla warfare. )
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unfilmable color herons

some noteworthy links of this week:

WIRED tries to figure out which unfilmable books and comic will be turned into films next. the picturesque article and a vote, here: "After Watchmen, what's 'Unfilmable'?"

YATZER comes with text-portraits, landscape-art and with a curious question: "What is your Favorite Color and Why?"- scroll down to the bottom of the page for the colorful answers.

FOLDED WORD turned Mel Bosworth's short story "Leave Me As I Lessen" into a Heron mini-mag .. and left it in public places. the story in audio - including heron stops - in a youtube-clip, here: Launching Heron.

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anthology short story films

in february, i read Judith Hermann's collection of short stories "Sommerhaus, später" (here the blog post). this week, i saw that there is an episode film that is based on the stories: 5 stories, interweaved. it made me think of Robert Altman's "Short Cuts", which is based on short stories by Raymond Carver. (here more about Short Cuts).

of course, i was curious for the Hermann-based film. how would it work, those stories together? unsure what was to come, i watched the startig scene: a car driving along a winding canyonland highway. in total silence. on and on.

well, i thought. then the couple started to talk. and there still was no sound. "that's not the film. that's the cables" - i finally realized. but it was interesting, to move into the film like that. and to start it again then, this time with sound. and move from US canyonlands to Iceland, then on to Jamaica, on to Germany, then to Venice, and then back to the canyonlands in rather short cuts, with the stories almost blending into each other, with the soundtrack overlapping scenes. (maybe i noticed the soundtrack more because of the unintended silence in the start).

and in a peculiar way, the hurricane theme that started in June moved on here - the Jamaica story unwound around a hurricane that was moving closer. "Ich will dass er kommt," the bikini woman above says in 2 scenes: "I want him to come." (hurricanes are male in german: der Hurrikan).
which made me think of the Hemingway quote again: "He always thought, though, that if there was ever one that bad he would like to be there for it and go with the house if she went."

and another suprise: 2 of the stories didn't really speak to me in the written version. but in the film, connected with the other stories, they were touching.

not sure if there is an english version of the film, but here is an english review of it: Nichts als Gespenster – Five Judith Hermann Tales / KinoGermanFilm.

(and here, more about anthology films)
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snow & films

whew. just back from a sunny snow walk, followed by sitting in the cat-sun-spot and reading the next 2 chapters of a surprise book: Monika Maron, "Endmoränen". i brought it from the library, thought it wasn't really for me, read the first pages yesterday, mainly to get a taste, and confirm my expectation, and put it on the "bring back" pile. and was caught.

and the Berlinale has it's festive ending, and announced the winning films. and it's films from all over the world. the NY Times has an article with many links: "NY Times: Multinational Forces at the Berlin Film Festival".

interesting ending line of the article, too: "Like many of the highlights of the 2009 Berlinale, Mr. Bujalski’s intimate and unassuming film is, among other things, a reminder that the most specific visions are often the most universal."

berlinale

webpages of the day - in celebration of the Berlinale Film Festival:

- Weltkino (contemporary films that are nominated in the Berlinale contest)
- Forum, Panorama, Generation (more contemporary films, in exra selections)

and just in time for the Berlinale:
- Cargo, a new german cinema magazine