Ingo Schulze: One More Story

Ingo Schulze’s short story collection “One More Story” was preceded by “33 Moments of Happiness,” a collection about St. Petersberg, and the novel “New Lives.” Critics consider Schulze the voice of post-unification Germany, a rather ironic mantle since Schulze slept through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

His latest collection, “One More Story,” translated into English by John E. Woods, has narrators who question their own narrative. They are very self-aware of the story-telling process. They don’t know why they should tell their story or what belongs in the story. They also fail to remember the story, admit their story gives the wrong impression, or comment upon the way that their story works.

All of this evinces a profound struggle with the act of storytelling. In “A Night at Boris’s,” which has a “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” feel of long-form dialogue between characters on a single night, the narrator offers a line which seems emblematic of Schulze’s characters: “I didn’t tell any stories myself. Nothing ever happens to me that could be shaped into some kind of narrative.” Yet he still shapes this narrative, a string of short-shorts set at a dinner party. Because the process of telling the story is never out of sight or mind, the fiction never loses sight of itself and the reader never forgets the artificiality of the narrative process.

Often his characters don’t even know where to start. In “New Year’s Eve Confusions,” the protagonist has to “try to cast about for the beginning of this story.” The reader gets the sense that some of this narrative confusion mirrors Schulze’s own writing process — perhaps his character didn’t know where to begin because Schulze doubted where to begin? — but the process of confusion leading to the final clarity of the story gives each story a meta-progression, where not only the narrative unfolds, but the act of narrating unfolds as well.

Every character is trying to make sense of their world, but prior to making sense of the world, they have to figure out how to arrange their story. They believe they’re failing at the task of storytelling, but since their hand is guided by Ingo Schulze’s, they actually succeed. They might fail to shoehorn their story into a classic form (or the “Time-Honored Mode” of the subtitle), but they succeed in creating something oddly shaped and meaningful that defines their lives.

Schulze’s questioning of narrative might be attributed to his biography. He lived through the repressive regime of the GDR (German Democratic Republic), who frequently censored the plays that Schulze performed at his playhouse. With Big Brother hanging over your shoulder, you not only doubt your narrative aesthetically, you also doubt its political neutrality. With that biographical information in mind, it’s harder to couch these meta-fiction touches as too coy or too clever — the narrative doubts and false steps seem to stem organically from Schulze’s life.

There are few reviews of Ingo Schulze’s work in English, but check out Words Without Borders review of “New Lives” by Robert Buckeye, a review of “Simple Stories” in January Magazine, and a overview of the author’s work including a discussion of “New Lives” in the NYTBR.

“One More Story” comes out from Knopf on Tuesday, March 23.