Update: Tommi review of this book available here; it includes some English translations.
OK. Time to break down. Thought I wouldn’t be posting anything new for awhile. But then… something happened – and It’s not what you might think. Recently it took more than four days to get over the anesthesia of a relative minor operation, followed by countless tablets of various pharmaceutical whatnot and hellacious amounts of red wine – and then something has come along to push me beyond the bliss of sedentary (un)imagination. Oh yea. This happening, this something, is like a new awakening put forth through some cynical and, perhaps, diabolical plot planned both in my brain-stem and the various compulsive behavior cubicles of modern corporate publishing houses.
The whole idea of actually writing something that a publisher would want to read is leaving me as slow as the whole idea of actually getting published at this late phase of a very unsuccessful (worst)writing life. And then, right out of nowhere, comes another reminder that THINGS can actually get worse – faster.
Where does it comes from? It comes from a short novel published in pink (sorry, this is a completely unrelated link, aka self-promotion) and written in German by some very nice, sweet lookin’ girl that used to work for MTV Germany or VIVA (the German language MTV equivalent) and basically deals with … the vagina. I guess.
In no way do I want to make fun of the success of English born, German writing Charlotte Roche. Nor do I want at this point to actually admit that I’ve read Feuchtgebiete – or “Wetlands” (or whatever the English publisher will title it). But I did spend about twenty minutes at a local German book store (near Frankfurt) a few months back and glanced through this highly successful first novel. Naturally, I picked it off one of the shelves covering an entire wall of the store like wall-paper because, well, I thought, gee, this book must be abuzz with reading consumer desire (if there is such a thing) if it can occupy so much selling space. Either that or it contains a lot of frat-party language regarding all things that cause pale faces to blush.
Don’t worry. I plan on reading it asap, and then posting more about it on this site. It’s sudden success has even pushed it above Jonathan Littell’s book on my reading list.
After I do finally read it, my thoughts on it will not matter. This book is a runaway success and it hasn’t even been translated beyond the beloved language that can bark so poetically. Not unlike the feelings I had to deal with when Christina Kettering and her FIRST play blew me away…. It doesn’t matter what this novel is about. Perfectly marketed pseudo-porn or whacked-out feminism gone awry, I wish the world would be full of these types of books instead of krapp like this.
My only solace is that these writers are obviously not (worst)writers. I wish them all much success.
In the mean time, if you want to read more about this amazing achievement here a few legitimate links:
Interview with Charlotte Roche.
She’s even in the NY Fucking Times!
Rant on.
-tgs-
June 11, 2008 at 10:21 am |
it pisses me off that women can write about their minge and sell a million books, be seen as saviors of the female species, receive plaudits for it and such. I’m not sure why, probably out of jealousy more than anything else. It doesn’t take talent to write about one’s genitals, just to have them, and have the correct set, i.e. the female kind…who wants to read about a cock? anyway, i could rant about this sort of thing all day and night, but i’ll leave that for the pub!