Kif Kehlmann is a writer, he wants to be one. He is not sitting on his first novel; but he who is coming forward right, too much time goes to auxiliary workers and office jobs, the family – his wife, Suzy, pregnant with twins, and the three-year Bo – must finally get something to eat.
His only Pair of shoes (Adidas) goes out of the glue, the car is ready for the junkyard, the dump just before the foreclosure sale. In this position, the Write is a pain. However, “Worse than writing was not only to write.”
As Kehlmann gets an old friend, the offer to write the auto biography of Siegfried Heidls, bruised swindler, the Australian banks $ 700 million. It is the highest damage in the history of the country. The process is short, the book needs to be a quick shot and a Bestseller.
The author hesitates a little because of his “literary Reputation”, but then he agrees. 10’000 Dollar fee mean: He can pay off a debt, of baby equipment to buy, finished the novel writing.
tough
Heidl, it turns out, however, as a very hard nut to crack for a Ghostwriter, some of it has already worn out. He is a Schwafler and mystifika thousand, which makes the core of his criminal business in the dark and instead, in endless hints about mysterious Affairs, in the intelligence services and the military of various countries were involved. He has “dangerous Knowledge”, which is why he feels constantly threatened.
Asks Kehlmann according to Details, avoids Heidl, or responds with counter-questions, “seemed to be any new story to confirm the previous, as well as to refute, before it was replaced by a third”. Heidl sabotaged the book systematically, and tried, moreover, his young biographer morally to turn around: The world was evil and needed to be cheated.
It is to Despair. The time is running out, the publisher makes printing. Kehlmann doesn’t know what to do, finally, different, to fill the gaps in the cloth by the invention. The Scam is? Heidl in any case, the “anecdotes” from his youth, as he takes on the Beatles met, and John Lennon, the song line from the “Hard Day’s Night” inspired – ecstatic and told you in Interviews.
the story does not Fit perfectly in our presence? Yes, it fits.
Fits the story wonderfully in our presence? In the the most powerful man in the earth “alternative facts” does not invents, if the actual fit him? In a RAID on a politician faster will be exploited, as it can be solved? In the fictitious quotes to the intellectual state of affair? Yes, it fits, and that is why the Australian writer Richard Flanagan, told us today. He has experienced but also really, and that was almost 30 years.
Flanagan himself was not-Yet-author, the Ghostwriter of a major swindler. John Friedrich was the name of that man, actually, a German named Johann Friedrich Hohenberger, based in Australia, a new existence, and millions of loans for the construction of a safety and rescue company ergaunerte, which was better equipped than some government – with a fleet of Helicopters, ships and even a submarine.
Flanagan got a little writing time, also be the keywords was shrouded in fog and subterfuge. After three weeks of Friedrich shot. The Ghostwriter wrote the book, it was released in 1991 under the title “Codename Iago”. In a sense, the false autobiography, Flanagan’s first novel was. The one that followed, made him the most important author in Australia, the book prize winner – with “The narrow path into the Hinterland” and, if the Swedish Academy prize regenerated again, for a viable Nobel candidate.
the vanity of power blind
Why is he coming back now, in “The narrator” on the old story? Because for him, the Friedrich, has become the Siegfried Heidl, appears as an emblematic figure for our time. In it, he discovered trains, the importance of which he worked until today.
This Heidl is so pathetic as a demonic figure. He uses the great confusion, which is fed in the world, and from this confusion is born longing for a leader and Savior figures for his purposes.
That the people are gullible, that the world wants to be cheated, already knew the Old: “Mundus vult decipi.” Heidl is a Virtuoso of Suggestion, a brilliant Manipulator of wishful thinking. Without having to be very active; most of his business partners, the race amounted to almost in your own.
“Content” instead of books
a Ghostwriter Kehlmann it can’t believe: While the increasing home interest rates the trigger of the air, have pushed the banks, the scammers are always higher million loans. Why did you do it, and why the members of the Board of Heidls security company of the impostor could be so easily fooled? Heidl baptized each new ship on one of their names. Vanity makes you blind.
retrospectively, Heidl prophet gets of trains: as a Mephistopheles of the financial crisis. “He would have held a little bit longer, it would be him in the new Millennium may have managed not only to ruin his company and a few banks, but whole countries.”
Friedrich/Heidl fascinated the Mature novelist Flanagan but for another reason: as a kind of brother in the Deceive and Invent. A broad strand of the novel is devoted to the Suffering of the authorship, the crisis of the publishing houses that sell instead of books, only “Content”, and the Bestselleritis.
So the demon wants. Flanagan his Heidl, this incarnation everything is Fake and Evil, he puts the dark shadow posthumously via his Ghostwriter The changes to the complete failure of his “real” novel for television, from script-writer to producer and makes a lot of money with Reality formats – “bulimia competitions or Shows with real cancer patients”. A cynic of the success, so who has learned from Heidl all over the world.
The great depravity
This Kif Kehlmann, the Flanagan, this kind of story can be told, is not a Mature writer-I, but a that is bent from the literary way. Has forgotten how to build an arc of suspense over hundreds of pages, characters, illuminates (or in the twilight), how to use the perspective of the reader of plays, the morality from the style developed. The language of this writer is of the Schalheit of success soaked.
The great novelist Richard Flanagan has chosen such a narrator or established, to the great depravity of the language, to illustrate. This is very, very consistent. But also almost too much of self-denial.
Richard Flanagan: The narrator. Roman. Translated from English by Eva Bonné. Piper, Munich 2018. 448 pages, approx. 37 Swiss francs.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 24.01.2019, 18:33 PM
