The Case of Christian Kracht German Monitor (Formerly: GDR -Monitor) Series Editors Ian Wallace, 1979–2009 Pól Ó Dochartaigh, 2009–14 Laura Bradley, 2014– Editorial Board Stephen Brockmann ( Carnegie Mellon University ) Anna Chiarloni ( Università di Torino ) Sarah Colvin ( University of Cambridge ) Paul Cooke ( University of Leeds ) Mary Cosgrove ( Trinity College Dublin ) Norbert Otto Eke ( Universität Paderborn ) Gisela Holfter ( University of Limerick ) Karen Leeder ( University of Oxford ) Laurence McFalls ( Université de Montréal ) Sabine von Mering ( Brandeis University ) Heinz-Peter Preußer ( Universität Bielefeld ) volume 82 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/gm The Case of Christian Kracht Authorship, Irony, and Globalism Edited by Marcel Schmid Jerome Bolton Immanuel Nover LEIDEN | BOSTON Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0927-1910 isbn 978-90-04-68229-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-69410-1 (e-book) DOI 10.1163/9789004694101 Copyright 2024 by Koninklijke Brill NV , Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Cover illustration: Christian Kracht. Photography by Frauke Finsterwalder. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Schmid, Marcel, 1979 - editor. | Bolton, Jerome, editor. | Nover, Immanuel, editor. Title: The case of Christian Kracht : authorship, irony, and globalism / edited by Marcel Schmid, Jerome Bolton, Immanuel Nover. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2024 . | Series: German monitor, 0927 - 1910 ; volume 82 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2024006559 (print) | LCCN 2024006560 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004682290 (hardback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9789004694101 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH : Kracht, Christian, 1966 —Criticism and interpretation. | LCGFT : Literary criticism. | Essays. Classification: LCC PT2671.R225 Z57 2024 (print) | LCC PT2671.R225 (ebook) | DDC 833/.92 —dc 23/eng/20240216 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2024006559 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2024006560 Contents Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 Marcel Schmid, Jerome Bolton, and Immanuel Nover Interview with Daniel Bowles The English Translator of Christian Kracht’s Imperium and The Dead 19 Part 1 Negotiating Place and Space: Globalism, Cosmopolitanism, Colonialism 1 Tramps Abroad: Global Nomadism, Narrative Identities, and the Novels of Christian Kracht 29 Daniel Bowles 2 Failed Utopias of Switzerland in Kracht’s Faserland and Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten 51 Brangwen Stone Part 2 Germanness and Finsterworld 3 Kracht’s Finsterworld : Inviting a Sinister Reading of What It Means to Be German 75 Alexandra Ludewig 4 Faserland (1995) and Finsterworld (2014) — Conceptions of Germany in Text and Film by Christian Kracht and Frauke Finsterwalder 95 Stephanie Großmann vi Contents Part 3 Krachtian Personas: Masculinities and Authorship 5 „Antics right- and leftwing“ Autor(schafts)inszenierung und Diskursstörungen in Christian Krachts und David Woodards Five Years (2011) 111 Christine Riniker 6 Irony Bites: Post-Pop Mad Men in Christian Kracht’s 1979 and Imperium 135 Mary L. Knight Part 4 Tropes — Ironic Games 7 Autorschaft und Ironie bei Christian Kracht 153 Stefan Neuhaus 8 Wertungsdebatte um Christian Kracht. Der Autor, das Werk und die Ironie 176 Iris Meinen Index 195 Notes on Contributors Jerome Bolton defended his dissertation, ‘Toward a Theory of the Veteran: The Trenches, Trauma, and Technology’s “Third” Hero’, in the Department of German at New York University in August 2015. Currently, he is living in Berlin, where he works as a Research Fellow at NYU ’s Global Research Institution. Bolton received his MA in German Languages and Literatures from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2011. While there he wrote his thesis on the cultural sig- nificance of race and jazz during and after the Weimar Republi c. He also holds a teaching degree from the University of Northern Colorado. Bolton has pub- lished on the Frankfurt School and he is currently planning to co-edit a special journal issue on Ernst Jünger. Daniel Bowles is Associate Professor of German Studies at Boston College and researches and teaches twentieth-century and contemporary German literature, culture, and history. His first boo k, The Ends of Satire: Legacies of Satire in Postwar German Writing , appeared in 2015 with De Gruyter. He has also published translations of novels by Thomas Meinecke and Christian Kracht and short texts by Alexander Kluge, Rainald Goetz, and Xaver Bayer. For his translation of Christian