The Principles of Life on Black Friday – Chronicle of Emotions, Notebook 1
Alexander Kluge, Martin Chalmers, Richard Langston
List price £22.99
Product Details
- Format:
- Hardback
- ISBN:
- 9781803092249
- Published:
- 04 May 2023
- Publisher:
- Seagull Books London Ltd
- Dimensions:
- 278 pages - 9 x 6mm
- Availability:
- Available
Categories:
A highly readable and lighthearted, yet intellectual-stimulating exploration of the modern human condition. This volume concerns itself with the question of time, from the description of a brief fragment passing by in a matter of minutes to stories of the unexpected stock-market crash of 1929, a once-in-a-century event that Europeans call ‘Black Friday’ because Wall Street’s collapse reached the Old World one day later. Through this exploration of time, Kluge ponders some fundamental questions not altered by the passing of time: What can I trust? How can I protect myself? What should I be afraid of? Our age today has achieved a new kind of obscurity. We’ve encountered a pandemic. We’ve witnessed the Capitol riots. We see before us inflation, war, and a burning planet. We gaze at the world with suspense. What we need in our lives is orientation—just like ships that navigate the high seas. We might just find that in Kluge’s vignettes and stories.
1. 0.0001% of a lifetime 2. An afternoon on the Ligurian coast 3. A case of time pressure 4. Commentary on Anna Karenina 5. Blood like bubbling water 6. Emotion consists of what remains unused 7. A living relationship to work 8. Causality outstripped 9. Hitler as “moonwalker 10. A glut of informers 11. An unusual case of lobbying 12. Heiner Müller and “the figure of the worker” 13. A musical interlude for great singing machines 14. Lohengrin in Leningrad 15. Twilight of the Gods in Vienna 16. Heiner Müller’s last words on the function of theatre 17. The death of the gods – a black hole at the heart of Rome 18. In another land 19. What is power of the mind? 20. The conman and happiness 21. Is one allowed to defend oneself against a helpless man? 22. Solar eclipse 23. The consistency of the moon 24. The poets of organisation 25. Siberian time reserves 26. The glowing block in the balance; the diver Ananenko 27. A near disaster 28. A new age 29. The immortal woman 30. A memorial to unknown soldiers 31. A visit to Robert Musil in 1942 32. A story of a tyrant 33. “Shore of fate 34. Reader-friendly articles must tell their stories spatially 35. A sudden outbreak of defeatism 36. Is it possible to find something without having any hope? 37. The strong influence of a daughter 38. Out of sight, out of mind 39. Lovestruck conspirators of a more noble humanity 40. Stauffenberg’s grave 41. Principles of life on Black Friday I 42. Principles of life on Black Friday II 43. Torch of freedom 44. That was the farewell to the industrial age 45. Turkish honey 46. The proprietor 47. A dignified form of property
Alexander Kluge is one of the major German fiction writers of the late twentieth century and an important social critic. As a filmmaker, he is credited with the launch of the New German Cinema movement. Martin Chalmers (1948–2014) was a Berlin-based translator from Glasgow. He translated some of the best-known German-language writers, including Herta Müller, Elfriede Jelinek, and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Richard Langston is professor of German literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Dark Matter: A Guide to Alexander Klugeand Oskar Negt, editor of Difference and Orientation: An Alexander Kluge Reader, and the lead translator of Kluge and Oskar Negt’s History and Obstinacy.