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).

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[ book tip by Incentives ] With Crossings, Marlene Streeruwitz has created an anti-modern decadent novel while continuing to follow her now familiar leitmotifs – money, hopelessness, other worlds – in her usual readable way.
In the world of the wealthy Max, everything can be bought and nothing is impossible: 'One has to sit on money, as on a horse. [...] One has to guide money like a good rider, with the reins in the snaffle.'
When his relationship to Lilli, whose name, like that of ‘Helene’ and ‘Margarethe’, is yet another reference to Streeruwitz's own name, breaks down, Max realizes that: 'It was lonely riding money'.

Needing cosmetic dental surgery, Max travels from Vienna to Venice, where he meets the artist Gianni. Afterwards he employs a marriage agency, which puts him in touch with Francesca, 'an Englishwoman from an old-established family, in which the daughters had always been exchanged for money'. In London, he finally takes on a new identity and decides from now on to live as an artist.

Crossings is set in four European cities. Whereas Vienna and Zürich represent inescapable centres of a capitalist society, Venice and London are other worlds, which show that the possibility of change does at least exist.

As in Verführungen (‘Seductions’), Partygirl or Majakowskiring, Streeruwitz’s originality is also expressed on the syntactic level in Crossings. In her Tübingen Lectures on Poetry, the authoress said: 'The complete sentence is a lie'. In contrast to the traditional fragmentary way of narrating, which makes use of natural elliptical patterns of thought, and therefore increases the reading speed, Streeruwitz creates an artistic language, which challenges the reader to pause for a moment and reflect.

(Translated by Peter Waugh)
Abridged review by Christine Schranz, September 2008.
Full-length review

[ book info ] Streeruwitz, Marlene: Kreuzungen. (Crossings). (original language: Deutsch) S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt, 2008 . ISBN: 978-3-10-074434-0.