Lutz Seiler, Star 111
300 pages in.
When you're an aspiring academic who needs to write articles, one question you're constantly asked is "why did you write this?" The implication is that research should be the needful output of relevance to the moment--an ideal answer is "I can make a new contribution to a currently-runing debate with great stakes for our knowledge of the world". The actual answer is almost always "because I need to write something, and this is a something-sized unit of writing". But the people who ask this question have the thing you want--money, jobs, the ability to publish you--and so you need another, better answer.
300 pages in, Star 111 feels a bit like this. Why has this book been written? There are some answers we could give: it's a firsthand fictionalized account of die Wende, the transition of Germany from two countries into one; it takes place in Berlin, a global city of much fascination and fashion; the author is a poet and is writing in an unfamiliar form, like The Savage Detectives; it's a Künstlerroman, and requires no further justification. But also, it's a novel-sized story and poetry collections do not pay the bills.
Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg are going to be gentrified, Carl will end up a successful poet. Effi seems like she will not stick around to the end, but who knows?
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