 Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hello everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute. I'm Laura Shepard, Director of Events. We're very pleased to host this program with Thomas Brucig, author of The Short End of the Sun Alley, with translator Jonathan Fransen, author of Crossroads. We are very proud to present this program along with the Graduate Institute of San Francisco and the German Consulate of San Francisco. So, first of all, we'd like to welcome Oliver Schramm, our German Consul General, and also Elena Sins, who is the Deputy Consul. And also we welcome from the Graduate Institute, Executive Director Naomi John-Jerry, and the Director of Programs and Public Events, Bettina Wodionko. Our talk today will be followed by a Q&A with you, our audience, and we will have books to sell and also to sign after our program. So, first I'd like to welcome German Consul General Oliver Schramm. Well, thank you, Laura. Thank you all so much for hosting us tonight. Thank you both for your wonderful, your venerated, iconic San Francisco landmark institution, the Mechanics Institute, the place as old as the Constitution of the Great State of California, and that has seen so many important landmark twists and turns off and in the Golden City History Road Bettina and Naomi are close friends of one of the team of the Good Institute of San Francisco. Thank you for being such great partners in promoting friendship. Those of us who've been California, Pacific Northwest, besides in Germany, especially the field of arts and literature culture that helped us understand our times and helped us explain to each other our thinking, our emotions, so much better than economic and all scientific relations that we could at least don't tell that to visiting delegations here. And of course, thank you to the shining stars of tonight's Landworld, renowned, acclaimed, beloved, and twice-winning Uber novelist, essayist, and editor, and most of all, great friend of Germany from Germany, and see what a bunch of arts Germanics can do. These young talents out there who could pass with good endurance in German music, German reunification whisperer, and magical life artists, funny in a charming way, something of a leading voice when it comes to Spain and interpret many views, perceptions about and around the humanity in human corner only of our German society, but the resilience of human nature. In German society, in people often it's still dealing with the instructing, the degree, and the rubble of the performance, the iterations. This is the 20th century that left with us. Failed in the experiment, Nazi terror, Showa, today's Showa day, post-war division in 41 years of socialist regime in the East of Argentina. Dear friends, no need to worry. I will not go further in my own attempts to describe what's best described by real experts and will refrain from talking about the literary achievements of these two towering, amazing authors and champions of the world. Instead, I wanted to simply thank you for your time, and for your willingness to present this wonderful piece of art tonight and to masterfully translate novel the short end of the Sondale and for sharing your thoughts and views with our audience tonight. I happened to watch a movie, Sondale, two days ago with my three sons and I could not believe my own feeling following Michael Kubitsch's or rather Michael Heron's life and his friends Buschelt and Mario in their comic adventures without claiming the place in their small world and their own bits and pieces. How could I have forgotten how many things, how many things looked and felt like them? Mind you, I was only a vessel at the time visiting members of my family in remote Evers Valley in the world and travelling through the GDR many times in my little Mexico people, anxious not to always be by you I think an excellent view of 60 to 65 and to get stopped 32 horsepowers has to get stopped by the folk of those years. How come I forgot so much of the youthling at the time, like a pest or something cool or that a nicky wasn't just a neighbor, rather a t-shirt and to the ova wasn't roadkill but a hearty baby not to everyone and how to explain to my young ones the funny clothes and the style of the time yet most of all they were astonished to see that despite the total lack of so many things normal today no cell phones families waiting for home connection the homes for years and worst of all and it is sensible no switch, no P.S.5 these youngsters never seem to have time after all a lot of hate on the scene judging from the wild scenes of the big and hilariously disastrous party Dear friends, that to me is one of the most astonishing magic tricks of great literature transcending time, culture catapulting you into past eras but also reconnecting you with your own experiences thus creating or reigniting deep feelings opening up sometimes long forgotten chambers near home and at the same time gripping you with a compelling story with the fate of its heroes that is directed or dictated by nothing else than the same or similar conditions of the fundamental human life existence, love, fear, joy sadness and anger and you can see yourself reflected on it sometimes relate to it and find consolation in the fact that one is not alone in feeling, fighting and fearing things whether it is the heartbreaking story of the Lambert Cavali in the awarding of Corrections or the alleged exploits of Klaus Wohl who was inhaling Pivia bringing the Berlin Wall down in this whole special way so thank you Jonathan and Thomas for conjuring up these precious moments and feelings with your