Kracht’s Imperium , Bowles received the 2016 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translato r’s Prize. Stephanie Großmann is an Assistant Professor (Akademische Rätin) in German Studies at the University of Passau. She teaches German literature and culture as well as film and media studies. Stephanie studied International Cultural and Business Studies in Passau and Verona and received her PhD in Media Studies in 2012 with the award-winning thesis Inszenierungsanalyse von Opern: Eine interdisziplinäre Methode. Stephanie is interested in intermediality (literature, film, music, and per - formative arts), conceptions of Germany, and narrative structures. In recent years, she has co-edited foundational works in literary (Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft. Textanalyse) and film analysis (Filmsemiotik. Eine Einführung in die Analyse audiovisueller Formate). She has also edited the book „O’zapft is!“ Das Münchner Oktoberfest aus literatur-, kultur- und mediensemiotischer Perspektive (2022) and has written on German Roman- ticism, contemporary literature, self-reference in literature and film, film music, Heimat- and DEFA-film. Currently she is working on her Habilitation viii Notes on Contributors project: Kartographisches Denken und Poetisierung der Grenzlandschaft im historischen Wandel: Mediale Konzeptionen des deutschen Territoriums vom Deutschen Kaiserreich bis zur Gegenwart. Mary L. Knight is Associate Teaching Professor of German at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She received her PhD from Duke University. Her research interests include pop literature, masculinities, and depictions of psychopathy in literature and fil m. Alexandra Ludewig is Head of the School of Humanities at The University of Western Australia, and a scholar of European and Australian Studies. Her teaching and research focus on issues of identity and ‘Heimat’ and she has published extensively in German and English on these topics. Among her recent publications are three monographs: Screening Nostalgia: 100 Years of German Heimat Film (2011), Born German: Re-born in Western Australia (2016), and War Time on Wadjemup: A Social History of the Rottnest Island Internment Camp (2019). Iris Meinen teaches and researches at the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Koblenz. In 2015, her dissertation on the history of knowledge of suicide in the 18th century was published by K önigshausen & Neuman n. Her cur- rent research addresses the question of body discourses and the relationship between gender, literature, and criticism. She has already published sev- eral articles on Christian Kracht, in addition to articles on Sibylle Berg, Sven Regener, Charlotte Roche, and Alexa Henning von Lange. In her Habilitation project, she is researching the visibility of female authors within the literary discourse on contemporary literature. Stefan Neuhaus studied German in Bamberg and Leeds, received his doctorate in 1996, and his postdoctoral qualification (Habilitation) in 2001. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg. He has held posi- tions at the University of Oldenburg and the University of Innsbruck and is currently Professor for Modern German Literature at the University of Koblenz. His publications include: Freiheit, Ungleichheit, Selbstsucht? Fontane und Großbritannien (1996, doctoral thesis); Literatur und nationale Einheit in Deutschland (2002, Habilitation); Das verschwiegene Werk: Erich Kästners ix Notes on Contributors Mitarbeit an Theaterstücken unter Pseudonym (2000); Das Spiel mit dem Leser: Wilhelm Hauf f; Werk und Wirkung (2002); Sexualität im Diskurs der Literatur (2002); Literaturkritik (2004); Literaturvermittlung (2009); Märchen (2nd edn 2017); Grundriss der Literaturwissenschaft (5th edn 2017); and Grundriss der Neueren deutschsprachigen Literaturgeschichte (2017); Der Krimi in Literatur, Film und Serie. Eine Einführung (2021); Grundriss des Interpretierens (2022). Immanuel Nover teaches and researches as an Assistant Professor (Akademischer Oberrat auf Zeit) at the Institut für Germanistik at the University of Koblenz-Landau. From 2010 to 2012, he served as academic coordinator (Wissenschaftlicher Koordinator) for the Practices of Literature and Literaturtheorie als Theorie der Gesellschaft Graduate Schools at the Münster University’s Germanic Institute. Nover received his PhD in German studies from Bonn University and the Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy) in 2009. In 2012, his monograph titled Referenzbegehren: Sprache und Gewalt bei Bret Easton Ellis und Christian Kracht was published with B ö hlau. He has also written articles on Clemens Meyer, Juli Zeh, Arthur Schnitzler, Bret Easton