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I reported, I portrayed, I embellished, I exaggerated, I fictionalized. It was the beginning of the E-Mail-era, so I wrote more frequently than ever before. Instead of doing any postdoctoral research, I started writing letters to friends in Germany about my stay at Yale. I benefited in many ways from my stay: personally and academically – but not in the way of writing a German Habilitation. It was a great year, coming across outstanding students and professors: Geoffrey Hartman or the divine Harold Bloom. The head of the department invited me for an interview and asked me:Īre you in any way related with the Zelter? And since my contract at Tübingen University ran out, I was offered a job at Yale University, doing postdoctoral research and teaching German at the German Department. More elevated academic work than ever before. Which implied: More meaningful fiction and truth. What they call in Germany eine Habilitation. The consequence being that I stayed on at university − which implied: another dissertation, a postdoctoral dissertation. At least not employable outside university. – and the question arose: What to do next? I went to the job centre and they were absolutely flabbergasted, beginning with the title of my dissertation. Nevertheless, I actually finished my dissertation and I received my Ph.D. While my dissertation was rather a burden and a chore. Opus Eroticum was really an obsession and an overflowing joy. The trouble being that I was much more creative working on Opus Eroticum than on Meaningful Fiction. And so it went on – for years: Meaningful Fiction − Opus Eroticum.
But as soon as he left again, I pressed another button: Opus Eroticum. And he was very pleased to see my efforts. When my supervisor came into my office I instantly pressed a button: Dissertation.
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And, second, how to get rid of them again.« It was probably the politically most incorrect text of that era – at least in place like Tübingen. The first chapter does conclude: »Two types of problems come into being: First, how to gain women. The difference being, that my text was not a diary but rather a kind of mad philosophical treatise, written in a mock academic style. Very much along the lines of Kierkegaard’s Diary of a Seducer. One secret file was entitled: Opus Eroticum. They were rather fragmentary escapes from my dissertation. While I was writing it, on my personal computer, I increasingly stole away from my doctoral files and opened other files, secret files of my first literary endeavors: aphorisms, short stories, beginnings of novels … These were far from being complete works of art. It is indeed a monstrous title of a monstrous work of philology highly theoretical, very philosophical, and hardly intelligible, not even to myself. You are perfectly right in being taken aback.
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I might as well give you the full title of my dissertation: Meaningful Fiction and Truth: A Study of the Aesthetic and Epistemological Problem of Fiction in the Context of European History of Ideas and English Literature. Fortunately, after my exams I was offered the post of a research assistant, teaching literature and writing a doctoral dissertation.
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I didn’t have a clue what I could possibly do with these subjects in terms of a professional career. That was in the Eighties of the last century. I studied Political Science and English Literature at Tübingen University. I might as well tell you how I became a writer at all. Thus, my profoundest apologies in advance. And, finally, to make things even worse: I do not even speak proper English, as you might have already noticed. Although this might even turn out to be a mutual blessing for both you and me. So you can’t really judge my qualities as a writer. And this brings me to the next problem: There are no English translations of my novels. So here I stand, a German novelist, addressing an English-speaking audience. It might be regarded as a contradiction in itself or as an assurance of heavy going dullness. To write novels is bad enough, but to write them in German is quite a problem.
This is not exactly the most attractive of all cultural combinations. I am far from being a shining example of an outstanding success. I should not really be here at all: delivering a graduation speech. Graduation Speech delivered at Bard College, Berlin, May 2014
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