words and so many of your readers thank you also for forming this formidable you as German team of yours I'm sure learning from and teaching each other during your tours through the ever changing American luncheon the times when there was so much conflict when climate change is not just a threat hanging over us but already a visible reality in our countries when globalism and capitalism seem to have become somewhat bigish terms in their meaning and when social networks don't seem to be such social places after all it is good to have strong personal ties and connections and to build on them like you two do by the way did you know that human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak so let me just thank you again for having me and listening to me never before they call please don't upset it I better stop inspiring and moving words now I would like to introduce Bettina Boryanka director of public programs at the group institute thank you so very much and thank you for being such wonderful hosts and thank you for being such wonderful colleagues and thank you both for being here that is a special night for us all as the globally active cultural institution of the federal republic of Germany the good institute advocates for understanding between Germany Europe and the world cultural exchange is at the very centre of our mission and the very centre of this evening is the book the short and of the zonanani and its unique genesis as well as the unique genesis of its translation as an act, as a process a result of extensive studies and active cultural encounters as well as well as exchanges through listening to and learning from each other's perspective and experience that's why this evening is so special for us and very meaningful for me the relationship between the book and its translation emphasises the sensitivity and understanding the willingness and unconditional desire to explore and discover to the recognition of context-based differences but also of commonalities between all of us as human beings and with all of the opportunities and challenges I think that there is so much that we can draw from today what continues to be relevant translations and this I think is particularly the case for literary translations allow us as readers to gain access to new perspectives worldviews, particular ways of life in a certain time and place a different kind of understanding for cultural norms and framings that we wouldn't otherwise have direct access to sometimes in a very implicit way sometimes in an explicit way Jonathan Franklin describes the unique genesis of the translation the resulting text a dual labour of law Jenny Watson's and his very own and this is something I think for us as the readers to be a part of that and witnessing this in the act of the reception that makes it so special and the mutual respect the profound exchange being open towards each other and the meaningful importance of all of these expert aspects the book carries in it makes it for me so very outstanding to be here together with the two of you witnessing that already in the process of the preparation for this event and now continuing that with all of you together so thank you very much for the time and collaborations as well we're just delighted to have both of the authors together and to find out about their collaboration on this project on this book the short end of Son and Allie is funny comic with a mischievous humor, delightful characters and also some very comic situations it's a really touching portrayal of a family community as they endure the shadow of the iron curtain Thomas Bruzik is the author of seven novels including the book I need a correction of the pronunciation and Heroes Like Us he's worked with Edgar Wright on his epic hymen he was born in East Berlin and now divides his time between Berlin and Mecklenburg Jonathan Franzen is the author of six novels including the Corrections, Freedom and Crossroads and five works of non-fiction, most recently Far and Away and The End of the End of the Earth all published by and he's here from Santa Cruz so please welcome Thomas Bruzik and Jonathan Franzen the sound is so good that I actually can't hear its amplification but I still am audible that's great louder I'm speaking as loud as I really want to eat the mic like that yes okay might have put the mask back Thomas is doing a whirlwind tour for this book we met up in Chicago and did events in Milwaukee and he's done other things in Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Paul and it's really like what two nights here and you're on to Miami just morning I was in the middle school in the school in Montview I would never have guessed that there was such a thing but first of all just a big thank you to the Mechanics Institute and the Council and the Growthy Institute for arranging this this is a sweet little space I did not know about it with lots of empty chessboards right next door we are going to do a little conversation of some sort and then we'll take some questions from the audience if there are any I thought I might just start by doing a reading from the book in English just to give you a taste of what it's like and maybe I'll even spam the lecture like this by the way Thomas I had a terrible thought which was while listening to the lovely speeches we didn't do the title right it should have just been the short end because nobody can pronounce Zonanade no one can pronounce Zonanade unless they know German the short end so it's actually the title in German is so at the shorter end of the Zonanade and I thought okay we could do better than that for English