In Search for the ‘Great 9/11 Novel’. Kristof Magnusson’s poetological rejection of crisis literature in Das war ich nicht (2010)

Abstract

Kristof Magnusson?s German bestseller and new economy novel Das war ich nicht (2010), whose subtheme is the failure of a large announced 9/11 century novel, questions and satirizes the media dictation and its exaggerated expectations of an aesthetic and morally adequate artistic reception of 9/11, which consequently limits both the writer and writing itself. By means of an ironic ductus and by reference to Theodore Dreiser?s novel Sister Carrie, a masterpiece of American naturalism, Magnusson distances himself from the discourse in order to establish an alternative poetic program: Unlike those German novels, which were written in the immediate aftermath of the attacks (as Ulrich Peltzer’s Bryant Park or Kathrin Röggla’s Really Ground Zero), Das war ich nicht does not repeat the impression of an aesthetic and poetic caesura. So Magnusson denies a medial postulated and inflationary served ‘crisis management narrative’, which is literature ought to accomplish. Instead, he pays homage to the epic storytelling by opposing with the example of Stock Market Crash a kind of ‘counter-crisis’. Replacing one crisis by another Magnusson?s treatment approaches a paradigm of terrorism and assassination research, according to which violent attacks do not affect the course of history in a long term. Nevertheless, it is not the novel’s intention to marginalize the events. Rather Magnusson’s example shows the historical genesis and variability of literary crisis management, which with increasing time has to devise alternative modes of coping with 9/11.