Der Blog zu Thomas Körners Fragmentroman Das Land aller Übel

The writer Thomas Körner has published an unusual novel for which he imagines a reader who uses his text as material in a kind of archive to develop his own story.
The text material of the fragmented novel is separated in nine fragments or parts which you can read chronologically within one part (for example within the Fragment of Man – Fragment vom Mensch) but you can easily change from one fragment to another. In this way you take some ideas and thoughts in one fragment (i.e. Fragment of the Book First box) and read some more ideas in other parts and then assemble all to a new story. This kind of reading is meant with deep, intense reading.
Important for Körner is the idea to “dismantle” the language first. With dismantle he means to break down a sentence or a traditional metapher into each word and find all meanings. The writer wants the reader to come back to the primary words.
Main reason for Körner as a writer in former GDR was his intention to disclose the abuse of language in totalitarian states.
The Socialistic and Marxistic Ideology of the GDR shows up in the language of agitation and propaganda, the language of the journal press and the language compliant to the party SED (Socialist Unity Party).
When the reader really slows down his reading to an individual word and afterwards will assemble the words again and come to his own individual story, Körner calls this “ensembling” ( in German: ensemblieren).
Let yourself be seduced to read and think “in the ensembling way”. Wishing you have fun. The comments function has been deactivated due to high spam occurance.