we'll just call it the short end because it can kind of get the short end of the stick which is literally what which is the setup for the book Long Street 1945 city gets divided like 98% of the street is in the west if you happen to live in that address you've got TV and great cars and lots of money and by whatever you want travel anywhere you want to and if you're like a couple of house numbers over you don't and this is the thing I should start reading the courses oh actually yes you're going to read in German I read in German just to give a little say this is a punishment for those who decided against a German course those who had German courses now have to benefit all the others telling their children or boys at ten German courses so I for those of you who speak a little German would like to try to follow along this is basically this is an imagined history of how there came to be this little bit that was on it's only two or three minutes it's ended at the beginning of the book I just want to prove that there's really a German version there are countless possibilities to give the address price and Michael Kubisch who lives in the Sonnenallee always experienced that the Sonnenallee free and even sentimental readings and solutions after Michael Kubisch's experience the Sonnenallee especially in uncertain moments and even tense situations self-sacred Saxons were always friendly when they found out that here they had to do with a Berlin who lived in the Sonnenallee Michael Kubisch could imagine that even at the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945 when Joseph Stalin Harris Truman and Winston Churchill held the former Reich's headquarters in the sector the mention of the Sonnenallee was a bit disturbing especially with Stalin the street with the so beautiful name Sonnenallee didn't want to leave Stalin in the US at least not completely that's how he had a promise with Harris Truman on the Sonnenallee who of course left Stalin didn't let go and quickly threatened to become President of the United States Stalin and Truman's nose spits almost touched the British premiere between the two after they broke up and even before the World Cup he saw for the first time that the Sonnenallee is over 4 km long Churchill was traditionally on the American side and everyone in the room decided to let Stalin talk about the Sonnenallee and as Churchill knew that he was already cold Stalin was so afraid to give him fire and when Churchill spent his first train he thought how Stalin would return to the square when Churchill left again but Stalin took a sip of 60 meters of Sonnenallee and changed the subject that's how it was I think how else could there be such a long street so short before the end and sometimes he also thought if the stupid Churchill had put his cigar on we would have the best life today that's like the people that are in the audience actually maybe before I do my reading I just want to pursue this I think you keep saying this is written in bad German in fact you claim it's deliberately bad German but a paragraph like that is not bad German it's actually can you explain a little bit of what you mean this was a good one just to step back one more thing we didn't collaborate very much but one of the things you said to me when we got in touch about my work on this was just know that this is bad German so could you explain a little bit so I started to write a book after the movie was shot but when I realized that the best things or some of the best things are not in a movie and so my editor told me to write a book and now I had the challenge what is the literary sense of the story that was made for a movie so you can just write the whole thing again so with the missing scenes you have an idea why is this literature and the idea why this is literature is that I started to remember the East Germany in a different way than I have experienced it when I lived in East Germany I knew how many times I was impressed I was sad helpless and so on it was not a good life and I was so happy when the walls were coming down but after a couple of years I as many other East Germans started to romanticize in a way so I told the old stories but with laughter and with with the young with tears no with Leuchten with glowing eyes I at the same moment I knew there's something at the same moment I knew there's something wrong so I told I had good memories about bad times so and now I wanted to I was interested in this phenomenon because many of many of the East Germans did the same as I and so I decided I'd write a book about East Germany but not as it was but as it is remembered and what is the necessity of writing because good good writing means that you are precise and but when I write precisely about East Germany so it's I write about East Germany as it was but not as it is remembered and this was the challenge and so I I realized the first price that I have to pay for this concept is that I that I'm not precisely like pop songs like Schlagertext so there are many and you said that you said you don't want to you are you are I'm sorry because good German or what English is saying and he said he said not use other I asked for permission to substitute the word said for more interesting verbs and I think it does create a slightly different effect but I think it's of course I know that you have to say said for all it and that it is like in children's book you find that someone says that they write a part in full and things like and this book is full of full of things that you should not write even if you said how difficult it was to translate the first sentence I believe