Neue Zürcher Zeitung 06.10.2006

Wilhelm Droste takes a second look at the speech by the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany. He, together with many Hungarian intellectuals, sees it as an impassioned call for a joint effort. "He curses openly out of respect for what has to be accomplished. When he speaks of 'kurva orszag,' for example, he doesn't mean that Hungary is a country of whores, even if that's what the direct translation would suggest. He swears in order to drive away curses. If you want to understand him, you have to consider the context. In his words, which have become a scandal, there lies the chance of an honest new beginning, were there to be a willingness to listen seriously. But Hungary in October 2006 is not looking to understand, but rather to celebrate its dividedness. Everyone is appalled and waiting for the opportunity to be more appalled. Thus, Hungarian is being reduced to a language of smug monologues. Peter Nadas will not be able to rescue it on his own."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 06.10.2006

Ralf Hertel reaches the conclusion at the Berlin conference "Global Ibsen" that Nora (from "A Doll's House") still possesses the potential to disturb. "The excitement is not just historically but also culturally determined. That's the conclusion of Errol Durbach (from British Columbia): students of Indian background see in Nora a strong woman who finally stands up to machos. My Chinese students, on the other hand, can never forgive her for buying individual happiness at the expense of her family.' For Mitsuya Mori (Tokyo), Ibsen's play puts Japanese culture in its entirety to the test."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 06.10.2006

Two weeks before he was to receive the Büchner Prize, the poet Oskar Pastior has died. Michael Lentz recalls a reading in 1992, when he met Pastior for the first time. "But what do I mean by reading? Pastior re-discovers reading, starting with the first syllable, just as he re-discovers poetry. Every sound is plastic. Someone articulates himself with previously unknown concentration. The audience is astounded – and seriously exhilarated. Not understanding something has never before and will never again be such a liberating experience." (see our feature on Pastior here)


Die Welt 06.10.2006

The American author James Ellroy tells Rüdiger Sturm why he never had any qualms about putting his novel, "The Black Dahlia" in the hands of the film industry ("I got good money for it") and explains why he's proud to be an American, but lives in a vacuum. "I never watch films and hardly ever read books or newspapers. I get the information I need from my friends and from the L.A Police Department. I don't own a TV. I occasionally go over to friends to watch a boxing match or watch a film on my own. They put the box at my disposal and I bring the pizza. That's it."


Der Tageszeitung 06.10.2006

Whilst milling around the Frankfurt Book Fair Dirk Knipphals asks himself "whether the good old business of literature didn't secretly kick the bucket a long while ago. Naturally all the components are still there – the authors, the critics, the publishing houses, the books – but it lacks a focus to generate a natural hierachy. No one bothers to go to the critic's Wednesday meeting at the Suhrkamp publishing house, but not because it's the bosom of German literature but because it's simply a Suhrkamp reception. That's still worth something but it's no longer the cradle of Suhrkamp culture or literature itself. It's been replaced by a complex tribal culture of different beliefs about what literature is."


Frankfurter Rundschau 06.10.2006

Elke Buhr admires the devoted perfectionist, Rebecca Horn, "the first lady of the German art scene" and her very personal retrospective. Horn has attended to every last detail and adorned the Martin Gropius Bau atrium with a new 18 metre-high light and sound installation. Buhr says that the artist is ecstatic about the exhibition and believes it helps hush the controversy over her body landscapes. "Her experiments with the body were considered virtually pornographic, particulary as they were made by a woman. Luckily people view her work differently now but it's another good reason to show the works in context."