Karl @underreadgerman Twitter profile

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Karl

9 months

Proudly presenting a new video about German writers from the postwar period that were influenced by James Joyce: Wolfgang Koeppen, Uwe Johnson, Arno Schmidt and Wolfgang Hildesheimer.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

@cacmrg 12 Angry Men

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

Great news regarding the birthday boy: Krasznahorkai's latest novel "Zsömle odavan" has just been published. Apparently it's about a 91 year old retired electrician who doesn't want to get involved with politics, but could claim the Hungarian throne because of his secret lineage.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 months

Kafka in a letter to Felice Bauer:

David Hering

@hering_david

2 months

First time reading this brilliant, nasty book. Hard to believe it was written in 1810 - it has the hard, absurd rhythms of Kafka all over it

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 months

Franz Blei, the Austrian critic/publisher/translator who discovered or supported Kafka, Musil, Broch, Rilke, Walser and more, wrote a "Great Bestiary of Literature," which I think is quite fun

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

Happy 70th birthday to the master of the apocalypse, the king of the endless sentence, the virtuoso of chapter titles and epigraphs, 2025 Nobel winner (?) László Krasznahorkai. So many thoughts on his work, so great the temptation to ditch all other reading plans in his favor.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

9 months

First time reading Lispector, and it's amazing to see how she transmits so much love for words with seemingly so little. "The anonymous girl in this story is so ancient that she could be a biblical figure. She was subterranean and had never flowered. I'm lying: she was grass."

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Karl

@underreadgerman

15 days

With Erpenbeck winning the Booker Prize and Jelinek, Bachmann, Haushofer, Fritz seemingly receiving more recognition lately, here are 4 more picks for women in translation month by German-speaking writers

Ryan Alexanderplatz

@ryanhasbadtaste

16 days

four picks for women in translation month

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

Short days are perfect for long books, especially forgotten greats. Now reading: One of Thomas Mann's favorites, baroque, in love with language, Paul Celan called it a "true work of art," - The Island of Second Sight (Die Insel des zweiten Gesichts) by Albert Vigoleis Thelen.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

28 days

"Determined to reshape the world according to the dictates of desire" Now reading

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 month

Working on something

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

10 favorite reads of 2023, the year I started recording videos in broken English and read Finnegans Wake (which wasn't even the hardest to get through - looking at you, The Death of Virgil). A stack full of intensity, word=welding, visual power and/or remembrance.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

5 months

If you see this, share four books you don't often see recommended!

Giles Goat-Girl

@nadienadianadie

5 months

If you see this, share four books you don't often see recommended!

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

The poor postman had to carry a white whale today.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

11 months

Better late than never, I guess: 20 years after winning the Nobel and 29 years after its publication, the translation of Elfriede Jelinek's magnum opus Die Kinder der Toten is forthcoming at @YaleBooks !

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 months

"Godless, abandoned, stridently military structures of unknown purpose, assembled as if out of broken laminae by a deranged mind. [...] The catastrophe is always ongoing, it never appears in its entirety, but always manifests in part." Krasznahorkai on architect Lebbeus Woods

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Karl

@underreadgerman

11 months

Four of the best books I've read so far this year (that have been translated into English and deserve way more attention)

Ryan Alexanderplatz

@ryanhasbadtaste

11 months

The four best books I’ve read so far this year

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Karl

@underreadgerman

9 months

Hans Henny Jahnn died OTD in 1959. His uncanny prose masters the terrors of martyred blood, the dark desires of foul flesh. Do yourself a favor and read his short masterpiece The Ship (Das Holzschiff). "The sea of light dries up. The soul falls off the earth and sees death."

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 months

Going in with the highest of expectations

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

My reading project for 2023: experimental* works written in German (mostly from the 20th century), arbitrarily grouped by formal, geographical & thematic categories like "Influenced by Joyce," "GDR," "Articulating loss" etc. Might record some thoughts further down the line too 🎙️

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

I just finished my 5th book by László Krasznahorkai, and each of them managed to involve me, the reader, in a way that mirrored the core themes of each book, as if I was another character instead of an outside observer. Just so much to say about his oeuvre's philosophy.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Best of 2022, limited to 1 book per author (Schattenfroh group read is still going on, but there's no chance it won't be a favorite)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Favorite novel, film, "album," painting

Ryan Alexanderplatz

@ryanhasbadtaste

1 year

Quote Tweet with your favorite novel, film, album, & painting

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Karl

@underreadgerman

11 months

"What Pessoa noted in the Book of Disquiet, namely that mystery never shines through as much as in the contemplation of the smallest things, I have nowhere found so illuminated as in the diminutive Weltbilder of Anita Albus." (W. G. Sebald)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 month

Why did I wait so long to read Wolfgang Hilbig? A gritty, dark and muddy prose, very tactile. "That afternoon the leaden hue of the sky merged on all sides with the vapors that rose from the freezing sheets of water at the bottoms of the mine pits." (transl. Isabel Fargo Cole)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

11 months

Some of my favorite pieces of art involve the melancholy of two separate people feeling lost in a neon city who find comfort in their shared loneliness. There are numerous examples for movies, but what about books?

