Manafonistas Head Quarter: Here is much talk about lost classics in music, is there a great lost book in your life?
Michael: Funny, you’re asking this question. I’m a specialist in losing books, records, clocks, scarfs, umbrellas. Radio scripts, DAT’s with some of my best interviews. Should visit a neurologist. Have had these symptoms since young age. You know that great Eno song „Tutti forgetti“ from „My Squelchy Life“? Forgetting can be pure fun, too. But yesterday, hurrah, I found a lost book by strolling through my archives: „Der Fünfte im Spiel“, by Robbertson Davies.
MHQ: What’s it about?
Michael: I forgot, too (laughs). Seriously, I only remember a few things. It’s about an old man who taught at university and decides to look back on his life. I read it when I was about twenty, and remember that it has then been absolutely captivating. Thrilling. A bit gothic. Good amount of deep psychology, too. And great stories.
MHQ: You wanna read it again?
Michael: Not a bad idea to rediscover a book you once loved, and forgot a lot of the scenes. But I would have to make some researches. Cause the book was the first one in a series of three. I lost the other two ones that had been published by Goldmann Taschenbücher. The whole thing is called, originally, „The Deptford Trilogy“.
MHQ: An autobiographical book?
Michael: Dunno. And I don’t care looking at Wikipedia. It belonged to those books I read between 16 and 26 years that totally sucked me in, page-turners, soul-twisters, existential stuff, that kind. In my case: some Highsmith novels covered the same area of deepness, some early Handke and Gustafsson, one Rühmkorff, about four Dostojevski novels, one Guntram Vesper, one Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Steinbeck, Twain, Calvino, Cortazar. That league of gentlemen and lesbians. I loved two Kundera novels, too. But don’t know if these more cultish novels would stand the test of „my“ time. Of course, I forgot some other stuff.
MHQ: Were there „in-books“ that you didn’t like at all?
Michael: Ha, one comes to mind immediately: Marlen Haushofer’s „Die Wand“. Boring. Boring like hell. As boring as nearly 90 % of Fassbinder movies. Might win some new friends here (laughs). And, honestly, I never found any inspiration in reading Kafka. Though one of my best friends directly comes out of one of his books.
MHQ: Is there another lost book you remember?
Michael: Yes, „Obduktionsprotokoll“ – the best book I ever read about the inner connections of jazz, sex and everyday life. Written by Hartmut Geerken around the late 70s. A lost masterpiece. He once told me I may have been one of five readers (laughs). Should do some web search for the other four. Might be soulmates. I even prefer it to Geoff Dyer’s „But Beautiful“.
MHQ: Michael, let us come back to the here and now. I know you’re a big fan of TV series like True Detective, Missing, The Fall, Hinterland, Ray Donovan. What did you see lately that has had a similar emotional impact?
Michael: Upss, you’re an attentive reader of this blog … well I have to name two: the first season of „The Red Road“. Comes close to the „abyss factor“ of True Detective. Not many people here have ever heared about this series. I only see the originals. And, the other one, not for the faint of heart, too, with dark humour, brilliant story lines, and an U.S. Marshall you might love from the start, i’m just at the end of the third season, three are yet waiting for me. „Justified“, based on a story by Elmore Leonard, and surely inspired by the special vibes and moods of his novels. And may I tell you one thing: this is not stuff for stealing time. It goes down to the bottom of life’s essentials. You learn a lot about your own life here. Not kidding.
MHQ: For example?
Michael: Survival techniques in the Outer Hebrides.
MHQ: Thanks for talking, Michael.
Michael: Pleasure. You pay the coffees (laughs).