you because when you read the first sentence you couldn't believe that a book starts with such a bad first sentence so a bit of a bad but poor in German I would say it's complicated but it is it's it was for a better reason than it was a higher reason or it was an important reason for a higher purpose I used that poor language not poor it's not too rich and too ornamented well yes and it's also very loose we can and many things about you cannot figure out the chronology of the book is because it's not worked out it's just kind of it's more free it's always story it's story, story, story which is one of the reasons it's such a pleasure to read there's always something happening and even when something seems irrelevant that's because you haven't gotten to the punchline yet you haven't gotten to the payoff but it's true it's I would say maybe loose rather than bad writing okay I'm going to read a little bit hold on a sense as a friendly audience so many you know I can hear you who knew most of them run with poison so that's sorry so just a little bit there's a this is a book largely about teenage boys and most of them could sign up for dance school because they're the prettiest girl and basically everybody is a type and of course one of the types is the prettiest girl at the school she's taking dancing lessons and all the boys even though they have no interest in dancing sign up because they're a chance to dance with them for three minutes except one of the group which I translated as frizz so he has hair like Jimi Hendrix you can picture it it's like whatever early 80s really skinny dude white as can be but with the Jimi Hendrix afro frizz didn't go to dance school things like that that interest him nothing else interested him either except music and music itself only interested him if it was by the Rolling Stones while his friends from the grounds were at dance school he never to get his hands on exile on main street but 72 stones double L frizz only wanted it for taping but the quality had to be flawless from an English pressing no you go shit still less an Indian pressing and he'd heard of the guy Frankie who had every stones out by all accounts Frankie wasn't doing time for assault again he was sitting at home and listened to the stones and full blast frizz went to Frankie and sure enough heard painted black from the courtyard it wasn't from exile but almost frizz climbed the stairs and stopped outside a door with the stones playing behind it he rang the bell and knocked but brown sugar was blasting that gimme shelter have you seen your mother baby and honky tonk woman trying not to think about Frankie's criminal profile frizz pounded on the door as hard as he could first with his fists and then resorting to kicking it at some point the door was open or rather ripped open a huge brood with tattoos and a long criminal record was standing in the doorway staring at him frizz bravely inquired about exile the tattooed brood continued to stare at his lower lip drooping frizz batted his eyelashes winningly he thereby obtained the address of a hippie who lived in Schrausberg and was now evidently the possessor of exile lost a gambling drunk Frankie croaked while frizz judiciously retreated frizz wrote his folding bike to Schrausberg which is way way far from Berlin by the way to look for the Schrausberg hippie he lived in a construction trailer the trailer was parked between a pair of trees with a hammock strung between them and lying in the hammock was the Schrausberg hippie he was listening to music and reading a book with the title The Fan Man frizz wouldn't venture into the construction trailer because the entire trailer floor was a wash and elm covers to move around in the trailer would be to wade in records and this was sacrilege to frizz hey man who you said the Schrausberg hippie got your address from Frankie got with the tattoos frizz said yeah man no man lives in Berlin man crazy city man got a TV tower in the middle of it so man what brings you to me well you've got exile on main street no man wrong way of looking at it I mean yeah I got it for Frankie but man you know I traded it for Zappa and Zeppelin not saying it sucks so the things got to keep moving got to circulate like this wonderful book here I took it from hallowed hands man hallowed hands so yeah man I got a shitload of records but you're not going to find exile here frizz was at least able to learn whom the hippie had traded records with this barricade man you know what I'm saying since barricade lived in Berlin frizz got on his folding bike again and peddled back to Berlin when the school's gym teacher learned how frizz could fight long distances he showed up at frizz's door with the junior coach it was a comical situation two men in tracksuits tried to recruit frizz for Olympic training it wasn't funny probably so funny down the Olympic thing but oh you can't do a comic novel in East Germany without the Olympics coming into it frizz talked his way out of it I have absolutely no psychic ambitions honestly training's not my thing pole vaulting as far as I'll go why pole vaulting the sports club coach asked surprised because it means practicing clearing 3 meters 45 things said neither of the men understood what he was suggesting the wall was 3 meters and 45, 7 meters high and according to one of the friends the GDR prohibited any sport that could be used to flee the country thus no one was permitted to sail or to serve of the Baltic kites and paragliding were likewise unless anyone had ideas of flying to the west from a high rise near the border lenzie knew this for a fact he was well