2023-05-16 12:33:07
BDespite his 60 years, ernd Begemann is a “boy from the provinces”, as he never tires of emphasizing, from East Westphalia to be more precise. He was also the first punk in Bad Salzuflen. Tocotronic and all the economic champions of the Hamburg school would be unthinkable without Begemann and his urban folk-electro album called “Rezession, Baby!” from 1993. He is a pioneer and also a bit of a knight of the sad figure, he gallops through the musical landscape with his own unshakable personality, always a tip of his nose ahead, often a gallop too far. Many can’t keep up and collect fame and honor for that very reason.
After all, last year he was on the road as an ambassador for German songs in Japan and was able to make his Asian fans happy. One could attribute nobility to him, because he probably hates nothing more than small-heartedness and stinginess. The happiness and exuberance of the audience are his manna, concerts lasting three and a half hours are not uncommon.
In more than 20 albums and over 400 songs, he sings of love, preferring to be “twice second choice” to being content with the monotony of monogamy. In November of last year, selected song lyrics were published by Ventilverlag, titles and subtitles speak volumes: “Give me a twelfth chance” and “I’ll disappoint you as only I can”.
The man in the gold silk shirt is a charmer and a crooner wild at heart and somehow, thanks to generosity, also a feminist, because he leaves women spoiled for choice in song and life. He admires Bert Kaempfert and offers Berlin, Pasing, Barmstedt and Ostfildern insights into what is not so loud and garish in life: a big heart, a noble spirit, drama and cappricci. He sharpened his senses as a reader of Balzac, Updike and, quite gallantly, Prince Valiant, as he explains in his own words below.
Hal Foster: Prince Valiant
The first epic work that really got to me. The comic classic is told very artistically. I visited him again a few years ago. The book gives examples of what heroic action is: not just being victorious in battle, but acting justly, acting prudently, acting for a community. Many moral questions are asked, and many ecological questions are also addressed. There are a few places where the forest is being cut down that Prince Valiant wonders if that’s an improvement now. Really good!
Martin Walser: Marriages in Philippsburg
A formative book for me. The imaginary city of Philippsburg, a kind of checksum of all German cities. Small note: In reality, the checksum of all German cities is Bielefeld, as statisticians have found out. The average number, the average composition of the population, the average square footage of cinemas per population…
I imagine that Martin Walser’s Philippsburg would actually be Bielefeld. It works as a melodrama, as a satire. It is also a slightly cabaret book, but shows a lot of what held the old, lost Federal Republic together, what always attacked it to its very foundations. Like any good book, it reveals what is hidden.
John Updike: Hide it
A brilliant writer who seems unread today, which is a shame. Maybe because the kind of relationship his books are about doesn’t seem to exist anymore. But of course the patterns in monogamous couple relationships are still the same, they are the sweet futilities embedded in the structure of a neighborhood, a city, an economic cycle. John Updike shows us this with ease. He’s basically the Blueprint for Jonathan Franzen and so on.
I think 1968’s Couples is Updike’s first big hit book, before the Rabbit series. At the time it was a silent revolution. There are no loud things happening in the book, no big explosions, no train derailments. He says how we live – and that’s breathtaking and that’s very dangerous, even though it looks so ordered. I appreciate the book very much.
Irmgard Keun: The artificial silk girl
Yes, it’s a bit of an over-the-top book. A lot of people don’t take it seriously as literature. It is a colportage novel, an entertainment novel, but written with so much verve and fire and empathy! The Silken Girl showed me that you can move geographically, you can go anywhere, you can romp to make something of your life, you can have adventures, and that there will probably be a price to pay. But that’s okay, because it’s more lively than not moving at all. Keun seems to present us with a special woman and thereby achieves a basic description of big-city life and of big ambitions, which realistically are rarely all fulfilled.
Ursula K. Le Guin: Winterplanet
Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels influenced me. Looking back, it’s mind-boggling how progressive she was, how many subjects she addressed first, always in her light, bright prose. I appreciate her very much. You could pick any book by her. 1969’s “Winter Planet” is perhaps the most advanced of the moment. It’s about a society in which the residents change their gender. Ursula K. Le Guin suggests that this makes them more complete beings, freer beings. That’s a beautiful thought, and because the author is Ursula K. Le Guin, she mercilessly questions the concept. She doesn’t trust her own design. She takes the litmus test. She throws her utopia against the wall, and it’s not just good things that get stuck.
Honoré de Balzac: Splendor and Misery of the Courtesans
All of the Balzac books that are set in the big city are fantastic. His small-town novels are every bit as haunting as the small towns they set in, but his big-city novels are pretty much all yours to choose from. I’ll take “The Glory and Misery of the Courtesans”. Nobody loved more than Balzac. Proust, for example, despises all people who don’t is are. He describes people accurately, but without empathy. For Proust, others are mostly annoying apparitions, obstacles in his own world. For Balzac, on the other hand, the people who populate his novels – everyone from the humblest coachman to the noblewoman – are the whole world. That’s all we have, he suggests.
These people around us – we need to look at them more closely. Balzac was a voyeuristic flâneur, as he himself admitted. He followed strangers through the back alleys, he listened at their windows… and then he brought the spoils home to us and let us partake and let us sit down in the parlors, let us overhear hateful oaths and curses and the tenderest confessions of love. Balzac wants to take us anywhere – and he’s doing it. That’s why he’s the greatest. He might not have been the best. There were perhaps more stylistically superior writers, but he is the greatest because he had the greatest heart.
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