ABSTRACT
At the beginning of his career Buch was losely connected to the Studentenbewegung and reflected its uncertainties in Kritische Wälder. Essays Kritiken Glossen (1972). Das Hervortreten des Ichs aus den Wörtern. Aufsätze zur Literatur (1978) and Waldspaziergang. Unpolitische Betrachtungen zu Literatur und Politik (1987) demonstrate individual interests (Haiti, Alejo Carpentier) and more general concerns of his generation (ecology, post-history, apocalypse), the latter present also in Bericht aus dem Innern der Unruhe. Gorlebener Tagebuch (1979), on demonstrations against nuclear power. The six stories of Unerhörte Begebenheiten (1966) and Zumwalds Beschwerden. Eine schmutzige Geschichte (1980) are typical in their cultivation of hyperrealistic grotesque satire aimed at the Spieβer of a vein of writing found also in the work of Elsner, Lettau et al. Central to the rest of his work is his relationship to the American continent and in particular Haiti, which he visited for the first time in 1968 and where he has ancestral links. In the reportages Aus der neuen Welt. Nachrichten und Geschichten (1975) and Der Herbst des groβen Kommunikators. Amerikanisches Journal (1986) he observes the USA with the sceptical eye evident also in Karibische Kaltluft. Berichte und Reportagen (1985), Die Nähe und die Ferne. Bausteine zu einer Poetik des kolonialen Blicks (1991) and Tropische Früchte. Afro-amerikanische Impressionen (1993). In Die Hochzeit von Port-au-Prince (1984), influenced by Carpentier, the three parts-on the attempt to reintroduce slavery after the liberation under Toussaint L’Ouverture, an episode of gun-boat diplomacy by Germany in 1897, and the history of the Haiti branch of the author’s family-add up to an indictment of post-colonial misadventure, despite its lightness of touch. The element of playful fantasy characteristic of post-modernism is more in evidence in Haiti Chérie (1990), consisting of the adventures of an immortal whore, an account of the reign of terror of the Duvalier clan and a creole cookbook for cannibals, and Rede des toten Columbus am Tage des jüngsten Gerichts (1992), structurally similar, but with greater geographical and historical range. In Der Burgwart der Wartburg (1994), which along with Grass’s Ein weites Feld (1995) owes a large debt to Hans Joachim Schädlich’s Tallhover, Buch has brought to the theme of post-Wende trauma and its historical roots the same qualitites.
