Autoren, die von 2009 bis 2014 Gast waren bei den Europäischen Literaturtagen.

[ Buchtipp von Christine Rigler ] Going clubbing and thinking – these two don‟t fit well together. If you go clubbing, you can forget thinking. A thinker spoils clubbing. “Ausgehen” (“Going Out”) by Barbi Marković is a wonderful thought pattern about going out, nightlife, listening to music and doing drugs. Milica went out earlier on Saturday with the first person narrator, and with Bojana on Sunday. But since Bojana no longer goes out, and just vegetates in front of the box, Milica also went out on Sunday with the narrator because going out alone is horrendous – what might happen to Milica? Music, drugs and style – and especially style – these are the central topics of this prose. Nothing new here – if only this unique sound were not present, which is reminiscent of a quite different type of book.

In 1971 Thomas Bernhard allowed a narrative identity to carry on walking – with Oehler, since Karrer was taken to Steinhof. Two grumpy blokes trash the world with their surly mockery and indulge in an eloquent celebration of the dreadful boredom of their existence. Thomas Bernhard‟s book “Gehen” (“Walking”) has an affinity with “Ausgehen” (“Going Out”) – not in an accidental and arbitrary fashion, but with the accuracy of a female writer, who is evidently fond of her literary model and simultaneously places him in a new realm. „Walking‟ and „thinking‟ become „clubbing‟ and „thinking‟. What remains is the impossibility of a satisfactory existence, or respectively the rhetorically sophisticated enjoyment of the ambiguity between being and contemplation.

While Marković accurately follows her literary example in her book, even to the finest nuances, she achieves a stupendous alienating effect. The television replaces the clinic for mental patients, and old becomes young – only the boredom and the despair remain constant. Marković formulates a wonderful paraphrase based on a literary forerunner and renews this through her own book. Both are connected by a convincing literary sound. “Basically, everything that is said, and quoted, is also a sentence uttered by Bojana, which I think of in this context”.

[ Favourite quote ] The events, which we go to, ought not to become the subject of our thoughts, for if we do not have enough stamina, then we can first be overcome by the disease of boredom, and later by fatal despair. In the same way as our movement is stifled in the clubbing scene, which surrounds us, and has and will surround us, if we cannot take a break from clubbing – so-called Belgrade trash or „nothing matters away‟ clubbing – then it will be precisely at this moment when satiation sets in. The art of going out lies in the art, says Milica, of taking a break before the instant when we‟ve had enough.

[ Info ] Marković, Barbi: Ausgehen. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2009 .