Bernd Fischer.  "Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois:  Christoph 
Hein's First Prose Collection."  In  Studies in GDR Culture and 
Society 4:  Selected Papers from the Ninth New Hampshire 
Symposium on the German Democratic Republic."  Ed. Margy Gerber.  
Lanham:  University Press of America, 1984.  Pp. 125-136.

130-131.  ". . .Hein's strength lies precisely in his ability to 
give credibility to trivial historical situations by skillfully 
shifting between history and fiction, which allows him to 
represent history without overburdening his heroes with undue, 
schematic claims of historical class-consciousness, 
revolutionary perspectives, etc.  This is particularly true in 
this story, since many of the details of Prussian and Russian 
history can be read as historical relfections on the present as 
well."  

[I don't agree that this story is all that free of such backward 
projections.]

[On "Neuer Kohlhaas."]  Imatation of Kleist's language 
tooclever; successful though as entfremdungs effect in a story 
about GDR Alltagsleben.

131-132.  "As in Kleist's novella, individual rebellion against 
the power mechanisms of the state ends in the social destruction 
of the individual.  The people around Hubert K. -- from his 
colleagues to his wife -- react to his rebellion with mockery, 
behind which thoughtless conformity and wavering fear are 
hidden. . . .The parentheses around the adjective `glcklichere' 
in the title serve as an early indication of [132] the political 
tension within the text."

133.  Hein repeats German literary history of the early 19th 
century when he seeks a new realism by turning to "the study, 
the genre picture, and the historical narrative." 

"In all of the texts in this volume, both historical and 
contemporary, Hein's specific version of realism revolves around 
particular traits which might best be labeled halfheartedness, 
personal shortcomings (without personal fault), weakness under 
the pressures of forces determining one's life, etc. . . .While 
Hein's intellectual heroes of past centuries could still 
reconcile themselves to the absurdity and brutality of their 
times for the sake of higher scientific, artistic, or political 
goals, as illusory as these might have been, his contemporary 
figures lack even these motivations.  Spiritlessness reigns as a 
law of everyday life, even in its smallest details."

[Obviously applicable to DFF.]

133-134.  "Hein's writing is characterized by his 
disillusioned realism, his obsession with negative aspects of 
history and society, and his attempt to break with stagnant 
historical and political-ideological patterns by presenting the 
private details of the intellectual and [134] proletarian life 
and suffering throughout history.  One of the formal means he 
uses to present this view of reality is the sacrifice of all 
authorial interpretations.  As a result of this authorial 
distance, the texts are punctuated with gaps in meaning which 
challenge the reader's pattern's understanding.  Neither 
political nor philosophical thoughts are allowed to detract from 
the concrete realism.  In the historical texts one occasionally 
finds ideological discourses, for example, statements made by 
Humboldt or Racine, but even there the author remains in the 
background and allows all emerging viewpoints equal treatment.  
This formal objectivity is visible also in Hein's use of 
narrative perspectives which view the charaters from the outside 
or, as in the example of Der fremde Freund, with the limited 
perspective of the Ich-Form.  In both cases, the reader is 
obliged to read between the lines, to think for himself."

[Not entirely true; in EZLB there is plenty of authorial 
tampering in the first story at least, and the is also plenty in 
DFF.  As for the modifications effected on the reader's patterns 
of understanding, is this as crucial a matter here as in Joyce?  
Possibly so, but my main interst here is in giving a formal 
description of the texts -- it seems that there has been enough 
discussion of the reader-response aspect.  Unless it can be 
fully grounded in the text, such discussions should be avoided.]