Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 15.09.2006

In an insistent plea from China, Urs Schoettli takes a critical look at the working through of the cultural revolution, which began forty years ago and whose destructive impact is still not fully comprehended. "Walking through Beijing's 'Forbidden City,' one wonders how many of the old men in the travel groups who come from the innermost provinces were involved in the destruction of valuable cultural assets forty years ago." Schoettli is annoyed by the history-obsessed Mao cult and in particular the fact that it's not limited to China. "It's repugnant that, even today, after Mao has been established to have been the world's greatest mass murderer, you still see Western tourists in Beijing buying souvenirs with Mao's picture or little editions of the little red book from giggling vendors who find this quite original. Imagine that happening in Berlin with Hitler memorabilia."


Die Welt, 15.09.2006

India's literature reflects a nervous middle class and for good reason, according to Ulrich Baron, who has read the most important books that will be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair. "India's economic storm is pretty much limited to the metropolitan regions like Bombay, New Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta while in the more populous, desperately poor interior, more than half of the people can't even read the reports of the brave new world due to illiteracy."

Brigitte Preissler reports on a fresh commotion in the French world of letters. In his biography of the writer Michel Houellebecq, Denis Demonpion, a journalist for the weekly magazine Le Point, accuses the author of having doctored his biography: "The biographer reveals, for example, that Houellebecq's mother, Janine Ceccaldi, is not dead at all, as her son maintains. Rather, she lives in La Reunion, where she explained to Demonpion that since they fell out in the early 1990s, she's broken off all contact with her son. Houellebecq also spruced up several details of his official resume. For instance, he wasn't born in 1958 as it says on all his book jackets, but in 1956. And he was not born Michel Houellebecq, but Michel Thomas. He took the more interesting-sounding name from his grandmother. Demonpion has also revealed that Houellebecq studied film for two years at the Institut Louis Lumiere."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15.09.2006

Edo Reent's advice to Günter Grass is that a writer of national significance must admit doubt, as Thomas Mann did (more on the Grass affair here). "Presumably Grass has lost sight of the fact that merely leaving open the possibility that the opposite of what he says might also be true is still a long shot from surrendering his accountability. As opposed to Thomas Mann – and even Bertolt Brecht - Grass has never even flirted with the idea that his work could not serve as a foundation for others to build on. Until the present day he's steadfastly maintained his enmities, and people just shake their heads at that. Now it's become clear that doubt and ambivalence are sturdier ground than that on which Grass stands. The question of the continuity of an intellectual existence once the shadow of contradiction has been cast on it simply cannot be answered. At the end of the day, you always come back to the secrecy shrouding a personality."


Die Tageszeitung, 15.09.2006

Eva Behrendt has had a look at the first edition of Polar - a new semi-annual magazine aiming to blend culture and politics – and is not entirely satisfied with what she sees: "There is much to suggest that this might be the mouthpiece of a network of academics who've been banned to the provinces and (often involuntarily) freelance culture critics, all of whom have got together to write for themselves. Even the tasteful tristesse of the empty Berlin club on the cover signals: Readers, something is missing from our lives: 'Politicisation' (the theme of the first edition - ed)."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.09.2006

Berlin historian and war theorist Herfried Münkler has long since become an "established brand" as Jens-Christian Rabe reports, having visited the political science professor at work. "Does such a person write in a standing position so that he notices when things might get boring (namely when he sees how strenuous it is to stand)? No, not at all. In his simple, functional university office and at home, Herfried Münkler sits. There is a standing desk in the house on the edge of Heiligensee but it is screwed down so far that he can rest his feet on it comfortably from a sitting position. The computer remains off. He only writes by hand, in part because he thinks that on the computer, he's inclined to babble on. 'When I have written a sentence in the machine, I often think: oh, that's sad, it took me ten minutes to write this sentence and now it has to go.'"