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

December 19, 1967: The last day of Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries (Jahrestage) volume 1. With 480 of almost 1.900 pages behind me, the Cresspahls from different pasts have become an irreplacable part of my present.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Recorded a little video about my experience with three German-speaking writers inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses: Alfred Döblin, Hermann Broch and Hans Henny Jahnn. Hope it is of interest to some of you!

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Arno Schmidt, Ror Wolf, Uwe Johnson, Hans Henny Jahnn, Marianne Fritz, Koeppen, Döblin, Broch, Hildesheimer, Canetti... What are some must read additions of maybe lesser known authors who wrote in experimental (in the loosest sense of the term) German?

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 months

German-speaking writers that have been translated until I run out of space: Bachmann Bernhard Broch Burger Canetti Celan Döblin von Doderer Erpenbeck Grass Haushofer Hilbig Hildesheimer Jahnn Jelinek Jirgl Johnson Kempowski Koeppen Müller von Rezzori Schmidt Sebald Walser Weiss

Ryan Alexanderplatz

@ryanhasbadtaste

3 months

drop the best German literature in English translation oomfs ⬇️

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

If it weren't for @TheUntranslated I wouldn't have discovered this highly intriguing piece of contemporary (and possibly period-defining?) art. Looking forward to finally diving into the experimental literature of my native tongue.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

When the record store has a corner with used books 😌

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Karl

@underreadgerman

4 months

This just in: an obscene bird has landed in Germany. As a rule of thumb, if Zach praises something, you do well to follow his recommendation.

Zach Issenberg

@ZIssenberg

4 months

The greatest horror novel of all time returns! José Donoso's The Obscene Bird of Night is out today, in a new unabridged translation from @meganalimcd by @NewDirections . This novel is one of my greatest reading experiences, and it could be yours too. Do yourself a favor, read!

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Karl

@underreadgerman

5 months

Great episode as usual. Breaks my heart that one of the most exciting contemporary German-speaking writers only has one of his books translated to English. Surely there would be a market for a Pynchon fan with the eyes of Handke, a paranoid Sebaldian disciple of Vollmann?

Beyond The Zero Podcast

@beyondzeropod

5 months

Brand new episode with the fascinating @clemensetz available now anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Weekend book=mail: new Lentz poems, a Burton reader, and Schmidt's essays on Joyce, Cooper, Poe, the Brontë sisters et al.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

I'm going in, see you in 1700 pages. #Anniversaries #UweJohnson

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

There aren't many things you can read that feel as hermetic, yet personal as the intertwined oeuvres of Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann - like coming across a secret language you aren't supposed to know.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Turns out ›Santa‹ is a Schmidt=fan. - !

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

Why not start 2024 with a good bit of pathos? (Peter Handke quoting his dramatic poem "Über die Dörfer" in his Nobel lecture)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

I don't think I've ever seen prose this saturated word for word. The dying poet as a journey beyond language, from feverish to ethereal - this makes it hard to read at times, but worth it for the musicality of all the pleonastic compounds alone. (The Death of Virgil by H. Broch)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

If all the literature and philosophy isn't already reason enough to learn German, our outstanding translators also provide us with widely unavailable treasures, such as Alastalon salissa by Volter Kilpi or Horcynus Orca by Stefano D’Arrigo.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 years

D.F.W. Hegel

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

Not really a New Year's resolution, but since 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death, his diaries and letters will move to the bedside table. The beloved stories and novels form but a part of his writing, and he certainly deserves a full immersion.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 months

I don't know about "best," but Georg Büchner is one of the greats of German-speaking literature even though he died at the age of 23

Brian Allen Carr

@BrianXllen

3 months

What is the best book written by someone under 30?

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Starting the prettiest physical book I own, and if Cărtărescu ends up getting the Nobel this week I can say I was a fan before the hype 😌

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Karl

@underreadgerman

5 months

Quite enjoying the intertextual erlements in László Krasznahorkai's works. In Universal Theseus, the narrator talks about the book The Melancholy of Resistance, and in War & War, Mihály Víg is mentioned (who plays Irimiás in Satantango and wrote music for Tarr's adaptations).