Ellis, and Christian Kracht and has jointly edited a volume on Das Politische in der Literatur der Gegenwart (De Gruyter 2019). Christine Riniker studied German Language and Literature, Comparative Literature, and Theater Studies in Bern and Berlin. She graduated with a PhD in German Literature from the University of Bern, where she was employed in the project ‘Christian Kracht’ als Herausforderung für die literarische Ö ffentlichkei t. Diskursstörungen und Werkzusammenhang ( ‘Christian Kracht’ as a challenge for the literary pub- lic sphere. Interconnections of the oeuvre and discourse disruptions ), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation ( SNF ). Her academic interests are con- temporary German literature, German pop literature and popular culture, the- ory of the literary fiel d, as well as literary Gender and Queer Studies. Marcel Schmid is an Assistant Professor in German Studies at the University of Virginia. He teaches classes in German language, literature, and culture, with a particular focus on Serial Media and Fairy Tales. Marcel studied history, German litera- ture, and art history at the University of Zurich, Yale University, and New York University, and defended his dissertation on the concept of autopoiesis in liter- ature in 2014. Since then, he has been a visiting scholar at both Yale and Brown x Notes on Contributors University and a postdoctoral fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Marcel is interested in self-reference in literature and the interface between literary analysis and technology. In the past few years, he has written and edited books on self-reference in literature ( Autopoiesis und Literatur , Self- reflection in Literature ) and the German life reform movement ( Die Literatur der Lebensreform ). He has also published in the Feuilleton section of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung Brangwen Stone teaches and researches in the Department of Germanic Studies at The Univer- sity of Sydney. She works on modern and contemporary Austrian, German, and Swiss literature, fil m, and theater. Stone has particular interests in post-migrant literature and theater, GDR literature, food in literature, Eastern Europe in German literature and fil m, gender studies, and literature’s relationship to memory and history. She also translates dramatic texts. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004694101_002 Introduction Marcel Schmid, Jerome Bolton, and Immanuel Nover Woran erinnert mich das Schweigen des Autors, des Urhebers, das raunende Rumgestochere der Kritik und dieses Werk, was wir [...] hier vor uns haben, funkelnd besetzt mit lauter Glitzersteinen, [...] dieses Antippen, dieses Zitieren, das Nebeneinanderstellen? Und dann bin ich darauf gekommen: Das erinnert mich an Damien Hirst. Dieses Buch ist das literarische Äquivalent von einem Hai in Formaldehyd. Literary critic Philipp Tingler on Die Toten , Literaturclub , 11 October 2016 ... Krachts Texte selbst sind an ihrer Popularität in der Literatur- wissenschaft nicht ganz unschuldig, denke ich. Der Autor schreibt wirklich diese unglaublich selbstreferentiellen und geradezu über- determinierten Texte. Sie sind voller Anspielungen und Verweise. Sie sind komplex und ambivalent. Das ist natürlich wie eine Ein- ladung an Philologen, die Anspielungen aus dem Text sinnhaft zu machen, zu verbinden und [e in e] einheitliche Lesart aufzustellen. Gleichzeitig sind diese überdeterminierten Texte natürlich auch eine Art hermeneutische Falle. Sie provozieren nämlich geradezu, genau und nur den Hinweisen nachzugehen, die uns der Autor aus- gelegt hat und damit genau die Lesart zu bedienen, die Kracht anti- zipiert hat. Miriam Zeh in an interview with Jan Drees, Deutschlandfunk , 24 May 2018 ∵ The Swiss author Christian Kracht is a divisive figur e. His early novels, such as Faserland (1995), have been described as a postmodern game with no real political implications, 1 while his later novels, including Imperium (2012), have been criticized for hiding right-wing sympathies behind their playfulness. 1 Florian Illie s, Generation Golf: Eine Inspektion (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 2001). 2 Schmid, Bolton, and Nover The Spiegel journalist Georg Diez even went so far as to characterize Kracht as a gate-keeper for right-wing ideas (‘Türsteher der rechten Gedanken’). 2 In response, many leading intellectuals, including Nobel Prize Winner Elfriede Jelinek, have come to Kracht’s defense and made clear that the claim is base- less and derives from a naïve reading that confuses the narrator’s voice with the author. Since the publication of Die Toten (2016) and Eurotrash (2021) it can be said confidently that allegations of the kind made by Diez are no longer tenable. In 2018, Kracht sparked a major public debate when he was invited to give the prestigious Frankfurt Lecture on Poetics. 