a world in order
there are items with q. qualtinger (2x), qualtinger/merz, queneau. there are no items with x or y. there is one item with i. ivekovic, rada. combinations of items can be, hm, funny. kraus, karl, beside kureishi, hanif. enzensberger, hans magnus, next to ellroy, james. murakami, haruki, next to müller, heiner. there are so far unnoticed connections. carroll, jonathan, next to carey, peter. both exploring the twisted, the magical, the vaguely – but not certainly – weird inside the regular, the ordinary. algren, nelson, next to ageev, m. an older and well-known surrealist writing (not always, but sometimes) about drugs next to a not so old, hardly known fellow in spirit. nabokov, vladimir, next to musil, robert. giants in narrative. vonnegut, kurt, next to vian, boris – shows how surrealist humour is not the same all over the planet.
rushdie, salman, next to richie, donald. contrast, conflict or confraternity? aged masculine voices of authority, they both are. pretense of looking closely at things which turns out to end up in mushy humanism, written in despair (all aged masculine voices reek of despair), but in good humour. but then there are also differences. at any rate: richie next to rushdie, a kind of revenge at the former, for turning out to leave only a shallow taste after several years in Japan despite having whetted my appetite beforehand. that’s why you’re classified under fiction, donald, and not under non-fiction. live with it.
non-fiction does not follow the alphabet. nietzsche’s collected works next to a small booklet about the female orgasm. leonardo da vinci’s philosophical diaries next to albert camus’ myth of sisyphos. pierre bourdieu’s heavy volume on distinctions next to lilian faderman’s history of lesbianism in the USA. dominique laporte’s “history of shit” (“eine gelehrte geschichte der scheiße”) next to midas dekker’s culinary volume on love between humans and animals in art history. fredric jameson’s heavy work on postmodernism next to mark schilling’s lightweight encyclopedia of japanese pop culture.
found another box full of fiction hs and ks. oh well, re-sort, re-shuffle. and then there is this stuff on the floor, below the lowest shelf. laub-hruby-körperth-schmid, three volumes. some wool, some needles, and an unfinished sock. and then there is this pile. robbins, harold, is the only well-known author in there, joined by various anonymi writing erotic confessions and raunchy tales. a pile left over by my father, one of those that noone else seemed to want.