Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre and Martin Suter talk about the aesthetics of swimwear, drugs, culinary arts or the fascination of so many people from the island of Íbiza and the local Club Pacha in “Everyone has gotten so serious”.
Great reading fun!
Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre is annoying.
Or did you just get too serious yourself?
You have to give him one thing: his punchlines are right.
One after the other, Stuckrad-Barre pounds out in this motley, haphazard, rapid mess of conversation between him and his fellow writer and friend Martin Suter.
He is 27 years older than the 45-year-old Stuckrad-Barre.
This also resonates in the exchange of words that appeared in Diogenes, which the two of them had in a luxury hotel on the Baltic Sea.
For example in the most beautiful of the 16 conversations - about what else ?!, love.
"Stuckrad-Barre: When did you
(Suter and his wife, d. Red.)
are you in love with each other? "Suter:" 1975 dash 76. "Stuckrad-Barre:" That's when I was born.
So in front of the line. "Suter: You see. I was already in love."
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The two writers also philosophize about the Pacha nightclub on Íbiza.
© Ullstein
This is how it goes over 272 pages.
A happy thought ping pong;
a stream of consciousness flowing from two brains;
a philosophizing that simply excludes everything serious like politics, climate change, pandemic.
Stuckrad-Barre also takes care of that.
For example, when - starting from the topic of love - they spin on to poems, opium, Bertolt Brecht, rocket leaves, in order to somehow get lost to Helmut Kohl.
Then the enfant terrible of the two finds the exit again, with his own impetuous manner: “But back to love.
He had Hannelore.
That was love - from her.
From his point of view it was probably just supper under the crucifix.
I don't even want to talk about him.
That disgusts me.
So I'm in love
And you love. "
And at some point they will sing together "Im Frühau zu Berge"
“Everyone got so serious” is like the little book with conversations between Ferdinand von Schirach and Alexander Kluge - only much more fun.
Because Stuckrad-Barre likes his interlocutor like a fatherly friend and wants to be recognized - but Suter simply lets that roll off him.
The hitting skills of the younger one sometimes seem too eager, too squinting for effect.
Like someone who always has crazy mind games ready and sprinkles them as if they had just occurred to him.
It works in combination with Martin Suter's wonderfully laconic (Swiss) style. One over-revs with his - O-Ton Stuckrad-Barre - "Witzelei-Zwang", the other hooks up with his rascal cunning.
And surprised.
For example with the revelation that he sings all the time at home.
Favorite?
"In the morning dew to the mountains".
Wonderful when they kick off together.
And Suter then briefly and truthfully summarizes: "That's just the nice thing when there are two of you, isn't it?"
Wonderful "unconceptional talk"
So this book is an invitation not to take yourself too seriously.
Martin Suter again: “I think the problem most people have is not that they are not taken seriously, but that they take themselves so seriously.
That's where politics and often love fails. ”You can see them brooding and laughing;
one imagines how much fun they must have had to be paid for something that is priceless: many hours between two dissimilar friends.
With a loud - O-Ton Suter - "unconceptional gibberish".
And in the end she takes them
both
very deeply to the heart.
Seriously.
Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre / Martin Suter:
“Everyone got so serious”.
Diogenes Verlag Zurich, 272 pages;
22 euros.
You can buy the book here at the local dealer around the corner
