Erinnern und Vergessen in Christian Krachts Romanen

The article discusses the issues of remembering and the process of forgetting in the novels by Christian Kracht. Each of the three texts chosen for discussion here has a different nameless first-person narrator whose memory, and sometimes no-memory, determines the style and the direction of the narrative. When the memory is disturbed, the identity of the characters becomes a problem. In the novel, Faserland, readers meet a dandy who leads a life of luxury, whose days are filled with parties and various stimulants. The protagonist’s memories, beliefs, and judgements reflect the so-called “Generation Golf” and record the hollowness, aimlessness, and alienation of the young aesthete. The novel 1979 deals with the process of purposeful forgetting and the attempt to create a new identity. Its tone is rather ironic, since the protagonist surrenders to totalitarian ideology, a step which in practice leads to self-destruction. The last text analysed here, Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten [I will be here, in sunshine and in shadow], is a counterfactual vision of the world devoid of letters and memory. Its protagonist, a native African, is “converted” into a party official. Consequently, his childhood, memories, and value system are manipulated.