All guests of the European Literature Days from 2009 to 2014.

[ book tip by Christine Rigler ] Since the 1990s what is typically seen as “young literature” – not only by female authors – is primarily influenced by first person (female) narrators. Their narratives leave plenty of scope for reflection and expressing personal opinion; and their preference for self-assurance in harmony with an aesthetic approach to life is presumably the reason why this genre is popularly received as programmatic literature from the younger generation. The critics often justify recommendations by pointing out how these books reveal what young people think today. In Claus Leggewie’s view, the generation gap is essentially due to a feeling of alienation: “Today, young people are regarded by the older generation as though they were strangers, while they do not see themselves as foreigners in their own country.”
A recurring pattern is noticeable in many novels: young first person narrators still have not decided about their lives, and they indulge in the luxury of boredom, disorientation and occasionally lack of motivation in a capitalist, high-achieving society that drains a person’s energy reserves. Unconditional functioning in a dismal world of work – in contrast to the capitalist ideal of a fitness-trained workaholic – presents rather an alarming vision, which is rarely openly criticized, though frequently blocked out.
(…)
The first person narrator in a short story by the German-Croatian author, Jagoda Marinic (*1977), describes herself (…) as a book worm: “The first picture, which exists of me in my head, is the image of a small girl in front of a bookcase.” This is a description of a scene in the reading corner at kindergarten where the small girl stubbornly remains alone until she is collected again. The narrator goes on several sentences later: “For as long as I can remember, I’ve found comfort in libraries (…).”
This text with the long-winded title – “I wish he had never spoken about the fact that you can only love one person” – recounts an unhappy romance which occurs while the first person narrator runs away from home after a quarrel with her mother. She boards a train and simply departs. A young man strikes up a conversation with her. The girl spends a few days with him in Hamburg. Her time spent with David – annoyingly, he already has a girlfriend (a foreign student about to graduate) – voices the idea that at some point you can only love a single person. This episode ends with the girl’s hurried return home. The protagonist tells the story retrospectively. She is caught between exuberant love poetry and a lament about her parents, who don’t understand, yet who both led tough lives as migrants and are not entirely unsupportive.

From: Christine Grond-Rigler: Ich und die Medien. Neue Literatur von Frauen. (“I and the New Media. New Women’s Literature.”) Studien Verlag: Vienna, Innsbruck 2005. (Chapter “Coming of Age. Ich-Erzählerinnen zwischen Blues und Entwicklungsroman”).

[ book info ] Marinic, Jagoda: Eigentlich ein Heiratsantrag. (original language: Deutsch) Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2001 .