#markus werner

[kopfdame]

Markus Werner - Zündels Abgang 

[biblioklept]

A put-upon frogman with too little oxygen vs. his angry father in Markus Werner's novel The Frog in the Throat

The hero of Markus Werner’s 1985 novel The Frog in the Throat is Franz Thalmann, a disgraced, divorced, defrocked clergyman, who lives ashamed and diminished, yet nevertheless resilient in a philosophical recalculation of his life. There’s a major complication to Franz’s reevaluation though: the memory (or ghost?) of his stern father Klement turns up as a literal (or is it just metaphorical?)…

View On WordPress

[7r0773r]

The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner, translated by Michael Hofmann

Existential crisis. I've come to you, says a stammering customer, because I feel so strangely sad the whole time, because everything seems so meaningless to me.—(Correction: This was said not by one customer, but by very many; I select one at random, will call him Zemp, and here furnish an incomplete account.)

Growth: pycnic. Form: fleshy. Limbs: curt. Walk more a shuffle. Good blue eyes. Polyester easycare pants, hand-knitted cardigan. Our man Zemp is a primary-school master in his mid-forties, married with children, a major in the reserves.

Does your wife know about your condition?

No no.

You said no twice. Why?

I don't want to tell her, it would only burden her.

Can't she tell anyway?

I try and keep a lid on it.

So you have the feeling it would burden your wife if you told her how you really feel?

Yes, I do. I... I'm not so weak in other ways. I'm trying to fight it, and you, as an expert, I thought you would find the silver bullet.

What silver bullet?

The silver bullet against these moods of mine.

Are you not happy in your gloomy condition, then?

Not at all.

And the feeling that it's all meaningless, that seems inappropriate to you?

It's a virus. Just like a virus. An attack.

I will cut to the chase. Of course, the first part of my "treatment" is to show Zemp that even as husband and major and father he is allowed to show a little weakness; second, that problems of his kind cannot be treated by any "silver bullet"; and thirdly that his symptom is no more hostile than a lighthouse pointing out hidden reefs.—In the next phase, which I will call in the widest sense "political," it's a question of assessing whether feelings of gloom and futility cannot be understood as perfectly appropriate reactions (indicative of a yearning for intactness) to a reality, large stretches of which are so constituted that anyone not dispirited at its aspect ought rather to wonder at his failure so to react.

"Large stretches": Are there, I ask Zemp in a last phase, are there in your life any things or situations that you find unquestionably good and beautiful?—Zemp has a long think, and finally in a half-strangled voice he says: Tulips.

Anything else?

Zemp is silent for what feels like several minutes, and then he says: A proper French kiss.

And a little later, softly: A hot bath and the finale of Haydn's Creation and filet de porc aux fines herbes. Also the smell of violets.

And does all that have meaning for you?

Yes, but I don't ask myself that. (pp. 28-30)

***

Over time, I've made the following discovery: Those books that Helen rejects are the ones I find especially interesting. They are subversive, making clear that their authors, in writing them, did so to avoid doing something far worse. These are the books that crackle subtly, the semi-house-trained powder kegs of books, the incautious, unconsidered, and if you like erroneous ones, and Helen doesn't care for them. They make her come over all maiden-auntish and offended. She is looking to be confirmed, not menaced. Which is where we differ. Being petted just puts me to sleep.(pp. 79-80)

***

I'll be fifty soon and I wonder what being grown-up will feel like. Was I grown-up when I turned twenty-two? For a bet, then, I ate a coffee cup. No problem. My stomach was equal to the challenge. Today, I poke at my sauerkraut. An ungrown-up way of behaving, only confirming one's suspicion that being grown-up, like everything else, is a passing condition. Admittedly, there are sixty-year-olds who cope with everything, and seventy-year-olds who make their way up to the high board and—everyone looking away—dive. But all in all, being grown-up seems to fade, the ability to cope with cold and wet weakens, and our old early sense of threat returns. To the post-adult, many things are intolerable, and more that seem impenetrable to him turn up all the time, exacerbating his sense of alienation: What am I doing in a world that daily grows by a million more things I don't understand, and that complicates itself by facts and arguments that remain mysterious to me? What do I know about microelectronics beyond the flicker? Who can still adjust and define himself in a slew of riddles? Who can resist a sense of impotence, and what with? Who can stave off imbecility and why?

Thus the post-adult, almost desperately, while the grownups frown and exchange glances. (pp. 82-83)

***

People remain a mystery, you can read a hundred books and you'll be no closer to understanding them, that's my view, and when I was younger, I always used to think: When I'm older, I'll work it out. You see, when you're young, you see old fellows with white hair, and you think: They may be old and knackered, but they have experience of life, they're not floundering like us, and maybe they have wisdom. And suddenly you're old and gray yourself, and you realize that's all you are, old and gray and just as clueless as you ever were, and so I say: No one's got the secret. (p. 97)

***

In the morning I'm miserable, at night I'm scared, and during the day I am at pains not to attract attention, putting one foot in front of the other, forming sentences, combing my hair, leaving tips for the waitstaff and buying five tomatoes and answering the telephone in my best and brightest voice, reading this and that in the newspaper, not killing myself, showering regularly. And I give advice to people and listen to them and feel moved by their confidence in me. I sit around, I drink, I brood, I pat myself down for flaws and find many and each evening I say: Starting tomorrow I'm going to get a grip on myself. (p. 101)

