Scene Disrupted During Production of Film Titled "Born in the Long Summer"
Hanging out at the Laidak, guzzling down an espresso, the sky's a gloomy gray. My black polo's on, my hair slicked back neatly. I'm feeling restless. This morning, some jerkwads accosted me along Sonnenallee, calling me a fag. I gripped my canvas bag tightly and sprinted to the Laidak.
This is how Jens Winter's debut novel "Born in the Long Summer" begins, published by XS-Verlag at the beginning of June. The similarities to Christian Kracht's "Faserland" from 1995 are striking. Barbour jackets, S-Class cars, and P1 - that was the fancy German upper class back then. Winter instead takes us on a wild ride through Berlin's middle-class hell. This includes those who babble about the latest Marx reading and shop their notebooks at Modulor.
Just like the literary blueprint, our protagonist blunders through a trendy Berlin, visiting old pals who promptly vanish from the scene. From bar to WG parties, academia lectures, and breathless train rides to Freiburg. Fleeing from the elite, no cliché is left unturned. One drinks vodka-mate, never Aperol Spritz. Islamic bars stir lengthy contemplations. The background noise for an ongoing lifestyle, "brand fetishism" was called back then. Key figures emerge: Kracht's trend researcher Matthias Horx in the ICE, and in Winter, Ines Schwedtner causing a ruckus among train conductors for the next strike.
Winter leans heavily on the "Faserland" sound: short, clear I-sentences, almost primitive in their descriptive prose. The narrative drips with a peculiar combo of naivety, irony, and cynicism. Both authors drew both praise and criticism for this approach. In 1995, it was all new and exciting, especially in Germany. Thirty years later, Jens Winter now writes an anti-German "Faserland." Is that even possible? "Faserland" was already the anti-German "Faserland." In certain circles, the book has cult status, satirizing unionists just as much as left-wing green taxi drivers. The joke was that Kracht himself was a loyal reader of "Bahamas" magazine.
The anti-German tabloid doesn't appear in "Born in the Long Summer," as this milieu is less dogmatic, presenting itself as poppy and culturally open. Diedrich Diederichsen instead of Justus Wertmüller. The paradigmatic novel for this sect was already written by Finn Job ("Afterwards") in 2022. Indulgent drug use is showcased as if it were already old hat. Added to this is the by-now-trivial complaint about bad living conditions in North Neukölln. Winter deserves mockery for this. Job peddles identity politics, thus creating polarizing literature. Some are turned on by it, while others froth with rage. These days, identifying as Israel-friendly is chic even among the German bourgeoisie, but it doesn't exactly improve one's clarity of thought.
Let's add another post-Kracht reference work. In '"Allegro Pastell"' by Leif Randt, there is a passage set at the "Laidak." This genuine outsider recounts a few lines about the "split of the Antideutsch" from Wikipedia there. His method involves relaying things as neutrally as possible. Everything is represented, nothing may have consequences. With the zany result, some saw sharp social criticism in "Allegro Pastell," even though its instigators celebrated their self-indulgent attitude. Consuming Bifteck and saying "I love you." A hyper-ironic approach, as Randt himself calls it – beyond any political silliness; at the price of complete arbitrariness.
Winter's text lies right in the middle of the Kracht-Randt continuum. The style copy gets us out of a dilemma, neither copying political judgments nor losing track with absurd subtexts. You can tell the protagonist is clueless and trapped in the senseless scene logic—when it's no longer about real politics but mere opinion and expected snarky replies. You can only feel sorry for him negatively. The truth is hidden in every sentence: Everything is wrong! And I'm smack dab in the middle of it. A self-critical examination of one's own ideology.
So, the caricature of the milieu is consistently skewered and actually played for dark humor. But not quite. Michel, the former best friend fresh off an American adventure, returns with his irritating girlfriend, flooding our protagonist with postmodern theory. Overly stereotypical woke satire persists despite meta-irony. It swings back and forth. Are "woke" and "antideutsch" just two masks for the same misery? It remains unclear "whether he means it seriously or is playing around," as Winter himself has somewhat pedantically inserted as a poetological hint. Connoisseurs might read the book for self-congratulation. Or maybe it serves as a means to disidentify oneself.
The novel works, with reservations. There's the self-delusion of the author, who here discusses contemporary literature. The shocks of the Corona years have finally swept away the remnants of the left-antideutsch. It's all about the past, as the title suggests. Its significance refers to the long summer of theory, but also to a phrase from the "Game of Thrones" series: Winter is coming, but it's already here. Realism isn't Winter's thing, but it would have added greater internal consistency to drop all post-2020 references. For example, it remains unexplained why the "Bajszel" wasn't picked as the cute scene pub, which long replaced the "Laidak" in that regard.
Well-placed are the blows that Winter deals, only initiates can truly feel them. The symbolic play with the surface might induce high blood pressure among outsiders. The narrative indecision is simultaneously the greatest weakness of the novel. What lies beyond the scene-swamp is left unanswered. Suspicion may arise that the narrative ambivalence simply represents the desperate extension of pseudo-politics into literature. The final sentence could be interpreted as transcending this self-referentiality: "His torso still glowed," echoing Rilke's ultimate art maxim: You must change your life. History teaches that many anti-Germans remain deaf to this call.
Jens Winter: Born in the Long Summer. XS-Verlag, 140 pages, hardcover, €22.
The protagonist of Jens Winter's debut novel, "Born in the Long Summer," finds solace in reading books on education-and-self-development during his free time, a stark contrast to his tumultuous lifestyle. In one such instance, he is engrossed in a book while hiding from his adversaries in a crowded Islamic bar.
As the narrative progresses, the protagonist frequents academia lectures and encounters key figures like Ines Schwedtner, akin to Matthias Horx from Christian Kracht's "Faserland." These figures represent the elite of Berlin's middle-class that he attempts to escape. His lifestyle, a blend of naivety, irony, and cynicism, is echoed in the style of his writing, as seen in his published works on entertainment and lifestyle topics.
