When Ronja von Rönne suddenly, as they say, became famous about a year ago, at least well-known or notorious, as many thought; when the young author published a text in the “Welt am Sonntag” which, without spending too much time explaining, claimed that feminism was disgusting, a worldview for those who were left behind and losers; when then in the social networks, where these questions are negotiated, many a man wanted to know the phone number of the author and many a woman when she would put her cups back in the cupboard; when summer finally came and Ronja von Rönne read a rather quiet, concentrated text at the Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt, which was about the bad morning after a bad night, a text that the jury took as an opportunity to make a fool of themselves ,if only because, apart from a novel by Christian Kracht that has almost become historical again, she had no point of reference, no criterion, no standard, which, 32 years after Rainald Goetz' appearance in the same place, seemed particularly helpless; So when there was a lot of excitement about this author, the reader naturally asked who this Ronja von Rönne was: a journalist who also tried literature? Or a writer who sometimes writes for the newspaper?Who is this Ronja von Rönne: A journalist who also tries literature? Or a writer who sometimes writes for the newspaper?Who is this Ronja von Rönne: A journalist who also tries literature? Or a writer who sometimes writes for the newspaper?
Claudius Seidl
Editor in the Feuilleton.
Follow I follow
That it doesn't matter as long as the newspaper articles are interesting and the prose texts are worth reading: That's an obvious answer – but it shows too little artistic appreciation.
Ronja von Rönne later said, apparently coquettishly, that she had only tried out her strange opinions on feminism, like trying on a coat – and there was probably a kind of mix-up.
Opinions on undressing?
All the opinions that get on your nerves so much in journalism because they weren't preceded by enough thought, all the hasty, bad, unjust, idiosyncratic, completely baseless and unfounded opinions and insults are a wonderful strategy in literature. Such an opinion written into a prose text can replace pages of psychology and subtle characterization. Such an insult creates a clear picture of the person being insulted and the person who is being insulted, and establishes binding relationships between the two.
Opining and scolding have a great, wonderful tradition in German-language literature - but if you remember Thomas Bernhard's sentences or the anger and unreconciliation of the young Rainald Goetz in your ear, then you are almost amazed at how polite, almost the novelist Ronja von Rönne already sounds well-behaved when her text scolds, thinks, rejects and says no. "We are coming" is the name of the book, which describes the genre rather than the plot. It could just as well be called “I go”, and the I that speaks is called Nora and cannot help it if the reader confuses it with the author.
Nora writes down what she experiences and, above all, what she does not experience because the therapist recommended it to her.
So the book claims to be a kind of diary, a report for the man who is supposed to get Nora free from the panic attacks that they say attack her almost every morning.
Once that's clear, you can close the book again straight away - wrongly connected, I'm a reader and not a doctor, I can't heal this text.
But one can also regard this as a fairly useful construction for writing about being young without claiming literary protection of minors.
Here an I speaks to an older reader, to whom it wants to explain itself and against whom it wants to assert itself at the same time.
Here a reader is waiting for whom language is merely a vehicle for describing facts that lie outside of it.
Nice idiots and old bastards
But an I speaks that already understands the words and sentences as facts, as building blocks of a world in which Nora is a stranger and wants to remain a stranger, if only because she doesn't want to be as old and worn out and fundamentally wrong as she seems to be , the world built of these words feels.
As a basic conflict, this is not necessarily new. Karl Marx, when he was young, described it like this: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”