INTERVIEW BY PAULINE RIGAUDEAU
In Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, you're known as the creator of the eccentric detective Brenner. How did Brenner come into being? Did you base his character on real people? Does he represent some part of yourself?
Initially, I was attracted to the omniscient narrator's voice, the know-it-all blabbermouth. He's actually the secret central character for me. I think it's fascinating how we human beings fabricate our identities with the things we say. The taciturn detective served as a kind of counterpoint to the blabbermouth narrator. At first sight, Brenner and I probably don't have very much in common. But most likely some small aspect of the author's persona slips into every character in a novel.
Your fans love the unique style of your prose and the way you write in colloquial German with an unmistakable Austrian flavor. Are you actually understood equally well throughout the German-speaking countries?
My style thrives on the contrast between the official written language you usually find in books and the livelier spoken language. The artificial language I use in my novels is based on Austrian or Southern German, but it's understood everywhere because there are differences between written and spoken language in Northern Germany as well. Sure, it's a little easier for South German and Austrian readers to follow, but the North Germans get to enjoy the exotic quality and think life for us is really just as wild as I describe it.
You've achieved cult status among your fans. Do people recognize you on the street in Vienna? You've managed to be equally well received by critics and readers in general. Can good literature be entertaining, too?
People do recognize me sometimes, but they never pester me because readers tend to be fairly reserved in general. So it's a pleasant kind of fame. I don't see the entertainment factor as a problem because I can't imagine that boringness is a criterion for artistic quality. But for purely competitive reasons, of course I'm glad that most books are so boring.
What do you think about the difficulty of translating your prose into other languages? What kind of experiences have you had so far?
I think the style is very difficult to translate because comic linguistic effects are usually based on breaking rules that are hard to transfer to a different language. There are a number of translations out there, but there are even more translators who confide to me how bad the various translations are.
All six of the Brenner novels are set in Austria. The same goes for Das Wetter vor fünfzehn Jahren (The Weather Fifteen Years Ago). Can you imagine a setting other than Austria for your novels?
Yes. Preferably a country I've never been to before. I picked Puntigam, the hometown of my detective, precisely because I didn???t know it. I only knew it from the beer ads on the radio. After my readings, sometimes people from Puntigam would come up to me and compliment me for describing Puntigam exactly the way it really is.
Two of your books, Komm Süsser Tod (Come Sweet Death) and Silentium, were filmed with Josef Hader playing the lead role. The third film adaptation, Der Knochenmann (The Boneman), was just completed. Do you consider these film adaptations successful? After all, you participated in writing the script. How well are the film versions received outside of Austria?
The films also do well in Germany, but the audience is smaller than in Austria. In Austria, they are blockbusters because the lead actor, Josef Hader, is very popular here. In Germany the films are shown in art house cinemas. Nonetheless, we only missed the audience prize by a couple of votes at the Berlinale. Personally, I think the films are good, but they should be viewed as independent works that can depart relatively far from the original books.
Your most recent novel, Das Wetter vor 15 Jahren, is a love story in the form of an interview between a female literary critic and the (fictitious) author Wolf Haas about his (fictitious) new work. Occasionally, it is referred to as a meta-novel. How did you arrive at this new form of writing?
First I wanted to write the story in a totally normal style. But I kept falling asleep. I just happen to have a predilection for books that not only interest me in terms of content, but also have a certain attraction on a linguistic or formal level. Not all of the arts are as conservative as literature, where this kind of demand appears so unusual. In visual art it's taken for granted that young artists are no longer painting in an Impressionist style and that rather every generation attempts to reinvent the wheel.
Who is "Wolf Haas" really? How much can we find out about the real-life author Wolf Haas in the novel? Did you incorporate personal experiences with interview partners in the novel as well?
I've always had to laugh at how carefully all of the journalists attempted to avoid the mistake of equating the "Wolf Haas" in the novel with me. Since I'm a malicious person, I always said, go ahead and compare him with me. In reality though, any person changes as soon as they appear in writing. Even in an autobiography. To this extent I don't know myself exactly, but there is a relatively high degree of concurrence there. On the other hand, even as a real person you don't always know exactly whether you are identical with yourself. Robert Musil put it very beautifully when he said, "Most people basically relate to themselves as narrators."
You used to work as an ad writer. Did that influence your writing style?
The only reason why I started working as an ad writer was because I hadn't found a publisher for my novels yet at the time. I believe it didn't influence my writing. But the stressful job did toughen me up a bit, and that made it easier for me to deal with the media aspects that come with the job of being a writer.
ABOUT WOLF HAAS
Wolf Haas, born in 1960 in Maria Alm, Austria, was a university lecturer and ad writer before he, in one fell swoop, made himself known as a "first-class mystery writer of the German-speaking world" (FACTS) with the release of "Resurrection of the Dead". Haas has been awarded the German mystery prize multiple times, and the Film versions of "Come, Sweet Death" and "Silentium" have also achieved huge success.
