Research Catalog

Title

Drilling through hard boards : 133 political stories / Alexander Kluge; with guest contributions by Reinhard Jirgl; translated by Wieland Hoban.

Author

Kluge, Alexander, 1932-

Publication

• London ; New York : Seagull Books, 2017.
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Hoban, Wieland
• Jirgl, Reinhard, 1953-

Description

349 pages : illustrations; 21 cm.

Summary

It was Max Weber who famously described politics as 'a strong, slow drilling through hard boards with both passion and judgement'. Taking this as his starting point, Alexander Kluge examines in 133 stories the tools available to political actors in the hard struggle for power. Weber's driller is certainly a suitable figure to embody intelligent tenacity as a precondition for political change. But what is a hammer in the business of politics? What is a 'subtle touch'? Finally, all these questions lead to a single one: What is the 'political' in the first place? As a literary man, the question that interests Kluge is: How does one tell stories about this? Politics, he says, consists of everyday feelings in a special state of matter. It is everywhere. It animates private lives as well as the public sphere, and hence in his stories, as well as the major figure, we also find the small, unknown, almost nameless ones: Elfriede Eilers alongside Pericles, the Chilean miners rescued from a depth of 700 metres next to Napolean, or the sensitive nape of three-month-old child's neck besides Alexander the Great. --

Series Statement

The German list

Uniform Title

• Das bohren harter bretter. English
• German list

Alternative Title

Das bohren harter bretter.

Subject

• Kluge, Alexander, 1932- > Interviews
• Political culture
• Germany > Politics and government

Genre/Form

Interviews

Note

• "This publication was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, India." --verso title page

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Language (note)

• In English; translated from the original German.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

On a winter's evening -- A humming of soul lamps : Jacobins fly to the moon in a balloon -- A pickpocket finds himself in a merging group : "that day he possessed nothing but his zeal" -- The furnaces of history : toppling of the tyrants -- Ground adhesion by the stomach.

ISBN

• 0857424289
• 9780857424280

OCLC

• 965734843
• SCSB-11837170

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library