3 There, he declared that the desire to associate every sentence he writes, statement he utters, or public appearance he makes with camp, irony, or, most devastatingly, with fascism, misses the point. Kracht argued that his work is more accurately viewed as the narration of real-life experiences — including his ow n. 4 The most shock- ing real-life experiences Kracht made public in Frankfurt relate to the sexual abuse he disclosed he suffered as a twelve-year-old at the hands of pastor Keith Gleed while attending Lakefield College in Ontari o. 5 Such traumatic events, Kracht suggested, inform his writing. He argued that if his literary figures tend to be ‘cold’, lone wolf types who deal with rejection, loneliness, and abuse, and who are hurt, hardened, and unable to give or receive love, it is because they are born out of the author’s real-life, life-altering experiences. It is also for this reason, he adds, that his characters tend to seek refuge in a world of superficial aestheticism rather than enduring the hardships of a cold realit y. Accordingly, his work does not simply give a voice to the superficial fantasies of a spineless, consumption-oriented pop-generation. Quite to the contrary, his writing is real 2 Ibi d. 3 The Frankfurter Poetikvorlesung is a public lecture held in Frankfurt am Main; the invitation is broadly recognized as one of the highest honors for contemporary writers. 4 Se e: Christian Krachts Ästhetik , ed. by Susanne Komfort-Hein and Heinz Drügh (Berlin: J. B. Metzler, 2019). 5 The German newspaper Die Zeit reported accusations of abuse made by other students: “2017 bekommt er [K rach t] dann durch Zufall ein kanadisches Magazin in die Hand, darin ein Artikel über einen Missbrauchsskandal an seinem ehemaligen Internat. Prinz Andrew, selbst Schüler der Elite-Schule, wollte Gleed durch eine Gedenkplakette ein ehrendes Andenken bewahren. Das war zu viel für Gleeds Opfer, sie verklagten die Schule. Es stellte sich heraus, dass über 30 Schüler von Pastor Gleed sexuell missbraucht worden waren”. Ijoma Mangold, ‘“Das hast du dir eingebildet”’, Die Zeit , 14 June 2018, <https://www.zeit.de/2018/22/chris tian-kracht-sexueller-missbrauch-internat-literatur-faserland/k omplettansicht> [a ccessed 27 March 2023] 3 Introduction At least, this is how the argument goes. If we follow it to its logical con- clusion, it becomes reasonable to assume that it is both reductive and inac- curate to dismiss the complexity of Kracht’s work as a grand game of irony. Following Kracht’s lecture in Frankfurt, the question of the author’s irony and authenticity has been taken up anew. Certain commentators — Miriam Zeh and Jan Drees, for instance — have suggested that Krach t’s attempts to fuse fictional narrative with real-life experience are little more than ironic tech- niques designed to deflect scholarly criticis m. 6 According to this line of argu- ment, even though one may be tempted to consider Kracht’s public lecture in Frankfurt as a notable act of courage, as an act of opening up about his trau- mas, it also creates a force field around his work that shields it from criticism and scrutiny. Nevertheless, the very form of his statement demands scrutiny: it was not made in an interview, essay or autobiography but formulated in the context of his lecture on poetics. As Susanne Komfort-Hein and Heinz Drügh have written: Besonders herausfordernd und intrikat wird die Sache, wenn im Fall von Krachts Frankfurter Poetikvorlesung ein Gegenstand zur Debatte steht, der selbstverständlich als Äußerung im Literaturbetrieb situiert und ebenso selbstverstä ndlich reflexiv mit dem eigenen Schreiben verbandelt ist, der aber darü ber hinaus stets eine — bei Kracht nur besonders extreme — existenzielle Note ha t. 7 This controversy is the point of departure for our volume. We do not set out to define Krach t, the author, as belonging to a particular movement or as having a specific styl e, and we resist the urge to attach terms such as ‘postmodernism’, ‘camp’, or ‘pop’ to his work. Instead, we hope to disentangle Kracht’s literary world from the at times reductive ways in which it has been presented to date by exploring the complexities of — and the discourses present in — his wor k. To this end, the contributions consider his novels, screenplays, poems, jour- nalistic work, and further forms of authorship that extend beyond the literary. 