informed about things that nobody else was even aware of despite how pertinent they were to everyone needless to say frizz didn't become a pole balder he figured it was only a matter of time before pole vaulting was banned anyway frizz was on the trail of exile on main street which at the Strausburg hippie to be believed was in the possession of someone named baratman baratman was an anxious sword among other things he lived in care of house searches and so he kept his records which he considered dangerous in unsuspicious sleeves an eric burden LP resided in the sleeve of box the well-tempered clavier batman turner overdrive was camouflaged by the record jacket of a brass band to conceal exile he got so far as to purchase two recordings of the alexandra ensemble because exile was a double album and required two sleeves his girlfriend was surprised to see a soviet army choir among the new additions to the record collection and that baratman went into the army where he fell victim to one misfortune after another first a smoke grenade exploded on him in the latrine he lost his lead privileges for that then he gave the wrong directions to a tank causing it to back over a bust of cagarin and demolish it yuri cagarin he lost his privileges for that as well finally baratman managed to forget his bazooka in a pub leaving it standing there like an umbrella for this he not only lost his lead privileges that spent ten days in the break his girlfriend at home had already uncorked the wine and was waiting for him wearing nothing but her slip she was so sex-starved but once again instead of baratman a telegram carrier came to the door baratman's girlfriend worked herself into such a rage that she finished off the wine and cursing the army still wearing her slip smashed baratman's two army recordings to smithereens flied in back tears of fury she couldn't see what she was actually smashing frizz wept too when he learned the fate of the only copy of Exile on Main Street to be found baratman so one thing I was struck by reading that is it's it's gag writing you know the term gag right it's like it's not enough just to have it be difficult you could have just told the story of we broke friends sat on the record or baratman lost it or destroyed it in a panic she couldn't even have gotten it he couldn't have hidden it in the sleeve it's like you keep setting it up it's like first he does this then he does this then he leaves this bazooka standing in a club like an umbrella it's like of course this never happened but it seems like that's the composition method for this whole thing and was like were you cracking yourself up when you were laughing when you were writing this stuff of course you have to enjoy your writing and you'll write and you'll also you're also the first reader so when you don't like when you don't enjoy what you have so nobody will enjoy it of course no but okay but you know I had to surprise how many writers don't see the others sorry I'm going to help you but I know your books too well so you can't it's quite new to but still it's like this must be part of what you meant when you said this is not a realistic novel I mean these are it's everything gets like driven two notches past will be realistic for comic effect now of course so when I wrote my before heroes like us I I I think I discovered a little bit whole comic works and it's the escalation and okay when I was at army I saw a tank that was misleaded and he ran of course a Gagarin and and one time I was going with my true market village and the pub was open and I thought okay now go there and I have not a beer but a cola and someone forget it was for God's his bazooka it could be possible it didn't when you when you write such some of the passage so you remember all this and one comes to be realistic is that there were soldiers with weapons in pubs so and no it's not impossible that's and yet it's such a different thing to just go for the lap again and again anyway that's why I wanted to translate the book was I do love a funny book and there are other fictional treatments of the time and the day to air which are less funny it's safe to say it seems to be a special gift and I think there's something so forgiving I know you were looking back and forgetting the bad stuff and remembering the good stuff and the funny stuff but isn't that's not just a failure of memory that seems like the path to getting over something to forgiving something that's that's right so when you start to laugh about something it changes the thing anyway but you need time to get this position and you need time that you want to laugh about something that's why I don't trust writers who can't be funny and why I so instantly relax when I pick up a book and there's a breath of humor a breath of irony and it tells me this is somebody who's not like experiencing the trauma and still put them on going away and I'm going to have somehow share in that it's like I've gotten a perspective and the comic perspective is so reassuring because it tells me somebody has processed it yes you need time for it it's not that Uber needs people who feel well no the core of a comedy is a tragedy on the core of a good comedy it's a tragedy I think they are very very closely related comedy and tragedy I think we can agree and I would maintain that that has to do with the distance of perspective that you tragedy you're really taking the long view you're looking at this kind of okay this is the way it's always been and always will be and it sucks I was going somewhere with coming out here Thomas it's a risky thing to make comedies because sometimes people don't