Lost Books Month: Tumult by Botho Strauss

This one is kind of complex. The book is out-of-print and was barely (if at all) distributed anywhere other than the United Kingdom. That being said, the press that brought the respected German novel to English audiences (via the equally respected translator, Michael Hulse) is still alive. Quite alive in fact, and purveyors of many amazing and wonderful titles.

More confounding still is the fact that Botho Strauss is alive and enshrined as one of Germany's greatest modern writers. Not to mention one of the most controversial ones as well.

So what gives?

Tumult simply must not have sold well in translation. Perhaps it was the milieu of the mid 1980's that stifled its aggressively visceral approach to the middle class sturm und drang of the late 20th century. Also possible is the idea that translations, particularly ones so driven by such violent stream of consciousness prose, were simply not popular in that time period.

Perhaps it's both. Or neither. These are conjectures without any foundation in statistics. The fact is though that Tumult is out of print and it is truly an amazing work capable of terrifying insight on human motivations and the ethical frailties such an oft-coined term like that implies.

One thing you should note: Do not take the words "aggressively" and "violent" lightly. This is a book that would make Bret Easton Ellis blush.


Tumult by Botho Strauss. Translated from the German by Michael Hulse. Fiction. Carcanet Press. ISBN: 0856354724 (Hardcover) 0856355887 (Paperback). 136 pps. Out-Of-Print.

All these years I've not given him another thought, this domestic fool with the face of a Silenus, the clamorous enemy of the state pensioned off, boiling up revenge on his wretched commander fresh each day with his breakfast milk; but then, half way, his head gave way after all. Robbed of his enemy, of fighting, of killing, he circled lifelessly about, only offering up a sleepy repetition of the old hatred, his great condemnations that at one time made up the entire heat of his person. A father and a slaughterer, dishonourably discharged, now he approaches once again, drapes his heavy coat across my shoulders so that I will draw myself up to full stretch just like the unrecognizable man with the umbrella and bloody mouth under the cadaver beef in Francis Bacon's painting. Let yourself go once more, have a fling, right? And then in perfect silence withdraw to the Institute...

-from Tumult

Botho Strauss writes somewhere on a beautiful fringe. The term postmodern is apropos yet Strauss has such a keen sense of history and a certain classicism about his writing that hard line postmodernists have been turned off from it. He is at once a major innovator of the form and a writer whose communicative powers tend to evoke pedestrian praise from the purely avant-garde.

This of course makes him instantly appealing.

Tumult throws the reader into the internal lives of a handful of Germans living and working in a small "information" company. That is to say a market research firm. The protagonist is Becker, a talented but shiftless man who was once the preternatural wunderkind of the firm and is now, in his third return from departure, a sad ousted lion bereft of anything resembling claws.

Becker cuts a meager figure at the firm. He is on his third trip back into the business, twice trying to leave and discover some more meaningful field of work. The feeling of futility and humiliation permeates every single page dealing with life within the firm.

Becker has found something, though small and humiliating in its own way, in a reborn relationship with his estranged daughter. The internal tension and compressed resentment between the two, built up over years of little to no communication and resentments over emotional issues such as abandonment and envy. As Becker becomes increasingly alienated at work and clearly destined for career failure he increases his endeavor to become close to his daughter in a meaningful way.

Botho Strauss has an uncanny ability to scent each emotion and its impetus. I find no other sense that fits the subtlety to Strauss' crafting of emotion. It sounds somewhat strange, but the heady mixture of exasperation, fatigue, hatred and love that Becker's daughter feels toward her suddenly interested father is unmanning, just like a good perfume. In turn, the awkward and often Saturnal emotions of Becker are horrifically narcissistic.

At one point in the novel Becker's daughter reveals a life-long sickness. She disrobes and displays a claw foot and slightly withered leg. Becker's reaction is at first one of sexual disappointment and then one of guilt born of reciprocity. Please understand that these supposedly deviant thoughts are rendered by Strauss in such delicate and fleeting language that the reader somehow feels the nausea of Becker as he drives them down and away, somewhat horrified by the fact that thoughts such as these exist within.

Tumult is a pessimistic book and nearly horrible to behold. The implication of the selfishness and bestial drive to life is disconcerting, to put it mildly.

This is a book, I fear, that is as accurate a portrayal of man's inner strife as exists.

Please, write the press if you have time and express an interest in purchasing the book. Perhaps if enough people show interest they can bring the book back to print. Remember though that the press is an amazing one and they do incredible work. So in no way is this a witch hunt. We just want to show interest in what they once did too.

For more on Botho Strauss click here.