6 For exampl e, in the conversation between Miriam Zeh and Jan Drees for Deutschlandfunk , 24 May 2018, <https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/frankfurter-poetikvorlesung-von-christian -kracht-alles-was.700.de.html?dram:articl e_i d=418626> [a ccessed 25 June 2019] , or in the review of the event by Jan Wiele: ‘Natürlich habe auch ich meine Schule angezündet’, Frank- furter Allgemeine Zeitung , 24 May 2018, <https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher /autoren/christian-krachts-poetikvorlesung-in-frankfurt-15604028.html> [a ccessed 21 June 2019] 7 Susanne Komfort-Hein and Heinz Drügh, ‘Einleitung’, in Christian Krachts Ästhetik , ed. by Susanne Komfort-Hein and Heinz Drügh (Berlin: J. B. Metzler, 2019), p. 6. 4 Schmid, Bolton, and Nover Despite Kracht’s status as one of the most widely-read contemporary Ger- manophone writers, his work remains relatively unknown among Anglophone readers and researchers. He has, however, achieved something of a break- through in the Anglophone marketplace in recent years. In 2015, Daniel Bowles’s English translation of Kracht’s highly successful (and controversial) novel Imperium was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review , The Wall Street Journal , and The Seattle Times . Following this, Bowles’s 2018 English translation of Die Toten was reviewed by the LA Review of Books , Publishers Weekly , and Harper’s Magazine and has been ranked highly on the list of the most-read books on the LA Review of Books webpage. Without a doubt, Kracht’s output touches on themes that are central to a number of important avenues in both teaching and research within German Studies. In keeping with the broad reach of German Studies, this volume sit- uates his writings in discourses that range across literary studies, Media and Film Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. We have structured the volume around three main strands of inquiry — globalis m, authorship, and irony — and hope that it will appeal both to experts on Kracht and to readers who are in the process of discovering his life and work for the first tim e. 1 Kracht in Scholarship To date, Kracht’s literary oeuvre has attracted significant attention in German- language scholarship. 8 In the early 2000s, research on Kracht began in earnest when Moritz Baßler and Fabian Lettow directed attention to the archive and to ‘pop’ in contemporary German-language literature. Baßler argued that the conspicuous presence of brands and labels in texts by Kracht and other con- temporary writers created an archive of fashion codes that framed the agency of the characters in pop-literary tales. 9 In Kracht’s early work especially, the 8 For a more expansive overview of Krach t’s body of work see: Christian Kracht , ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt (Munich: text + kriti k, 2017), which lists some 200 research articles on the author. By contrast, Christian Kracht: Werkverzeichnis und kommentierte Bibliografie der Forschung , ed. by Matthias N. Lorenz (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2014) lists only 170 articles. See also: Christian Kracht revisited: Irritation und Rezeption , ed. by Matthias N. Lorenz and Christine Riniker (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2018). 9 Moritz Ba ßler, Der deutsche Pop-Roman: Die neuen Archivisten (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2002). 5 Introduction characters are trapped in the superficial world of brandin g. 10 In an essay on the postmodern dandy, Lettow asserted that Kracht’s staging of authorship was not just an attention stunt, but a principle that combined writings and perfor- mances, pointing toward a synthesis of artforms or Gesamtkunstwerk . Kracht’s writings, the fashion codes in his works, and the fashioning of his authorial appearances are all subsumed under the label ‘Christian Kracht’, causing the ‘real’ author to vanish. 11 It is not surprising that the theme of disappearance evolved early on in research on Kracht, featuring in articles and volumes by Eckhard Schumacher, Sven Glawion, and Immanuel Nover. 12 The author’s texts, novels, and short stories not only involve the disappearance of characters, but also enact the disappearance of the author himself: he is a staged auto-fictional figure o r, at the very least, a figure that ‘vanishes’ through polysemic readings. 13 The inter- action between the staging of authorship and polysemic readings is a focal point of this volume, since the two have often been treated separately in research on Kracht. 