understand don't forgive you making comedies so I think life of Brian was almost and of course it was it was not easy to okay there was laughter but when many people said I want to I want to glorify East Germany and of course I don't want but when laughter starts it's dangerous it's dangerous yes it's politically dangerous because it's politically effective and of course I can't expect that everybody can laugh about this jokes so everybody has line to refuse it but just imagine all these comedies I officially end of North Korea just for comedies they definitely come the figure of Kim Il-jong has enjoyed quite a run as a figure of comedy American movies here but of course Joe is like trying to get his missiles accurate enough to put a nuclear weapon on Union Square not funny and yet it should be and when it's over once it's over along the way even though this is this is a book of it's a book of almost it's it's not sketch comedy it's gags it's really it's funny stuff and people passionately pursuing ridiculous things really in many ways the frame of the book and this is not true of the movie involves Nika Kubish's pursuit of a letter which he believes to be a love letter which he starts to open outside its building which is of course right up against the wall and a gust of wind comes along blows it out of his hand over the barbed wire and into the death strip between East Germany and West Germany where there are people with towers waiting to shoot you if you go out there you could make it over the wall and he spends the entire book trying to make he can see it he can see the letter kind of stuck in a shrub on this heavily fortified area and in some ways that's the through line of the story it's partly about his love for the girl he believes may have sent him this letter but it's also just completely absurd the lengths to which he goes to try to retrieve the letter I'll just give one example which is a fishing pole with glue while glue at the end of this one person watching with a periscope in the direction to the person holding the fishing line not giving too much wind because there are other equally crazy attempts to retrieve the letter and of course everything is made everything they don't succeed all you always saw for instance you know he's never going to get his exile at main street and so what one of the things that if you're not so familiar with that period one of the things that's really great is you are following these characters with their ridiculous comic pursuits vain pursuits along the way you're getting a pretty complete picture of certain aspects of political enforcement privation and and boringness that was a lot of the day of the life in East Germany so almost in spite of itself this is I think not a bad introduction to some of the basic facts about life in East Germany yes I used to say in German I translated it to English you have to understand it yourself to understand it you have to experience it to yourself to not be able to understand it and um yeah yeah there you go we should turn it over is there any audience questions we actually have a microphone conveniently a third color blue okay I'm coming your way Councilor Schramm I'm coming your way oh it was just a quick full-on question you mentioned and you all have gotten angry some people thinking you made fun telling character jokes you made fun about the system have you also experienced the other side of the spectrum saying well in his novel he's cosying up too much as you mentioned in the beginning he's depicting a life in East Germany which didn't exist and too much fun for what we've experienced but also a hostility driven novelism something you've experienced yes of course the and it's a lot of fun to say this is hostaging I am literally nostalgic nostalgia was a name that was coined and that's not from but I did it for a higher purpose but I god damn it you did it for a higher purpose god damn it I was completely completely helpless when someone said yeah exactly as it was this is as it was because I said no it was not it's it's it's Germany as it was remembered or as it is remembered but when someone says no exactly this false is Germany I'm helpless ask a question of the translator what did you do no I was my last name was German but it's actually Swedish no German in my family my mother claimed to have some great great ads who came up with this from Tia I didn't believe it I just I took head and take a language from high school and and then it was it became a way in college of pursuing something that seemed potentially practical while studying literature tell my parents no international banking diplomatic they would say okay he's learning a skill he's learning a trade when I was just reading here at the Kafka I have two questions from Jonathan the first one is why now why did you translate the books right now if it's not brand new and the other thing is there are two translators mentioned is there something like a ghost translator or how did you those are actually the same question let me explain so I read this book many years ago along with company there in Japan some of these like because I was really very purposefully I did not like to talk and I would have other books I needed to read because I was working on a novel of my own that had a lot of East German stuff in it and a good friend Daniel Kalman's wife Anna said oh well you've got to read Brusek because it's all ours because that's how it was she did kind of say that she said he because because of the popular representations of that time it was either this dark dark the darkness behind the iron curtain you just see