First Fall Event: Daniel Kehlmann at The Booksmith

Summer seems to have flown right by, but here we are approaching fall, which means it's time for another season of the Center's events. First up, Daniel Kehlmann.

We'll be having Kehlmann next Saturday, September 25, at The Booksmith. If you're coming, let us know by RSVPing on our Facebook page (not required, but it helps us if you do).

The book he'll be reading from is his new novel, Fame, just out in the U.S. and U.K. in Carol Janeway's translation. The book has been making some noise, which isn't surprising for a mega-selling author, as well as one who counts among his fans Jonathan Franzen.

This book is being billed as a "novel in nine stories," and true to that title it's a very fragmented work. This is pretty fitting, since the book is all about what electronic communications technologies are doing to our senses of identity and of fame.

Wrting in The Independent, Boyd Tonkin paired it with Tom McCarthy's new novel, C, which souns about right to me.

Fame (Quercus, £12.99), Kehlmann's new "novel in nine episodes", takes us deeper into that intimate space of contemporary life where networked gadgets reconfigure private souls and public roles. Mobile phones or online avatars allow our identities both to split and to spawn. In these deftly interlinked stories, smart metafictional games coincide with unironic and open-hearted reflections on loneliness, ageing and mortality. And they share with McCarthy an abiding interest in the metaphysics of technology.

This gives a good idea of what the book feels like (and, yes, it is very metafictional, although not in an annoying or cloying sort of way). As Tonkin implies here, the book does cover quite  abit of ground, even though it's only about 200 pages long.

The Irish Times also has a good review, which includes a handy summary of the novel's first story, in which a man gets more than he bargained for when he buys his first cell phone.

In the opening story an unsuspecting technician reluctantly purchases his first cell phone. Ebling is practical. “Why did nobody wonder about whether it was a good idea to clutch a powerful source of radiation to your head?” But as his family needs to be able to contact him he bought one. “And now, without warning, it was ringing.” The calls begin to come, fast and insistent and all for a man named Ralf, a famous actor with a complicated love life. When Ebling complains that he has been given a number that already belongs to someone else he is assured that such an error is impossible. He continues to receive calls for Ralf with such regularity that he realises he would like to know more about Ralf’s life: “After all, it was now, to a small extent, his life too.” The calls continue, and Ebling gets to thinking: “Why did some people get everything and other people almost nothing? Some people achieved so much and other people didn’t, merit had nothing to do with it.” He begins to take notes of the names of the women that, by virtue of them thinking he is Ralf, he is involved with.

Also, don't miss the review at Love German Books, which does an awesome job of coving German literature in general. Here's s nippet:

The book’s strength though, as those who know Measuring the World will guess, is in its characters. All treated with a healthy lack of respect, the author seems to like some of them more than others. There’s the calmly eloquent retired teacher who turns out to be a character in a Leo Richter story and tries to persuade the writer not to make her die in a Swiss euthanasia clinic. There’s the despairing doctor who goes on a tour of Latin America as Richter’s lover, forever fearful that he’ll steal the details of her life for his writing. Or Ralf Tanner, who ends up opting out of his life of luxury in favour of a job as his own lookalike – only he’s not very good at it.