Our author Jonathan Guggenberger’s recent article in this newspaper has provoked many, some interesting, reactions. A differentiated answer to this from Daniel Stähr – part response, part agreement – can be found on the Blog The Sad Millenials. Stähr offers an explanation for why passionately written criticisms that Jonathan Guggenberger is currently missing are missing: “Every criticism implicitly also includes a personal attack (…) The good criticism is bought at the price of potential new enmities.” However, Stähr continues, no one can afford such hostilities with fans and publishing employees anymore given the generally low financial remuneration.
The pay thing is an important point. In addition, thinking about the role of criticism in career planning is also fruitful from a literary-historical point of view. General review was once an established means of starting a career in the literary world. Handke in Princeton, Goetz in Klagenfurt, such attacks brought attention and cultural capital.
Does it no longer do that? Why not? Have those involved in the literary world become resentful? Or has this form of general condemnation, which conveys aspects of parricide and genius habitus, long since become trivial – which is what Caroline Wahl’s corporate bashing, after she was ignored for serious literary prizes, speaks of? In any case: a lot of material for literary sociology.
Instantaneous water heater and reflection location
Daniel Stähr also encourages people to think about whether the features section can still make books known and authors great. For him, “there is currently only one institution of classical cultural criticism that can bring unknown authors into the spotlight: prizes, and in particular the German Book Prize.”
It should be noted that the feature section was never a self-contained institution, but was always a water heater and a place of reflection for other instances, with whom it alone could have an impact in exchange. There is currently a kind of ping pong game.
Clear distribute the prizes spotlight, But the feature articles are needed for the respective motivations, deepening and stabilization (it is not enough to create hype to say that a literary voice is “new”, you also have to describe what the new consists of). But here too: Nothing against fundamental debates and feature-length self-reflections. It is always important to exchange ideas about the conditions of your own actions.