KONG’S FINEST HOUR, Alexander Kluge

Kluge writes “container novels.” He picks a subject, throws every initial thought about that subject he has into the container, makes associations with those thoughts and throws them in, and them makes associations with the associations and throws them in too, and just keeps going until he’s emptied that subject of associations to his satisfaction. He uses facts, and memoir, and fiction, and often rolls all three together until you’re completely uncertain of what you’re standing on and have no choice but to lurch forward into Kluge’s next memory or factoid or fabrication. It’s a completely mad way to write a book and I’m enthralled by it.

I mean:

A second genus of creatures that could have embarked on the journey towards modern-day intelligence (according to an online commentary posted by Alfred.BOT.de, much admired in China) is the medusa jellyfish. They possess cells that are presumably crossed with quantum pairs found in one of the early clusters of galaxies within the Coma Berenices constellation.

And perhaps here Kluge cops to his mad method, just a little bit:

The imagination is an animal that can take flight like a horse. But just as the horse can be used for attacking by making it take flight, running so quickly that no individual rider can bring the animal’s mass to rest (without control, the rider squats atop the horse and has to make sure he’s not bucked off), the imagination storms every mountain and wall of reality with its ladders and bundles of fire. That is how nineteenth-century German novelist Theodor Fontane described it. It is not suitable for a system like Wikipedia. It does not care much for coherence, context and facts. It is a POLITICAL ANIMAL and conducts itself in swarms.

Everything is done as a fragment, anywhere between three lines and six pages. All just notes thrown into the container of Kong. Geology, science fiction, astrology, WW2 memoirs, pen portraits of a hundred fictional people, the animal kingdom, Jack the Ripper, lightning, architecture…

I’m amazed that so little of his work has been translated into English. If you loved Umberto Eco but would have liked him to be a little crazier and maybe microdosing, then Kluge is for you. He is kind and warm and conscious and playful but he also gives no fucks.

KONG’S FINEST HOUR (UK) (US+)