Germans Going Global (eBook)

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Anke S. Biendarra, University of California, Irvine, USA.

Acknowledgements 9
Introduction: Contemporary German Literature and Cultural Globalization 11
1 Effects of Globalization on the Literary Marketplace and Contemporary Authorship 29
Distinctive Features of Germany’s Literary Marketplace 30
Authorship: Changed Paradigms 33
Showing the Authorial Self 38
Fräuleinwunder 45
The Rise of New German Pop Literature 48
Fashioning the Authorial Self on the World Wide Web 53
Personal Web Sites as a Medium of Authorial Self Representation 56
Authorship 2.0: Stephenie Meyer 61
2 Globalizing German Literature: Literary Debates around the Millennium 67
Debates among Older Intellectuals 69
...ist alles so schön bunt hier: Debates on Contemporary Realism 75
Authentische Alltäglichkeit: Turning towards a Literature of the Authentic Everyday 84
Ingo Schulze’s Simple Storys (1998) 86
Elke Naters’s Königinnen (1998) and Lügen (1999) 91
3 Brave New Work World: Narratives of the New Economy 99
Recent Developments in the German Economy 103
The Individual in Precarious Times 107
A Short History of Work Literature 110
Narratives of Work in the Aughts 112
The Aesthetics of the Surface: The Work of (M)Ad Men in Joachim Bessing’s Wir Maschine (2001) and Rainer Merkel’s Das Jahr der Wunder (2001) 113
Economized Bodies: John von Düffel’s EGO (2001) 126
The Readability of the World in Ghostly Times: Kathrin Röggla’s wir schlafen nicht (2004) 130
4 Forms of Social Realism: Unemployment in Contemporary Narratives 139
Sentenced to Idleness: Annette Pehnt’s Mobbing (2007) and Jakob Hein’s Herr Jensen steigt aus (2006) 142
Flotsam of Globalization: Joachim Zelter’s Die Schule der Arbeitslosen (2006) 149
5 Traveling Without Moving? Narratives of (Im)Mobility 157
Global Tourists in Judith Hermann’s Nichts als Gespenster (2003) 163
Mobile Cosmopolitans in Gregor Hens’s Transfer Lounge (2003) 167
Global and Local Violence: Gregor Hens’s Matta verlässt seine Kinder (2004) 170
Hedonism Gone Global: Christian Kracht’s Der gelbe Bleistift (1999) 174
No Happiness on Earth: Sibylle Berg’s Die Fahrt (2007) 182
Retreating to the Province: Florian Illies’s Ortsgespräch (2006) 190
6 Coda: Piles of Authenticity: Narrating 09/11 199
Works Cited 211
Index 237