ABSTRACT
The freedom of the interior, labyrinthine forms and motifs can be found particularly often in recent East German prose. But the muse of boredom does not kiss poets alone: the union vacation slot on the Baltic, where one is trapped in the rhythms of meals, in the uneventfulness of days spent in canopied wicker beach chairs, where one starts the dreaming about co-worker X because she sits across from one every day. The final party is lady's choice, eternal school days, no champagne, just soda on tap, and a sky full of unfilled, no, unfulfillable desires. Boredom that does not make one nervous; it makes one deep. Hans Castorp does not discover his weak spot, his religious devotion to vinyl tenors, until 800 pages into The Magic Mountain. The flowers of stasis and the creepy horror that is always present ghost stories that are only half imaginary.
