There are old dependables that one reads or comes back to at the end of a long day, simply to escape from the day-to-day grind. For me a true guilty pleasure is reading quasi travel / food books disguised as mysteries. I first came across this genre through Donna Leon's books, where 'sublime' Venice is present as a character in each book, and there are pages devoted to Italian cooking. So much so that the recipes have been collected into a cookbook of its own!
I have enjoyed the Klufti books set in Allgäu, where King Ludwig built Neuschwanstein.
I started reading my second Rita Falk book, Dampfnudelblues, which is on the Spiegel best seller list. The book is written in the voice of Franz Eberhofer, the village constable, who has been transferred to Niederkaltenkirchen, a village in lower Bavaria, after trying to be Dirty Harry in Munich. Franz's brother is married to a Thai girl-woman. Franz calls his month-old niece Sushi and says that even with the Schlitzauge (chinky eyes) she is beautiful (I did find this funny though). But, upon being asked by the mayor to act as a bodyguard for a black Angolan football player, he says "Sie glauben doch nicht im Ernst, dass ich mich jedes Wochenende auf den verschissenen Fußballplatz stelle und einen Neger bewache!" (You don't seriously believe that I am going to stand in the shitty football playground each weekend and watch over a nigger).
This is the point where I stopped reading the book.
I understand that Franz is meant to be funny in a slapsticky politically incorrect way. If one looks at the Amazon reviews of the book, there are claims that the use of the n-word makes Franz more authentic. Granted, one doesn't have to take the same approach as in the US, where there are bowdlerising Mark Twain's books to replace the n-word with slave. But, unless Ms. Falk meant to show that Franz was somewhat xenophobic, such sentences are simply not funny!
I have enjoyed the Klufti books set in Allgäu, where King Ludwig built Neuschwanstein.
I started reading my second Rita Falk book, Dampfnudelblues, which is on the Spiegel best seller list. The book is written in the voice of Franz Eberhofer, the village constable, who has been transferred to Niederkaltenkirchen, a village in lower Bavaria, after trying to be Dirty Harry in Munich. Franz's brother is married to a Thai girl-woman. Franz calls his month-old niece Sushi and says that even with the Schlitzauge (chinky eyes) she is beautiful (I did find this funny though). But, upon being asked by the mayor to act as a bodyguard for a black Angolan football player, he says "Sie glauben doch nicht im Ernst, dass ich mich jedes Wochenende auf den verschissenen Fußballplatz stelle und einen Neger bewache!" (You don't seriously believe that I am going to stand in the shitty football playground each weekend and watch over a nigger).
This is the point where I stopped reading the book.
I understand that Franz is meant to be funny in a slapsticky politically incorrect way. If one looks at the Amazon reviews of the book, there are claims that the use of the n-word makes Franz more authentic. Granted, one doesn't have to take the same approach as in the US, where there are bowdlerising Mark Twain's books to replace the n-word with slave. But, unless Ms. Falk meant to show that Franz was somewhat xenophobic, such sentences are simply not funny!
In my opinion the sentence is very authentic and could happen every day in a small village in germany. We germans are of course xenophobic, but give him the chance to become a friend to the "Neger" in the book. By the way, that word has never had a bad taste in Germany 20 years ago. Although nowadays we know how it was used in the US and that it should not be used any more.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether Germans are xenophobic - I think part of it is that are in some ways very parochial. But I totally agree with you on the Neger word, it didn't have these historical connotations in India either.
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