Christian Kracht

Life

Kracht, who is among the best known exponents of contemporary German "pop literature", attended several elite boarding schools, including the Schule Schloss Salem in Baden and Lakefield College School in Ontario, Canada. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1989. In Germany he worked as a journalist for a number of magazines and newspapers including Der Spiegel. In the mid-1990s he went to New Delhi as Spiegel's Indian correspondent. He subsequently lived for several years in Bangkok, in the former Yugoslavian embassy, and from there he visited various other Asian countries. His travel reports were published in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper and subsequently appeared as a book, Der Gelbe Bleistift ("The Yellow Pencil"), in 2000. Between autumn 2004 and June 2006 he published the magazine Der Freund in collaboration with the writer Eckhart Nickel. Initially he lived in Kathmandu while working as editor; however he left this position, and vacated Nepal, when political unrest in the country made working conditions too difficult. The magazine was finally completed in San Francisco; eight editions were published, as originally planned. Kracht's father, Christian Kracht Sr., was chief representative for the Axel Springer publishing company in the 1960s.

Kracht's first novel, Faserland (1995), was judged by some critics to be a key early work among the new wave of German "pop literature" that started in the mid-1990s, while others drew parallels with the work of Bret Easton Ellis, some even accusing him of plagiarism. Kracht's work deals with modern consumer culture, the collapse of the post-war concept of a "harmonized middle class society", and the individual and national identity crisis that this has brought about.

In September 2001 he published the novel 1979, which was seen by critics as his swansong in the pop literature genre, and depicted the fragility of an apparently decadent Western-metropolitan value system and its powerlessness before the Eastern-totalitarian models of Islamism and Maoism: Kracht was seen as on the way "towards genuine seriousness". The novel was published very close to the September 11 attacks, earning additional public attention.

Since 2004 a stage version of 1979, directed by Matthias Hartmann, has appeared in theaters in Zurich, Bochum and Hannover.

Kracht's writings contain alienating references to other works including Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, the subtly ironic travel journals of Robert Byron and Herge's Tintin series. Furthermore, the ligne claire ("clear line") drawing style developed by Herge is used for the illustrations (by Dominik Monheim) in the first edition of Ferien für immer ("Holidays Forever"), a collection of pieces about "the most pleasant places in the world" written together with Eckhart Nickel in 1998.

Kracht, who sees himself not as Swiss but as cosmopolitan, is among the most controversial figures in present-day German-language literature. In his few interviews he presents himself to be — depending on one's view — either impudently dandyistic or ironically detached; the meaning of his pronouncements in interviews is seldom obvious. His description of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar (and by implication the Taliban itself) as "camp" should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt: in this case moral values take second place after media aesthetics. A similar principle applies to Kracht's foreword to the 2006 illustrated book Die totale Erinnerung ("Total Recall"), in which North Korea is mainly referred to as a gigantic theatre production, whereas the pretended ignorance of actual suffering upset some commentators.

Kracht refers to his own books, which have been translated into 14 languages, with apparent self-irony — calling them merely "light entertainment" —, but behind this statement there is perhaps more than a little pretense: "After architecture, the greatest cultural achievements are to be found in comedy. I conceive my works as humorous ones. Kracht distances himself from the label "pop literature". For example he once refused to allow his writings to be republished in an anthology of that genre. Kracht also became known to a wider audience in Germany through his appearance on the popular Harald Schmidt Show. Moreover he took part in an advertising campaign for the clothing label Peek & Cloppenburg with fellow writer Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre in 1999.

Since mid-November 2006 he has been a regular columnist for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His column, which is published every other Saturday in alternation with Jenny Erpenbeck (previously with Nicole Krauss), originally had the title "Letter from...", which by now has changed to "Letter from the Past". Late February 2007 saw the publication of Metan ("Methane"), the product of a climbing expedition up Kilimanjaro with the writer Ingo Niermann. The book describes the mysterious power of methane gas ( Metan). Early reviews varied from the critical to the bewildered, one describing it as "großer Quatsch" ("a load of nonsense"). Another reviewer refers to the book as a parody of "alarmism" and suggested it should be taken as a joke: "But if this book is taken as a joke, it probably is not a bad one.

In the 2007 list of the 500 most important intellectuals in Germany, published annually by the political magazine Cicero, Kracht is placed 101st, climbing 29 places from his previous year's position.

Publications

• Faserland (novel), 1995
• Ferien für immer (travel writing - together with Eckhart Nickel), 1998
• Mesopotamia. Ein Avant-Pop-Reader (as publisher, anthology), 1999
• Tristesse Royale (together with Joachim Bessing, Eckhart Nickel, Alexander von Schönburg and Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre), 1999
• Der gelbe Bleistift (travel writing), 2000
• 1979 (novel), 2001
• Die totale Erinnerung. Kim Jong Ils Nordkorea (illustrated book - together with Eva Munz and Lukas Nikol), 2006. To be released in English in October 2007.
• New Wave. Ein Kompendium 1999-2006, 2006
• Metan (together with Ingo Niermann), 2007
• Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (novel), 2008

Audio books

• Liverecordings (together with Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Harald Schmidt and Christian Ulmen), 1999
• Faserland, 2000
• 1979, 2002
• Das Sobhraj Quartett - Asiatische Reisenotizen (together with Eckhart Nickel), 2004
• Das Jagdgewehr by Yasushi Inoue (together with Sandra Schwittau, Mavie Hörbiger and Hannelore Elsner), 2005
• Frühstück bei Tiffany (Breakfast at Tiffany's) by Truman Capote, 2007

Distinctions

• 1993 - Axel Springer Prize

References