[ book tip by Literatur Schweiz ] «Alles wird wie niemand will» brings together a curious set of stories that already reveal their flightiness in the print space. They do not appear as compact as prose text usually does, rather, they frazzle at the edges – when the sentences jump onto the next line. It is Jens Nielsen’s stage experience that informs this loose form. His texts are ideal for oral performances.
«Alles wird wie niemand will» signals in its very title that reality cannot be controlled. The first few stories set a fairy tale tone. Once upon a time, for example, there was a man, «who could say anything». Like a plant he unexpectedly grew from a meadow. People listened to his words, they still listened when, after a thousand years, he had said everything and became grass again. Later, a first-person narrator appears who literally is beside himself. From a theatre balcony he loses one body part after the other. They fall down and grow onto a woman wearing a strapless dress. Sometimes Nielsen’s stories remind us of Bichsel’s «Kindergeschichten» insofar that they encounter things with a seemingly innocent naivety. Or they call to mind the existential slapstick in Beckett’s dramas. They are absurd, and wonderfully true – it seems.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl.by Anja Hälg)

[ Favourite quote ] «Die Schwerkraft ist
Die Schwerkraft ist wie
Wie jemand der immer nach Hause will (nuscheln)»

[ book info ] Nielsen, Jens: Alles wird wie niemand will. (original language: German) Everything Is as No One Wants. Verlag Der gesunde Menschenversand, Luzern, 2009 . ISBN: 978-3-905825-14-5.