prison cells and grey streets or that you have the very very earnest lives of others which got a lot of attention and lives of others is not my favorite movie nor Anna's saying it's just like well that's just not that's a fairy tale that's not how it was here's some people to read and Thomas was at the top of the list and then we spent the evening together we made dinner and I had one particular question for him for the novel I was writing and he answered that Anna and I could not come up with it Thomas came up we were just looking for the right word in German and so I knew this book and I thought and being lazy I thought is there an English translation because I mean German but it's like a half speed and it's not the easiest German this because there's a lot of slang and there wasn't I was surprised I was like how are some of these other things getting translated into English and it's something that is said it's just a beautiful in its own way perfect comic novel and so I was shocked but I didn't think anything of it because I was mostly thinking about myself and my own work so then what like three years ago I hear from this woman Jenny Watson who teaches at Urquette who is frustrated because she loves the novel she teaches modern Eastern history and literature to or modern German I don't know what she teaches but anyway she was frustrated that she couldn't teaching students she couldn't teach this book I want them to read because they're 19 years old they will get these characters and I said why don't you try translating it and she's not a translator I said well you know I can help you and that's really how it started so it was really her energy and and she actually broke was the icebreaker cutting through she did a quick loose translation and then I kind of went through and went sentence by sentence and did my own translation on top of that but that's why and she wouldn't have happened without Jenny she was just actually a really lovely person a suffering suffering humanities professor question yeah and I have to add when I saw the first pages that from John's translation I was so happy because I have seen before some translations that hadn't been published so I knew how the translation usually looks like it when I saw it oh no it's my son Nali but when I saw the first pages from John's I was oh wow yeah finally somebody understands me it was really so I think my train once said the difference between the right word and almost right word is the same as between a flash and a firefly a firefly between lightning and a firefly so and I saw in that page that he always had made the right decision because translating is making decisions with every word you have you have to make you have choices and you have to make a decision and he made the right decision and really unbelievable happy to have such a wonderful translator it was fun question back here the book in a sense takes place in a timeless setting and it's only with the quasi epilogue that there's a look back to it I have had the good fortune to look at a couple of your other books I mean how it glows and heroes like us and the difference in that sense is market they are dynamic in the sense they take you through time how did you move from one to the other that's right this book has a special time concept when I said that I want to write about remembering so the decision is that it plays in the past and there is you can't say it's in the early 80s or in the middle of the 70s or in the late 80s it's the past and when you try to when you remember you know you know this episode in your life you can't bring it in order you knew I had an accident but did I move was it was it a move or an accident or did I bind that my last refrigerator before accident or after that you know there were things like that but you can't bring it in order and when you have all these episodes here in the book you can't bring it in order it's a big part of episodes and they are told one after the other but the time is extended it's a wholeness but this is also a concept it's not a weakness I'm not on the weaknesses of the book but this is intended it's a feature it's a feature a feature not a bug I would second that it's a little fairy tale but it mostly it's you you are immersed in you really feel immersed in memory and it feels like and every once in a while I think two or three spots this eye narrator pops up and I had to ask you in one instance whether that was actually an eye narrator or whether it was ambiguous because it could have been indirect or you know speaking in direct discourse and you said it was the eye narrator just to kind of like tell you and sometimes and we the first person plural shows up several times we couldn't travel because we didn't have passports things like that and so it's it's subtle but it's very it's clearly a strategy to to not place this in a historical even rationalizable sequence for for a feel good feeling beyond so so how can you turn it beyond it's okay yeah okay actually Germans are failing to translate good evening I want to reflect on this idea of nostalgia because I think that in Western democracies we have this kind of terror of nostalgia it's there's this idea that oh it's always dangerous it's always going to pull us back to the past it's always going to delude us and I don't know that it is I think nostalgia can be a rich territory for the imagination and I think we don't allow people to engage in some forms of nostalgia that can be a danger as well yeah I think there is about nostalgia there is a kind of misunderstanding so when people in Eastern Germany when they feel nostalgic they