14 Despite the author’s reluctance to ‘explain’ his work and ‘enlighten’ his readers, his rare public appearances are telling. The confusion 10 Ibid. Sascha Seiler also discusses the processes of pop culture and the simple branding of the world in Kracht’s writings. See Sascha Seiler, Das einfache wahre Abschreiben der Welt: Pop-Diskurse in der deutschen Literatur nach 1960 (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 11 Fabian Lettow, ‘Der postmoderne Dandy. Die Figur Christian Kracht zwischen ästhetischer Selbststilisierung und aufkl ärerischem Sendungsbewusstsein’, in Selbstpoetik 1800–2000: Ich-Identitäten als literarisches Zeichenrecycling , ed. by Ralph K ö hnen (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 285–305. 12 Eckhard Schumacher, ‘Omnipräsentes Verschwinden. Christian Kracht im Netz’, in Christian Kracht: Zu Leben und Werk , ed. by Johannes Birgfeld and Claude D. Conter (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009) pp. 187–203; Glawion and Nover, ‘Das leere Zentrum’; Immanuel Nover, Referenzbegehren: Sprache und Gewalt bei Bret Easton Ellis und Christian Kracht (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: De Gruyter, 2012). 13 See also: Johannes Birgfeld and Innokentij Kreknin, ‘Christian Kracht’, in Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur , ed. by Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Munich: edition text+kriti k, 2013), <http://www.nachschlage.net/search/document?index=mol-16 &id=16000000773&type=text/html&query.key=2ZwGhY4v&template=/publikationen /klg/document.jsp&preview=> [a ccessed 2 April 2023] 14 See: Till Huber, ‘Andere Texte. Christian Krachts Nebenwerk zwischen Pop-Journalismus und Docu-Fiction’, in Christian Kracht , ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt (Munich: text + kri - tik, 2017), pp. 86–93, 90; Paul Michael Lützeler, ‘Iran: Christian Kracht, 1979 (2001). Popkultur und Fundamentalismus’, in Bürgerkrieg global: Menschenrechtsethos und deutschsprachiger Gegenwartsroman , ed. by Paul Michael Lützeler (Munich: Fink, 2009), pp. 197–202. 6 Schmid, Bolton, and Nover about his statements as an unreliable interpreter of his own work is proof that the authority of authorship is still expected in today’s literary discourses. This research on authorship is closely linked to questions of postmodern- ism, which constitute another important branch of inquiry regarding Kracht’s work. According to Leander Scholz, Kracht’s novel 1979 (2001) is an outstanding example of postmodern literature because it defies any realistic readin g. Even though the title points readers towards a specific year in histor y, the ludicrous events encountered by the protagonist cannot be read as a slightly fictional - ized version of historical events such as the Iranian revolution of 1979. Instead, Scholz argues that they force readers to consider how we read reality into fictio n. 15 Analyzing Kracht’s writing with reference to Jean Baudrillard, Richard Langston argues that there is no possibility of returning to a pre-postmodern condition. 16 When the protagonist in 1979 attempts to flee the irony-laden decadence of the ‘West’, he ends up in the labor camp of a totalitarian state, where he fights for his lif e. Here, the alternative to a post-modern world is not pre-postmodern but rather a world beyond any ‘pre-’ and ‘post-’, where irony has no place. Frank Finlay also examines Kracht’s writing through the lens of postmodernism, focusing on the nexus of superficiality and globalization in Kracht’s debut novel Faserland 17 Finlay and other scholars have taken the interconnected themes of superfici - ality and authorship as a starting point for studying the relationships between postmodernism and ‘Popliteratur’. Like Finlay, Christoph Rauen and Bj ö rn Weyand argue that ‘Popliteratur’ is a logical consequence of postmodernism. 18 Similar to the philosophical implications of postmodernism, ‘pop’ writings reject epistemic certainty and the clear meaning of the text gets lost in poly- semic play. ‘Popliteratur’ does not provide a clear meaning and does not have a clear political message. Finlay, Rauen, and Weyand also show that Kracht’s earlier work is a pioneering example of ‘Popliteratur’ because it breaks away 15 Leander Scholz, ‘Ein postmoderner Bildungsroman. Christian Krachts 1979 ’, Gegenwarts- literatur: A German Studies Yearbook , 3 (2004), 200–24. 16 Richard Langston, ‘Escape from Germany: Disappearing Bodies and Postmodern Space in Christian Kracht’s Prose’, The German Quarterly , 79.1 (2006), 50–70. 17 Frank Finlay, ‘“Dann wäre Deutschland wie das Wort Neckarauen”. Surface, Superficiality and Globalisation in Christian Kracht’s Faserland ’, in German Literature in the Age of Globalisation , ed. by Stuart Taberner (Birmingham: Continuum, 2004), pp. 189–208. 