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Schattenfroh is dead, long live Andrei! Such a unique experience, challenging the notions of what a book is, what literature can do, what there is beyond language. Most grateful for all the provided guidance, ressources and great discussions. They call it writing.

Andrei

@TheUntranslated

2 years

The Schattenfroh Group Read at the Untranslated Book Club is officially over. Thanks again, everyone! 🍾🍾🍾

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Bottom's Dream felt lonely, so I got it some other big syntactical rebels as company. The postman's muscle gain is becoming more noticeable...

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Other people: It was a dark and stormy night. James Joyce: A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

"Finally he decided to die without the assistance of death. The effort of becoming motionless and growing cold demanded all his inner concentration and strength." It's about time more people read Hans Henny Jahnn, esp. since some of his works have been translated into English.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Really happy with these recent finds, especially the German translation of Goldstein's Помни о Фамагусте.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Weekend pickups: John Hawkes - The Cannibal Gregor von Rezzori - The Death of my Brother Abel A reader of Arno Schmidt's Bottom's Dream with introductory essays on each book

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

At last they are united.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

11 months

150 pages into Johnson's Anniversaries, the time has come for an upgrade from softcover to hardcover (maybe because I got them for 6€ total).

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Pride and Punishment

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Used my waiting time at the station to finish Nobodaddy's Children and practice my editing skills, so here is the world's first Arno Schmidt fancam (sorry)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Just got The Aesthetics of Resistance in the 2016 edition, which is the first one to include the corrections by Peter Weiss (previous East and West German editions differed in the third part).

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Karl

@underreadgerman

5 months

NBAVante😈💜

@thatboiharley

5 months

what is the most insane thing someone has said during a interview

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Karl

@underreadgerman

10 months

Just "finished" reading Finnegans Wake & the German translation attempts and will need a good minute to reassemble my brain. Words... They can be quite fun, can't they? "Now gode. Let us leave theories there and return to here's here. Now hear. 'Tis gode again."

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Karl

@underreadgerman

6 months

Just finished The World Goes On for a little project on László Krasznahorkai, and one of the things that intrigue me most is his relationship with nothingness. Formally, this is most obvious in The Swan of Istanbul: seventy-nine paragraphs on blank pages with 30 endnotes.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

From under the tree 🎄: Love everything by Anne Carson, so Decreation is a no-brainer; Blanchot's theoretical texts, esp. on literature, are highly intriguing, curious what he can do with a novel; Marianne Fritz' debut might be a better place to start than her 12-volume behemoth

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

There's no way people can read a book as great as Berlin Alexanderplatz and go "That was great, but I've had enough of Döblin." I don't even want to put it back on the shelf!

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Karl

@underreadgerman

9 months

Channeling my inner @ryanhasbadtaste for my first Peter Weiss. Surely one of the coolest titles for a play there is.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

A virus called Ovid-19, and once you get it, you transform into an animal or a stellar constellation.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 years

Scholars don't want you to see this Heidegger interview

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Karl

@underreadgerman

5 months

Kieślowski's Talking Heads is one of the treasures I cherish most. Like the director, I don't know who I am or what I want, but there is an immense comfort in hearing the 100 year old lady say she wants to live longer. And oh, to be a Syrena car...

Christina Tudor-Sideri

@dreamsofbeing_

5 months

Twenty-eight years since the death of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Thinking about this today.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

It's a rare occurance to have a transformative experience caused by a work of art, but the impact that a recent re-watch of Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies had on me after reading Krasznahorkai's Melancholy of Resistance still hasn't worn off.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Halfway through Solenoid, and an unknown number called me today. The voice said the reading sample (which I returned months ago because I didn't receive the actual book) reappeared at the door of my old apartment. Is this one of those cosmic signs Cărtărescu is writing about?

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Reading Schattenfroh and Terra Nostra at the same time feels like being part of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, in which Bosch himself (who is you) is pictured painting that very piece.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

4 months

April 19, 1968: The last day of the second volume of Johnson's Anniversaries (Jahrestage). 1.000 pages in, I don't want to imagine how it'll feel once the Cresspahls are not a part of my everyday life anymore - or maybe I'm a part of theirs, a future memory among recollections.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

9 months

@beyondzeropod W. G. Sebald!

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

"Each version of Schattenfroh differs from another version," it says in the book. Got myself a second copy to check, and sure enough, this one is signed 😌

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Yesterday I realized that I didn't buy any books this month. This morning I realized it was the date of the local annual used book sale...