so the nostalgia isn't it's a result of this kind of official history telling with anti-human regime and stasis by the state and so on and personal experience you could have a quiet life a quiet poor life politics it was not terror for everybody it was terror and horror for some few but you know what you had to do not to come into this but go back to the nostalgia so if people are nostalgic they don't want to have back East Germany they just do something that everybody loves to do they remember and when you said I'm a kind of reunification fluster so to explain this phenomenon that nostalgia is no no kind of rollback of you know it's just revangismos revanches but it's simply everybody loves to do but when you remember the 70s you have no half official history um history history there is no official narrative that you are the year nostalgia is in so that your memories can be confronted so it's much easier to you to remember past nostalgia also often has to do with a certain disappointment later in life you become nostalgic for the time when you were younger and there was a lot of disappointment following the euphoria of reunification for a lot of people in the east there were actually even rational reasons to regret the passing of certain aspects of a state that guaranteed you a place for them or guaranteed you healthcare guaranteed you education so that's part of the two disappointments later in life disappointments can lead to nostalgia question in the back to follow up again on the reception of the book wondering whether it was differently received in east, former east germany also with regard to generations so this is apparent I have not read the book and I have not seen the movie but I was wondering whether younger people get that just because it has maybe some kind of a youth genre the way things are talked about and reflected or someone who could not say this is how it was or this is not how it was talked about it remember it someone who is just too young to have that kind of a relationship to former east germany how it has been received so in general between east and west there are all the difference in east many said this is how it was and in the west many were happy to have a comedy about east germany so there was a longing for love about that time so of course there was a kind of police and this police was mostly in the west they said no you can't make jokes about east germany this is a kind of glorification and this is not allowed and some of them learned what the intention of the poem wasn't some of it it's more than you understood as a writer and with younger and the older I think for the younger I am an old writer who writes about things that long before they were born and when I was young and those writers came to me with their stories I knew how hard it was for them I know how hard it was for them so the book is written in schools many types and the teacher of course tells them this is a book about east germany and not this it's a book about remembering so it's not my fault and at the beginning of the first and last episode of the book you can see it that it's not realism it's pure myth and but I can't I can't help it when the teachers say it's what I did what I could they're just going to have to lift up the doors on the internet question here two questions to Jonathan what was the word that Thomas helped you with and also related to that how would you say did Thomas inform your understanding about the GDR for your writing wasn't it to go now me too yes there is there's a character he sees himself as a serial seducer of teenage girls but he has a kind of funny word for it we can look that up Planshtag's going to take it out Thomas I was going to pick a I think it's a school of trained platform girls approximately sorry it was I might write a funny novel to be given permission to be funny I think that was the main thing I took was this from Thomas books you don't have to be terribly serious about the terror of Planshtag I mean you can also acknowledge it but you can also laugh maybe above all you can just invent and that was not something you said I think it was something Anna said was sorry wrong person wrong but nevermind this will be our last question because we want to have time for you to buy books and have it signed and be our guest in person last question okay when I asked you earlier why now you gave your personal story what I'd like to know is why would an American reader under 50 want to read this book that's not even this correctly correct did you have a feeling you had to add footnotes there's really no there's not a footnote to be found there is an introduction which I sketch out some basic background that really don't give away any of the stories you have it's not a spoiler for me so the main reason to read it is that it's you do actually learn something in spite of the comic and philosophical attention you do learn something about a time you might not know much about but the main reason as always it's really fun that's the reason to read any piece of fiction will not be a good one it's a really good one and moving sweet thanks so much everyone please you're selling books in the back and please join us for another paperback yep yeah yeah yeah I had I had I had I had I had I had I had I had I'm going to take that and then I'm going to put it on the top of my face. And then I'm going to take that and then I'm going to put it on the top of my face. I'm going to take that and then I'm going to put it on the top of my face. And then I'm going to put it on the top of my face. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.