18 Frank Finlay, ‘Surface is an Illusion but so is Depth: The Novels of Christian Kracht’, German Life and Letters , 66.2 (2013), 213–31; Christoph Rauen, ‘Schmutzige Unterhose wird sau- berer Büstenhalter. Zur “Überwindung” von Postmoderne und Pop bei Christian Kracht’, in Christian Kracht: Zu Leben und Werk , ed. by Johannes Birgfeld and Claude D. Conter (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009), pp. 116–30; and Bj ö rn Weyand, Poetik der Marke: Konsumkultur und literarische Verfahren 1900–2000 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013). 7 Introduction from the German literature of the 1970s and 1980s that was more informed by the political tensions of the Cold War. In connection to pop and postmodernism, research on Kracht has long focused its attention on the role of irony and camp in his works. Discussion of these two aspects originated in Eckhard Schumacher’s 2003 essay, ‘Das Ende der Ironie (um 1800/um 2000)’, which argues that it is imperative to take Kracht’s irony into account when interpreting his work. 19 According to Schumacher, Kracht draws on the romantic concept of irony that was estab- lished by the circle around Friedrich Schlegel in order to divert readers from reaching a stable interpretation of his texts and his persona, thus ensuring a variety of approaches to making sense of both the author and his texts. According to Schumacher, the superficiality and simplicity of Krach t’s texts hide their ironic play with both authorship and literary conventions. Heinz Drügh follows Schumacher’s path in emphasizing the role of irony in Kracht’s novel 1979 , which has confused literary critics due to its combination of his- torical facts and superficial pop-cultural branding. 20 In a close reading of Imperium and Die Toten , Innokentij Kreknin argues that the style of Kracht’s writing, involving irony and camp, complements his staging of authorship in his public appearances. 21 Till Huber deals explicitly with camp, as well as with ‘Docu-Fiction’ — einer ‘Annä herung von fiktionalen und nichtfiktion - alen Elementen’ 22 — as it relates to Krach t. Huber also includes in his analysis lesser-known publications like Metan and shows how Kracht employs a jour- nalistic writing style that is related to the articles that he published in Tempo magazine, a monthly lifestyle magazine (1986–1996) that was modeled after 19 Eckhard Schumacher, ‘Das Ende der Ironie (um 1800/um 2000)’, Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie , 1 (2003), 18–30. 20 Heinz Drügh, ‘“... und ich war gl ücklich darüber, endlich seriously abzunehmen”. Christian Krachts Roman 1979 als Ende der Popliteratur?’, Wirkendes Wort , 57.1 (2007), 31–51. See also: Christoph Rauen, Pop und Ironie. Popdiskurs und Popliteratur um 1980 und 2000 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000); Niels Werber, ‘Formkrise und Kulturkritik. Karl Heinz Bohrer und Christian Kracht’, Pop. Kultur & Kritik , 5 (2014), 140–59. 21 Innokentij Kreknin, ‘Selbstreferenz und die Struktur des Unbehagens der “Methode Kracht”. Zu einem Wandel der Poetik in Imperium und Die Toten ’, in Christian Kracht revisited: Irritation und Rezeption , ed. by Matthias N. Lorenz and Christine Riniker (Berlin: Frank & Timm e, 2018), pp. 35–69. See also: Innokentij Kreknin, Poetiken des Selbst: Identität, Autorschaft und Autofiktio n; Am Beispiel von Rainald Goetz, Joachim Lottmann und Alban Nikolai Herbst (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014). 22 Huber, ‘Andere Texte’, pp. 86–93, 90. 8 Schmid, Bolton, and Nover Vanity Fair and New York Magazine . The writing style in Tempo also informed Kracht’s first novels Faserland and 1979 23 Shortly after the publication of Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten in 2008, the topics of fundamentalism and totalitarianism emerged in Kracht studies. Since then, 1979 , Imperium , and Die Toten have all been read in this light. 24 Immanuel Nover discusses extremism in connection with the stag- ing of scandalous authorship to argue that extremism should not be misread as pure provocation but rather as intertwined in the discourses on ‘purity’ and ‘disgust’ that are central in Kracht’s writings. ‘Purity’ and ‘disgust’ are lit- erally ‘incorporated’ in the character of August Engelhard in Imperium , for instance, who seeks to reach purity by nourishing himself solely on coconuts, but ultimately resorts to eating his own thumb. In Faserland , meanwhile, the protagonist exhibits disgust when explicitly recounting instances of leaking bodily fluid s. 25 Totalitarianism and extremism are just two of the themes that can be con- nected to political discourse in Kracht’s work. In this context, Marcel Schmid has also brought the themes of imperialism and utopia to the fore. Schmid argues that the novels Imperium and Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und Schatten comment on the life reform utopias that were popular in the early twentieth century. The term ‘life reform’ refers to