The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Simple Stories: A Novel by Ingo Schulze
Irving Malin

Ingo Schulze. Simple Stories: A Novel. Trans. John E. Woods. Knopf, 2000. 280 pp. $25.00.

Schulze is of the most interesting German writers under forty. His first collection, 33 Moments of Happiness, demonstrates his ability to play with paradox puzzles, to raise epistemological and ethical questions in an apparently fragmented world.

It is impossible to do justice to the complexity of this novel. Although the jacket copy describes it as a kind of Winesburg, Ohio set in the after-Berlin-Wall breakdown, it is more subtle than Anderson’s text. All of the Ohio characters are simple “grotesques”; they have clear motives (which are simplistically explained). Schulze’s novel, although composed of “stories,” is not simple. There are many characters, their fates are unclear, they are “dim” and perverse. And although they attempt to confront their ambiguous motives, they seem to be more aware of indeterminacy than order.

The novel is comprised of uneasy disjunctions, misplaced meanings, and paranoid analyses which assume a shattered world in which identity and meanings are unclear. (Thus the political breakdown of the GDR is echoed by these traces, clues, and hints—the language reflects the political instability, or vice versa.) And it becomes even more frightening as we are offered solutions.

The cross-cutting, the sudden intrusion of previously “dead” characters, the oblique meanings—these qualities of the novel remind me of Locos and Frog. Schulze’s novel may not achieve the fiendish complexity of these, but the fact that it vibrates so oddly and beautifully demands that we see it as a startling achievement. [Irving Malin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Simple Stories: A Novel by Ingo Schulze Irving Malin Ingo Schulze. Simple Stories: A Novel. Trans. John E. Woods. Knopf, 2000. 280 pp. $25.00. Schulze is of the most interesting German writers under forty. His first collection, 33 Moments of Happiness, demonstrates his ability to play with paradox puzzles, to raise epistemological and ethical questions in an apparently fragmented world. It is impossible to do justice to the complexity of this novel. Although the jacket copy describes it as a kind of Winesburg, Ohio set in the after-Berlin-Wall breakdown, it is more subtle than Anderson’s text. All of the Ohio characters are simple “grotesques”; they have clear motives (which are simplistically explained). Schulze’s novel, although composed of “stories,” is not simple. There are many characters, their fates are unclear, they are “dim” and perverse. And although they attempt to confront their ambiguous motives, they seem to be more aware of indeterminacy than order. The novel is comprised of uneasy disjunctions, misplaced meanings, and paranoid analyses which assume a shattered world in which identity and meanings are unclear. (Thus the political breakdown of the GDR is echoed by these traces, clues, and hints—the language reflects the political instability, or vice versa.) And it becomes even more frightening as we are offered solutions. The cross-cutting, the sudden intrusion of previously “dead” characters, the oblique meanings—these qualities of the novel remind me of Locos and Frog. Schulze’s novel may not achieve the fiendish complexity of these, but the fact that it vibrates so oddly and beautifully demands that we see it as a startling achievement. [Irving Malin]

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