***

We live for moments, and are so utterly full of ourselves. One takes the expression "theme," the other speaks of "musical framing," a third says "demand profile," and the terms ring as though those who use them had the expectation of living forever, and I can't understand why the mouth is not accounted among the private parts. We live for moments, and obsess about our trouser creases, and if a soft-boiled egg comes out hard we make a fuss about it. There ought to be a comma here! we say. And: Isn't it high time Hürlimann pruned his hedge? I adore caraway seeds. Not my type. Natural or manmade sponge? You haven't heard the last of this. I am considering what steps to take as Swiss radio has started to fade out yodels after the third verse. Hey, is Meyer queer, he's wearing that pink sweater vest again. We live for moments and are so conceited, so gabby, so superficial-to-high-heaven, and all the time we do our doody we do our doody, and it makes us rotten and stupid and we make a din and fuck stupidly. We don't have the courage for anything, and everything frightens us. We get up early and we do our doody and feel guilty if we lie in, and wish we could claim we had a cold. We take less pleasure in escapades, even before the excess the night before we think of the rue the morning after, not only do we have less enjoyment, we enjoy our enjoyment less, it seems almost obscene, but not renunciation and not doody and not our incessant obedience and biddableness and their consequences, idiocy. We are so tame, so intimidated, pleasantness takes precedence, because everything's so complicated and so happily relative, we're excused in advance for not saying this and not saying that, self-censorship is accounted care, and fear of reality is tolerance, and even the most doddery fool has a chance of being taken for a compromise-ready soul. Is our walk relaxed? It is not. We walk, as we live, hunched, pressed, bent, and ungainly. How do we dance? We do not dance, at the most, we may hop. Where is there a happy face, free from anxiety, free from pretense, free from the fear of disapproval? Where is the evidence that could support my hope that all my night thoughts are merely alcohol- and frog-conditioned nightmares? Anna is dead. She had to go. She didn't fit in. And Kezi slumbers where? Does someone lie at her side, gazing into her face, disbelieving his own good fortune? So or so or any old how, we live for moments and everything withers at a dismaying pace, and the fact that my clothes will outlive me only underlines the misery of it all, while the bells chime brightly and the organ is as dignified as the obituary, the worms bestir themselves, I ventilate. (pp. 109-10)

[biblioklept]

Markus Werner's The Frog in the Throat (Book acquired, late Feb. 2025)

The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner is forthcoming in translation by Michael Hofmann. Publisher NYRB’s blurb: In a small town in Switzerland, Franz—ex-clergyman, ex-husband, current counselor of locals at loose ends— is being haunted by his recently deceased father, Klement. In life, Franz was caught cheating on his wife and defrocked, after which Klement never spoke to him again. In death,…

View On WordPress

[across3country]

DM Bad Salzdetfurth: Werner und Friedrich holen Masters-Titel

DM Bad Salzdetfurth: Werner und Friedrich holen Masters-Titel

FOTO | Ungefährdet zum Titel: Markus Werner ©Erhard Goller   Markus Werner ließ am Samstagabend in Bad Salzdetfurth nichts anbrennen und gewann nach 2015 zum zweiten Mal den Titel in der Masters-Kategorie 1. Bei den älteren Herren der Masters-Kategorie 2 und 3 landete Max Friedrich einen, auch für ihn überraschenden Sieg.   Markus Werner machte sich gleich auf und davon. „Attacke, das war von…

View On WordPress

[mymycheesecake]

“...diesen Vorgang besinnungslos genossen habe, wobei ihr sehr bald klar geworden sei, dass sie sich ihrem Mann in diesem Zustand nicht habe zumuten dürfen. Sie habe ihn darum verlassen, wenn auch nicht im Gefühl der Endgültigkeit, und ihre Schuldgefühle unterdrückt. -Seite 177 ”

[ask-helmut]

Jóhann Jóhannssons “ORPHÉE” live @ Funkhaus Berlin 1.12.2016

Ein ausverkauftes Funkhaus Berlin, ein Jóhann Jóhannsson mit sieben eindrucksvollen Musikern, darunter ein überragendes Streicher Quintett. Ein fulminates Ende mit Standing Ovations und geschmackvolle Electro-Club-Sounds im Anschluss im Foyer für den Heimweg. Auch die Funkhaus-Session No.4 war somit ein eindrucksvolles Erlebnis. Freuen uns schon jetzt sehr auf die Fortführung in 2017 mit José González & The String Theory!

Orphée bei Spotify

Alle diese fantstischen Fotos sind von Markus Werner | http://konzertfotos.berlin

[mindbuilding]

"Für die Bahnfahrt hatte er eine deutsche Zeitung gekauft und sich auf die Lektüre gefreut. Aber schon das Wort ›Maßnahmenpaket‹ nahm ihn fast bis Como in Anspruch. Jenseits der Landesgrenze verweilte er lange bei der Bezeichnung ›Sattelgriff mit Antirutschnoppen‹. Auch darin sah Zündel eine imponierende Gegenposition zu seinem Lebensgestolper.

Zündels Abgang: Roman" von Markus Werner