God only comes when dust is flying
Not your thing? Here’s a few other suggestions for Liechtenstein.
When you think of Liechtenstein, what comes to mind is likely its alpine landscapes, its status as a tax haven, or perhaps its castle — not its contributions to world literature.
Liechtenstein is one of the smallest countries in the world, both in terms of size and population. With fewer than 40,000 residents, it’s no surprise that its literary scene is, let’s say, modest.
So it was slim pickings. I had the choice between a children’s book from the fifties, a on account of the football team from Liechtenstein, a royal biography or a short story published in “Best European fiction 2011”: Stefan Sprenger’s Dust: a rare example of contemporary fiction from Liechtenstein.
Since Stefan Sprenger was the only author actually from Liechtenstein, I went with the short story. And it was …
Well, it was an experience.
this collection of Best European fiction, 2011
It is as said a short story. Took me less than half an hour to read. The story is made up of three narratives that are … I wouldn’t say intertwined. More like completely unrelated but chopped up and mixed together.
One of them has a group of scientists exploring if dust has feelings (Spoiler alert, it does. The feeling is shame.) And apparently their serious research to decide this consists of something like a group discussion and a form of interpretive dance …
Second narrative is the story of a photo artist, Frau H., who has a groundbreaking epiphany involving dust on a table, in the top floor of a building where there are a lot of dusty businesses.
And finally the third consists of an excrutiatingly detailed discussion between a petulant violinist called Klubka and his orchestral director about the importance of resin for violin strings. Which also somehow involves dust. And … God.
In order to be able to measure emotion on an incremental scale, moving step by step from a wholly emotionless state to the level of human beings, the researchers attempted to establish a baseline of zero emotions by examining ordinary household dust. The results were astonishing: counter to all of their assumptions, the Burgenfeld Circle in fact detected a really quite considerable level, indeed an abundence of emotion in the stuffm necessitation a revision of their entire emotional hierarchy.
So.
If you’re infinitely smarter than me, and drawn to abstract enigmatic narratives, Dust might be worth a read. But this story went WAY over my head. I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the plot, if there even is one? I didn’t understand the point of this story whatsoever. There were words, and I even got the feeling that they were very well written at times, but the story had absolutely no meaning to me.
Still, there’s something fascinating about knowing that even a tiny country like Liechtenstein has its own contributions to the world of literature — even if they leave you scratching your head in confusion.
Maybe the children’s book about the cow would have been more my style after all. I’ll do that on my next world tour.
But for now I’ll consider Liechtenstein done and dusted.
Pun very much intented.
Dust has long been used as a metaphor for human existence in literature although on the basis of your review, I think I’ll stick to Philip Pullman. I’m eagerly awaiting the last in his Book of Dust trilogy.