"If one of my characters stands on the edge of a cliff, they should expect me to push them off just to see what happens..."
In an interview with Madjid Mohit, Gerrit Wustmann talks about his collection of short stories “Nothing is funny about it”. In ten stories full of deep black humor, populated by the desperate, losers and other ghosts, Gerrit Wustmann uses all genres and turns the inside out. The perfect read for long, dark autumn evenings. Or for all those who are waiting for the train on closed routes.
He was born in Cologne in 1982 and is a freelance writer and journalist. Nothing about it is funny is his thirteenth book. He has received several awards for his literary work.
Gerrit, do you actually drink as much coffee as the characters in your new book?
GW: Yes, that's about right.
The first of the ten stories begins with a visit from an official who has creepy-absurd questions for the protagonist and even creepier forms with him. Have you often had trouble with offices?
GW: Luckily I've been spared from that so far. But friends keep telling me the most absurd stories. A couple of friends, for example, had to go through a veritable odyssey in order to get married. The problem was, on the one hand, that neither of them have a German passport and, on the other hand, that forms are apparently only processed when they have accumulated a DIN-standard layer of dust.
There's really nothing funny about that...
GW: No. But you can't get through it without a sense of humor, I think.
How often do you manage to take annoyances with humor?
GW: Not often enough.
You have that in common with some of your characters, it seems to me. In times of autofictional storytelling, the question arises as to how autobiographical your stories are...
GW: Much less than you think. There are of course elements in the book that are based on personal experience, but there aren't many. With very few exceptions, such as Dinçer Güçyeter's great book Our German Fairy Tale, I'm not a big fan of this autofiction trend. I much prefer classically told, fictional stories, which can also be escapist.
Speaking of form: So far you have mainly written poems. And factual texts. Narrative prose only very rarely. How come you've now made a volume of short stories?
GW: I just wanted it. Many of these stories have been floating around in the back of my mind for years, but there have always been reasons or excuses not to write them. And when I finally sat down at my desk and got started, I couldn't stop at times. It was like a pull I had to give in to. I never had that with poetry.
In “None of it is funny” there are ghost stories, Kafkaesque, weird, nightmarish, funny and even a thriller. Can't you at least commit to one genre?
GW: nope Often, when I start a story, I don't even know what the end result will be in terms of genre, and I just let myself be surprised.
But a tendency towards the gloomy and at times towards the fantastic can already be seen...
GW: I've always had a soft spot for the horror genre. I'm interested in the dark, as well as the absurd, the unexpected, the outlandish. No other genre in the last twenty years has been so diverse and complex, so experimental and original. Roughly since the boom of the genre came to an end in the nineties and it migrated to small publishers. The prose by Brian Evenson or Steve and Melanie Tem, young authors such as the Hungarian Attila Veres or the Dutchman Thomas Olde Heuvelt show book after book what is still possible in terms of narrative. These are authors who consistently continue what began with Poe, Kafka, Aickman. Unfortunately, very little of it arrives in German translation. So I'm translating Tem myself right now. A volume of his stories will come out next year. Finally!
Some of your stories made me feel like you had a diabolical grin on your face when you did bad things to your characters...
GW: If one of my characters stands on the edge of a cliff, they should expect me to push them off just to see what happens...
Like poor Dago in the story "Everything New", who is literally driving insane with his health issues, you mean?
GW: Exactly. Although this character, this Dago, took control pretty quickly. My basic idea is that there's this guy sitting there on his fiftieth birthday who only counts getting older based on doctor visits and wants a new body. So I give him that opportunity, on a 'what if' principle. What he made of it surprised even me. But we don't want to tell you exactly what that is, everyone can read it for themselves...
That means you don't plot, don't sketch a structure before writing?
GW: No. I never take notes either. With good ideas I just have to wait a while, they develop on their own to a certain extent, until I feel ready to go. I often have a character, an initial situation and the ending. This is the best case, because then writing is very fast. But it's also often the case that the characters suddenly do things that I didn't expect and steer everything in a new direction. Those are the most beautiful moments when writing, when the text develops a life of its own and it dictates itself to me.
As if a ghost were standing behind you and whispering the story in your ear, which is what happens in one of the stories...
GW: Sometimes it almost feels like it.
And, has the ghost whispered new stories in your ear yet?
GW: He babbles non-stop...
Go ahead, write them down. Thank you for the talk. And the coffee!
GW: Be my guest!
Only those who have read the book will understand this. So one more reason to finally open it!
"Nothing about it is funny” will be available everywhere by September 1st and can be purchased now here be pre-ordered.
