Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature

Two Annoying Bagatelles

This chapter analyzes the different disturbances of writing scenes in Jean Paul's novel Siebenkäs. It explains that this novel contains several scenes of writing in which the precarious relationship between body, technology, and writing is negotiated and it relates how the protagonist Firmian Siebenkäs copes with the competing demands of his marriage, his career, and his writing. This chapter also discusses the aesthetic, philosophical, and psychological strategies employed by Siebenkäs and other characters in order to deal with the recalcitrance of the “imaginary materiality of writing,” the most prominent of which are models of Stoic self-government, psychosomatic treatments, and idyllic and humorous modes of representation in literary writing.