different movements that emerged in mainly Protestant countries in Europe and North America, includ- ing groups such as teetotalers, nudists, vegetarians, and hikers. Some members had ties with communist and fascist groups but generally the life reform move- ment was not actively political. Nevertheless, most shared the idea of building utopias, where people live in accordance with nature, refine their bodie s, and improve their nutrition. In some of Kracht’s fictio n, e.g., in Imperium , utopian ideals become a reality with disturbing effect s. Instead of enjoying a peaceful 23 Till Huber, ‘Ausweitung der Kunstzone. Ingo Niermann und Christian Krachts “Docu- Fiction”’, in Depressive Dandys: Spielformen der Dekadenz in der Pop-Moderne , ed. by Alexandra Tacke and Bj ö rn Weyand (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009), pp. 218–33; Till Huber, ‘Im Herzen der Uneigentlichkeit. Überlegungen zu Christian Krachts Nordkorea’, in Christian Kracht: Zu Leben und Werk , ed. by Johannes Birgfeld and Claude D. Conter (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2009), pp. 223–37. 24 See: Innokentij Kreknin, ‘Die Faszination des Totalen. Politische und religi ö se Systeme bei Christian Kracht’, in Autorschaften im Spannungsfeld von Religion und Politik , ed. by Christian Sieg and Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (Würzburg: Ergon, 2014), pp. 145–65. 25 Immanuel Nover, ‘Diskurse des Extremen. Autorschaft als Skandal’, in Christian Kracht , ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt (Munich: text + kriti k, 2017), pp. 24–33, 24. 9 Introduction life in nature, the utopists turn into violent rulers, who differ only slightly from the colonists of the German Empire. 26 More recently, research on Kracht has shifted away from political and aes- thetic analysis. Moritz Baßler and Heinz Drü gh have specifically addressed Kracht’s novel Die Toten , arguing that it exemplifies ‘kontemporäre Positionen des Ästhetischen unter Markt- und Medienbedingunge n’. 27 Kracht’s aes- thetic does not connect to ‘etablierte literaturästhetische Positionen’ but is also not ‘in einem autonomieästhetischen Raum ei n[ge]k apselt’. 28 Christoph Kleinschmidt connects the narration in Kracht’s novels with the philosophy of language. He concludes that it remains unclear if Kracht ‘alles so meint, wie es dasteht, oder doch ganz anders oder beides zugleich’. 29 The caveat concerning a particular reading already applies to Faserland , where the narrator proves to be unreliable and subverts all naive ‘realistic’ readings. One of the most recent contributions to studies on Kracht is the 2018 vol- ume Christian Krachts Weltliteratur: Eine Topographie , edited by Stefan Bronner and Bj ö rn Weyand. Bronner and Weyand’s volume focuses on the geographical settings of Kracht’s novels. Taken as a whole, the authors argue that Kracht’s ‘topography’ expands with each newly published novel and that this expan- sion directly influences the poetological principles at play in each tex t. As a result, Kracht uses a different writing style for every newly explored spac e: the superficial style of 1980s and 1990s pop culture for Germany in Faserland , the style of Heart of Darkness for Africa in Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und Schatten , and the exalted style of Thomas Mann for the German colonies in the Southwest Pacific in Imperium 30 26 Marcel Schmid, ‘Die Enden der Romane: Christian Krachts Adaption lebensreformeri- scher Selbsterneuerung als narratives Verfahren’, Kritische Ausgabe , 18 (2014), 17–20; Marcel Schmid, ‘Das “Imperium” der Lebensreform: Krachts Rezeption utopischer Projekte’, Alman Dili ve Edebiyat ı Dergisi ( The Journal of German Language and Literature ), 34.2 (2015), 59–71. 27 Moritz Baßler and Heinz Drügh, ‘Eine Frage des Modus: Zu Christian Krachts gegenwär- tiger Ästhetik’, in Christian Kracht , ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt (Munich: text + kriti k, 2017), pp. 8–19, 9. 28 Ibid. 29 Christoph Kleinschmidt, ‘Von Zerrspiegeln, M ö bius-Schleifen und Ordnungen des Déjà- vu. Techniken des Erzählens in den Romanen Christian Krachts’, in Christian Kracht , ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt (Munich: text + kriti k, 2017), pp. 44–53, 52. See also: Susanne Komfort-Hein, ‘Harakiri, Hitler und Hollywood: Die Toten’, in Christian Kracht , ed. by Christoph Kleinschmidt (Munich: text + kriti k, 2017), pp. 67–74. 30 Bronner and Weyand, ed., Christian Krachts Weltliteratur . See also: Stefan Bronner, Vom taumelnden Ich zum wahren Übermenschen: Das abgründige Subjekt in Christian Krachts Romanen ‘Faserland’, ‘1979’ und ‘Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten’ (Tübingen: Francke, 2012).