Gather Couplings Depicted By Peter Schneider Expressed As File
without purpose, without craziness, without some reckless assertion isn't worth a fucking thing! I had read The Wall Jumper a few years before and managed elevated expectations.
My friend Roger had selected this one for our book platform during the spring ofa particularly low period of my adult life.
I read and soured, almost by the page, Strange but this is the third postwar German author I've read in the last few months, by coincidence, together with Thomas Bernhard who's Austrian actually and G.
W. Sebald.
But this book, which takes place in a split Germany, reminds me more of Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles.
Both fall somewhere between story and philosophy, both use a scientistprotagonist and science to explore love and relationships, and both are ultimately critiques of the naivte of the generation that gave us the sexual revolutionin their belief that sexual freedom would lead to a better, more generous world.
Schneiders' protagonist Eduard, a molecular biologist in West Germany, has reached the scientifically dubious conclusion that the average life of a relationship is three years, one hundred sixtyseven days and two hours.
He and his two friends, a composer and a East Berlin poetall of whom are in longterm but not really exclusive relationshipsplace bets on who will still be together with their current girlfriends a year hence.
The tone gets less philosophical as the story goes on, but to its detriment.
Too much happens. There are pregnancies, weddings, breakups, a father's death, a trip to Paris to evade cancer, protests at the university, and an elaborate plot by a girlfriend which ends up ensnaring the secret police.
In The Elementary Particles, the protagonists remain almost to the end, completely removed, They are brutal in their assessment of their own motives and in their commentary on love past the age of.
Eduard, on the other hand, quickly turns out to be a playboy who thinks he's absolved by his acceptance of guilt.
Guilt is a theme that ties a few of the story lines together, Eduard's grandfather might have been a Nazi, Eduard is accused of allowing "mice concentration camps" because of his scientific research, Eduard's brother pronounces their mother guilty of suicide then rescinds the decision, the brothers fight over nature/nurture, or in other words how much we are to blame for ourselves.
But the story is about three men navigating relationships, and what role does guilt play there None, if they have their way.
Overall, the story feels unfinished, with lots of good material but too many threads to follow any of them.
That's not to say it's bad, just fragmented,
Eduard Hoffman is a microbiologist with an interest in relationships, He believes he's found "a strain of separation virus" raging in West Berlin in, which terminates every relationship within three years,days, andhours.
As Eduard attempts to evade the virus, he tangles with Germany's Nazi guilt, memories of his father, a wayward mouse, and other threats to his identity in a divided country.
"A little Don Giovanni, a little café sociology, a little laboratory science, a little Berlin witit's a pleasant mix.
"Suzanne Ruta, New York Times Book
"With its poignant valedictory to its protagonists' waning youth and its rueful placing of them in the firing line of history, Couplings achieves a balance of light and dark that is utterly persuasive.
"Michael Upchurch, San Francisco Chronicle Book
I described it to my wife as a cross between "Don Giovanni/Don Juan" and "As You Like It.
" The things I would have found interesting, namely a deeper understanding of the female characters in this book, were glossed over.
I was left with a triad of male personalities, the Kirk/Spock/Bones of Teutonic Literature, which left me saying 'so what' There are moments of beauty in this book the author's description of Jenny was so vivid I can still see her in my mind's eye.
Those moments are rare, however, and aren't enough to carry the book, I need more when I invest my time in a novel: more thoughts provoked more outstanding imagery more plot more reason to keep reading.
This may be a novel I send on its way to a more deserving and appreciative home.
A scientific approach of love and fear through statistics, That is why I chose to read this book, Up till now p., it's a little disappointing though, . . Peter Schneider is a German novelist, His novel Lenz, published in, had become a cult text for the Left,
capturing the feelings of those disappointed by the failure of their utopian revolt.
Since then, Peter Schneider has written novels, short stories and film scripts, that often deal with the fate of members of his generation.
Other works deal with the situation of Berlin before and after German reunification, Schneider is also a major Essayist having moved away from the radicalism of, his work now appears predominantly in bourgeois publications.
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