Optische Autritte. Marktszenen in der medialen Konkurrenz von Journal-, Almanachs- und Bücherliteratur by Stephanie Gleißner et al. (review)

Abstract

borne debris in Jeremias Gotthelf’s Die Wassernot in Emmental (1838) before considering the efforts to resist the erosion of landscape and memory in max Frisch’s Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (1927). Finally, Part 3 (“Triviality”) looks at spaces that contain junk in Gottfried Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich (1854–55) and surfaces that collect dust and sand in two crime novels by Friedrich Glauser from 1936. Frederick’s deeply researched case studies proceed from careful textual analyses anchored in historical and philosophical contextualization. For example, the chapter on stifter offers a sophisticated reading of a lesser-known text by way of a deep dive into cryptogamic reproduction and classification. considering that collecting was practiced passionately throughout nineteenth-century Europe, it is unclear from Frederick’s study the extent to which his argument is specific to German-speaking culture. Unlike other scholarly forays into literary collecting, Frederick’s sources do not thematize collecting or utilize it as a structural principle. accordingly, his choice of texts, much like the objects they feature, are unexpected and unconventional. The chapter on Frisch, for instance, reveals how efforts to prevent deterioration involve the creation of waste itself when the protagonist’s struggle with dementia results in gathering and displaying information on unwieldy amounts of paper scraps. Thus, The Redemption of Things serves as a logical complement to Frederick’s previous monograph, Narratives Unsettled, which examines digressions and interruptions, elements normally dismissed as types of linguistic detritus. Frederick’s aptitude for discovering relevance in the irrelevant makes for a fascinating read. Even less-persuasive chapters are still richly informative and provoke readers to examine the oft-overlooked pieces and particulates of the world around them with new eyes and newfound curiosity. in the end, the author delivers what his title promises: a model for nonrestorative collecting which acknowledges collection as dispersal and underscores the continuities between realism and modernism. Through amassing such necessarily incomplete or insignificant things, the collector recognizes the precariousness of material culture as essential to modern existence. in accepting an object’s inevitable decay into immateriality, we come to accept the materiality, contingency, and irrevocable decline of our own bodies. only through loss can redemption occur. The redemption of things, as Frederick reminds us, “does not save us from the world of scattered things by ‘fixing’ or ‘restoring’ them; it allows for these things to be experienced fully.” collecting is no longer a mechanism for overcoming alienation and impermanence, but a means of coming to terms with them as conditions of modernity. Those appreciative of austrian and swiss literature along with scholars interested in material culture, collecting, and nonfunctional or “marginal” objects will likely be most attracted to Frederick’s book. Yet his work reaches beyond this primary readership in its attention to multiple disciplines and affirmative turn to literature in contributing to and shaping cultural discourses of past and present.