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Schattenfroh told me to build him an altar.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

9 months

I find myself coming back to this phrase from The Waves by Virginia Woolf that seems to touch on what the best examples of literature, poetry, arts in general can achieve: "A hole had been knocked in my mind, one of those sudden transparencies through which one sees everything."

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

I'm not usually one to hunt for rarities, but made an exception for Hans Henny Jahnn, who is quickly becoming a favorite: one of 550 signed copies of his play "Spur des dunklen Engels," with incidental music by Yngve Jan Trede.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Went to check out a used book store's art section to maybe find a book with Hieronymus Bosch's paintings in preparation for Schattenfroh, but instead found this. Imagine not only writing a doorstopper, but another whole book explaining it...

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

I keep coming back to this picture, trying to build the courage to engage with the late work of Marianne Fritz. Luckily for German readers, Die Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse is going to be back in print in 2023. And English readers have the translation by @a_nathanwest available!

Nathan N.R. Gaddis

@NRGaddis

3 years

Bottom's Dream; eat your heart out.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

The beginning of Anne Carson's "Ode To The Sublime By Monica Vitti"

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Thank you for all the great recommendations - in den nächsten Jahr(zehnt)en sollte keine Langeweile aufkommen.

Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Arno Schmidt, Ror Wolf, Uwe Johnson, Hans Henny Jahnn, Marianne Fritz, Koeppen, Döblin, Broch, Hildesheimer, Canetti... What are some must read additions of maybe lesser known authors who wrote in experimental (in the loosest sense of the term) German?

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

@wastemailing How your neighbours watched the postman drag it up the stairs

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 years

@iridio16 @funnylucy69 @echo_aster He was not an objectively bad horror writer but does have objectively bad parts where he gets in his own way, like the ending of The Picture in the House, where he actually did build up a tense atmosphere just to throw it away.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 months

Really loving the variation of this image in Anne Carson's books: "not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh" (Autobiography of Red) "together and apart, like pores blown into hot rock and then stranded out of reach" (The Glass Essay)

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

Gerade dieses gebrauchte Mayröcker-Lesebuch für 3€ erworben und beim Öffnen eine verfrühte Weihnachtsüberraschung entdeckt

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Karl

@underreadgerman

6 months

Who wants to hire me as a movie poster designer?

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

*"Experimental" in a very broad sense of the word. I'm especially aiming for underappreciated, often overlooked books/writers, both at large and by me only, so it's going to be a very subjective selection.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

How good is The Trial by Orson Welles?! I know this isn't news, but what an absolutely perfect scenic design. And speaking of great adaptations: Koji Yamamura's short Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor is very out there too, both put their own twist on K.'s nightmarescapes.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

8 months

Among the books not pictured are those that challenged my notion of what it means to read, such as Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, Watt by Samuel Beckett, Doggerland by Ulrike Draesner, and of course the Wake.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

3 years

It really is orwellian how many people misuse the term "kafkaesque"...

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Karl

@underreadgerman

1 year

Arno Schmidt + 🌙☁️ = 🥰 "Mond schob sich steif und generalobersten durch die Reihen erbleichender Sternmannschaften; der Wind murmelte und experimentierte mit Allerleigewölk" "Draußen : hohlgeschliffener Mond liegt auf dunklem Samtkissen, Teil vo’m gefährlichen Besteck." 🧵

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Karl

@underreadgerman

11 months

Instead of saying "I have a midlife crisis," try: Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, ⁠For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

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@underreadgerman

29 days

"Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown."

Jay Innis

@DepartureJay

29 days

What’s your favorite line from Ulysses?

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@underreadgerman

2 years

Already a contender for the best opening scene on its own, knowing the development of Eszter's thoughts towards the end - accompanied by Mihály Víg's soundtrack - is nothing short of sublime.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

With all the recent posts about the new translation of Kafka's diaries, it's time to reveal who is staring directly at me when I sleep (and who silently judges my dreams).

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

@mrjohndarby

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 years

As a fanboy, I hope Krasznarescu will win the Nobel today

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Karl

@underreadgerman

5 months

Seems insane that David Foster Wallace looked like this at one point in history

Karl

@underreadgerman

3 years

D.F.W. Hegel

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Karl

@underreadgerman

7 months

Today, I very briefly locked eyes with a guide dog on the bus. He awkwardly looked away, it seemed, and my immediate thought was "I hope he doesn't think I'm rude." Strange.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

9 months

Might have butchered the quality by making it one hour long, but I hope the target audience won't mind.

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Karl

@underreadgerman

2 months

"It is as if I could dip my hand down into time and scoop up blue and green lozenges of April heat a year ago in another country" - Anne Carson (The Glass Essay)

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