ABSTRACT
This chapter provides Klaus Zeyringer's personal satire of Austria's Literaturpapst Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, who has been aggrandized by the state apparatus of the small republic and its multiple offices of Kulturforderung and who has succeeded in dominating the public arena of Austrian literature. In the Ehrenrunden im Salon, Zeyringer discusses his favorite contemporary authors—Kehlmann, Thomas Glavinic, Gstrein, Evelyn Schlag, Dimitre Dinev, and Karl-Marcus Gauß—insisting that a good, authentic story cannot and should not be equated with a lack of formal reflection or poetic consciousness. Zeyringer seems to put some hope into the intrinsically democratic nature of the internet and the average person's opportunity to vent his/her criticism of the manipulative or authoritarian behavior of the professional readers. Zeyringer's critical Vermessung der Welt is a commendable effort at publicly declaring the elitist members of this Salon narcissistic and hegemonic in their aspirations and practices.
