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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



Ruhm

by
Daniel Kehlmann


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase Ruhm


Title: Ruhm
Author: Daniel Kehlmann
Genre: Novel
Written: 2009
Length: 203 pages
Original in: German
Availability: Ruhm - Deutschland
Gloire - France
  • Ein Roman in neun Geschichten
  • Ruhm has not yet been translated into English

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Our Assessment:

B+ : confidently tossed off, a bit light

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
Le Figaro . 26/3/2009 Astrid Eliard
FASz . 10/1/2009 Volker Weidermann
FAZ A 17/1/2009 Heinrich Detering
NZZ . 17/1/2009 Andreas Breitenstein
Die Zeit . 16/1/2009 Wiebke Porombka


  From the Reviews:
  • "La peur d'être oublié, le fantasme d'être reconnu, le rêve d'inspirer un écrivain et de devenir le héros de son livre, tous ces thèmes sont brillamment explorés par Daniel Kehlmann, que le succès a rendu plus drôle et incisif que jamais." - Astrid Eliard, Le Figaro

  • "Kehlmann geht virtuos in diesen Spuren, verlässt sie aber immer wieder, wenn es ihm passt, wechselt Ton, Perspektiven, Erzählweisen und Geschichten. Und folgt aber in aller Ruhe seinem Thema: wie leicht in der technischen Welt durch eine kleine falsche Programmierung alles aus den Fugen geraten kann. Wie alle Sicherheiten verlorengehen, ein neues Leben beginnt. Ruhm ist ein Schreckens- und Traumbuch aus unserer Gegenwart." - Volker Weidermann, Frankfurter Allegemeine Sonntagszeitung

  • "Es ist ein Buch von funkelnder Intelligenz. Und es besitzt vom ersten Satz an eine Spannung, die unwiderstehlich ist. (...) Kehlmanns short cuts und simple Storys ergeben ein perfekt abschnurrendes Welt-Maschinchen. Zu dieser Perfektion gehört die Entropie. Die Vollkommenheit der Maschinerie zeigt sich erst in ihrem Kollaps, der so raffiniert kalkuliert ist, als habe ihn auch der reale Autor nicht mehr im Griff (der doch gerade damit triumphiert)." - Heinrich Detering, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

  • "Ruhm ist eine Literaturparodie und zielt zugleich mitten ins Herz der Gegenwart -- indem er den Identitätszerfall zeitgenössischen Daseins thematisiert, welcher der ubiquitären Nutzung der Informationstechnologien entwächst. Ort- und Beziehungslosigkeit, Identitäts- und Persönlichkeitszerfall heisst die wenig originelle Diagnose, doch macht nicht sie, sondern ihre vor Witz funkelnde und zugleich vor Wucht federnde literarische Umsetzung die Sensation des Romans aus. (...) Ruhm strotzt vor Raffinement. Daniel Kehlmann scheint alles zu können (.....) Es ist kein schwergewichtiger Roman, sondern eine genialische Fingerübung, die Daniel Kehlmann vorlegt" - Andreas Breitenstein, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

  • "Neben der Kritik an Technisierung und Medialisierung, die fast alle Geschichten grundiert, kann man Ruhm gar nicht anders lesen als ein programmatisches und poetologisches Buch, in dem Kehlmann noch einmal klarstellt, dass er ein Autor ist, dem es ums Ästhetische geht, um den spielerischen und zugleich souveränen Umgang mit Text. Nicht etwa um das faktisch korrekte Nacherzählen von Wirklichkeit, denn ein Realist war er ja noch nie." - Wiebke Porombka, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Ruhm ('Fame') is presented as 'a novel in nine stories', but the connexions between the tales are, for the most part, very loose. Characters pop up again, some scenes are seen again from a different perspective, but these tales don't blend together particularly obviously. As one of the characters -- a writer, of course, one of several -- acknowledges near the end:

     Wir sind immer in Geschichten. [...] Geschichten in Geschichten in Geschichten. Man weiß nie, wo eine endet und eine andere beginnt ! In Wahrheit fließen alle ineinander. Nur in Büchern sind sie säuberlich getrennt.

     [We are always in stories. [...] Stories within stories within stories. One never knows where one ends and another begins. Actually, they all merge into one another. Only in books are they neatly separated.]
       In Ruhm Kehlmann plays the trick of suggesting clean, neat separation, even as he made clear with his subtitle -- insisting this is a novel, not a random collection of stories -- that there is both order and connexion here.
       The first story is about a man who finally gets a cellphone, but finds he is receiving someone else's calls. The second is about a German writer, Leo Richter, in some African country, doing the rounds of some of the Goethe-Instituts and the like, his travelling companion, Elisabeth, a woman he recently met who works for Doctors without Borders.
       In that second story Elisabeth already begs Leo not to put her in one of his stories -- but, of course, it's too late: stories are inevitable, and we're all in more than we can imagine. The third story is recognisable as one briefly mentioned in the second, Leo's most famous tale -- a skewed one in which the author is repeatedly pulled into the story by the protagonist, a woman he has sentenced to death but who doesn't want to die and begs him to spare her, to play god and change the outcome.
       The stories overlap in various ways: we meet the man whose calls the new telephone-owner of the first story is constantly receiving (and learn of the consequences of this confusion), while a later story clears up the number-mix-up that led to the technical problem in the first place. Similarly, while travelling in the second story Leo decides he can't bear another of these trips and sends a text-message to another author, Maria Rubinstein, begging her to take his place (at this last minute) on a similar trip to Central Asia he was booked on; her story, later in the book, then reveals what happened on that fateful trip.
       Many of these characters are, to varying degrees famous or well-known, and identity -- hiding it, keeping or losing it, changing it -- is a central theme of the book. One character is a famous actor -- so famous that there are impersonators who appear on talent-night shows imitating him -- who (a bit predictably) finds himself losing his identity. As an actor, he is a man of many identities in any case -- and yet also unsure of any specific identity, even his own.
       In Maria Rubinstein's case, she finds herself the odd man out, and then is unable to get back on track again in a Kafkaesque nightmare as the bureaucratic machine digests only that it was Leo Richter that was supposed to be in this Central Asian wasteland and is unable to deal with the last-minute substitution.
       Another man spins evermore fantastic tales as he juggles the woman he lives with (more or less) and a mistress, inventing stories of what he has to do at the office or where he has to travel for work to cover his tracks as he is with one or the other, finding himself eventually even 'lying out of habit and inventing stories for no good reason' but ultimately unable to juggle both his invented and his real world.
       One story is also devoted to another writer, Miguel Auristos Blancos, whose books pop up in many of the stories (even in Central Asia), who writes an ultimate work of un-fiction, a piece meant to take back all he's done (as if that were possible ...).
       Kehlmann writes with almost consummate confident ease: these are tales that seem almost effortlessly thrown on the page, yet there's clearly much deliberation and care here. The collection often feels very light: Kehlmann is the rare author who doesn't want (or need) to parade all the writerly games he's playing; this book belongs right alongside those of Javier Marías and Enrique Vila-Matas, yet Kehlmann avoids the insistent self-consciousness that mark their works.
       Ruhm is very well done, yet isn't entirely satisfying, undermined by the very effortlessness of its appearance. Still, worthwhile.

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Links:

Ruhm: Reviews: Daniel Kehlmann: Other books by Daniel Kehlmann under Review: Other books of interest under review:
  • See Index of German literature at the complete review

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About the Author:

       Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. He lives in Vienna, where he studied philosophy and literature. He has published several works of fiction.

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© 2009 the complete review

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