Style and Appearance
Kracht’s novels are pastiche; a playful blend of influences ‘stolen’, in Kracht’s words’, from areas of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Thus, Kracht's writings contain alienating references to other works, including Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, the subtly ironic travel journals of Robert Byron, and Hergé's Tintin series. Furthermore, the ligne claire ("clear line") drawing style developed by Hergé is used for the illustrations (by Dominik Monheim) in the first edition of Ferien für immer (1998).
Kracht has attested that a writer also ‘always performs being a writer’. His performance is persuasive and has successfully seduced reviewers into sometimes overlooking the distinction between the author and narrator to erroneously identify Kracht as the autobiographical protagonist of his debut novel Faserland. He has sometimes been a controversial figure in modern German-language literature. The meaning of his pronouncements in interviews is not always obvious; his description of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar (and by implication the Taliban itself) as "camp" should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt: in this case moral values take second place after media aesthetics. A similar principle applies to Kracht's foreword to the 2006 illustrated book Die totale Erinnerung (published with Feral House as "The Ministry of Truth" in the U.S.), in which Kim Jong-Il's North Korea is referred to as a gigantic simulation, whereas his apparent ignorance of actual suffering in North Korea upset some commentators.
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Famous quotes containing the words style and, style and/or appearance:
“I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the calibre of a bullet, teething beads.... One’s style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must willfully misunderstand it.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Hence, the less government we have, the better,—the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)