Incentives - New Literature from Austria

readme.cc provides multilingual access to the latest Austrian literature. In collaboration with the Literaturhaus in Vienna the reading forum offers the latest insights about literature published in Austria.

Literary journalists and researchers introduce current new publications; reading samples allow for a closer look at the texts; short portraits of the authors complement the picture.

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The Project "Incentives" targets at the internationalization of Austrian literature, respectively the translation of current texts.

Project realization: the Office of Documentation of Contemporary Austrian Literature (reviews, author’s portraits) – The Association of Translators (translations) – readme.cc (infrastructure).

http://www.literaturhaus.at

[ book tip by Incentives ] How deep is rock bottom?

When did the plunge begin? How far down is the bottom? These are questions asked only by those who have long been in free fall. People driven only by fear, for whom “hope” is a meaningless word. People like the residents of the Langfeld housing projects, a gray concrete complex between train tracks, the garbage dump and a riverside no-man’s land full of impromptu trailer parks inhabited by Romanians and Bulgarians. Behind the cemetery wall are metal shipping containers that house the homeless. Whoever grows up here is already lost at birth.

The tenants of the Langfeld projects are known only by nicknames:“the courtyard lady,” “the cretin,” or “the one-legged woman.” Still, people in the complex know the mother of the nameless narrator. They text message him every time she fails to make it home from her after-work drink with her colleagues. When she does get home, she continues drinking until she falls asleep in her own vomit at the kitchen table, where she stays until morning. As long as she leaves him alone – the son whom she once, in a drunken moment, says is nothing but a burden (a Ballastexisten; literally, a “being of burden”).
The only thing the nameless boy can feel is self-inflicted pain, when his hand burns from holding hot light bulbs or their shards cut his palm. Love isn’t a word you can feel. Love is the white spots on the wall where his mother’s photos used to hang before she killed herself. Or the receipts on which his mother kept a diary, only to burn them after writing. The final one reads: “How does ‘no prospects’ taste?” In the end, all that’s left of her is a short death notice under “Miscellaneous News.”

The author counters the bitterness of this life with compassionately precise sentences describing “the short-changed”. His narrative gives these people a history, restoring their dignity. As if he would like his gentle descriptions to caress this relentless social reality, and perhaps – at least for a few pages – redeem it. Dolgan’s powerful and closely-woven language reveals his extraordinary powers of observation. The precision and maturity of his accurate poetic prose and his psychological insight are surprising in such a young author. Dolgan’s debut, Ballastexistenz, is dark, brutal and excellently written.

Abridged version of the review by Michaela Schmitz, November 2013. English translation by Laura Radosh.

Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=10125

[ book info ] Dolgan, Christoph: Ballastexistenz. (original language: German) Droschl Verlag, Graz, 2013 . ISBN: 978-3-854208-42-6.