Changing Addresses: A Collection of Contemporary Austrian Writing ed. by Johann Holzner and Alois Hotschnig (review)

If this new collection, Changing Addresses, is any indication of the state of contemporary Austrian writing, one thing is certain: the Austrians are dripping with ideas. Changing Addresses is the first in a new series entitled “Studies in Central European History, Literature, and Culture” (series editor Günter Bischof, New Orleans), the fruit of a longstanding partnership between the University of New Orleans and the University of Innsbruck. The editors include the scholar Johann Holzner (Innsbruck) and the Austrian short story writer Alois Hotschnig (winner of the 2008 Erich Fried Prize; his collection of quizzical black fables, Maybe This Time, recently appeared in English with Peirene Press in 2011). Together with the translators, under the direction of Brigitte Scott (also of Innsbruck), they have embarked on an ambitious project to disseminate, and in some cases introduce in English for the first time, eleven Austrian writers (many of them young and Tyrolean) who represent some of the best and most cerebral writing in Austria today.

The guiding principle that Holzner and Hotschnig had in mind in choosing writers for this collection were those whose imaginations illuminate fresh, existential possibilities through a “distance from everyday reality.” According to Holzner, contemporary Austrian writers, with razor-sharp skepticism, relentlessly assault reality, which they use to “break open whatever still exists of former foundations,” creating a felicitous relativism, but “without opening the door to arbitrariness.” Setting the bar for Austrian writers as high as he does, Holzner could easily be describing a high-wire artist, working with ideas so friable, so finely taut, that the slightest misstep can result in fractured vision.

The title of the collection comes from a poem by Sepp Mall. The poem illustrates Holzner’s idea of poetic felicity “in the tension of things stretched to the breaking point,” which is particularly evident in Mall’s use of opposing images. Christoph Bauer’s elegantly titled “Poems” is concerned with changing identities and mental peregrination. With lines like “a stranger I arrived under my skin” and “passport and luggage ready, all in all a paying guest inside my body’s hut,” Bauer adeptly explores the dangers of too much self-observation and the grayish romance of dubious forms of self-discovery.

Bauer is followed by Sabine Gruber’s delightful short story “Leaves,” which is about an obsessive, old-maid leaf collector and her voyeuristic neighbor’s machinations to fill the woman’s life with meaning once autumn has passed. It explores the idea that change is something that must be managed and controlled—often to ill effect. The story is a sophisticated counter-narrative when placed after Bauer’s dynamic poem, which seems volatile when juxtaposed with Gruber’s languid tale. Barbara Hundegger’s poem, “at z.* from your balcony,” presents a highly fragmented poetic voice that, like its confusing title, disrupts the emergence of narrative cohesion by breaking the logic of each stanza, just as meaning is about to surface. Ulrike Längle’s “The Sinking of the ‘Romanshorn’” is a surreal mystery story that plays with the sinking of a ferry as seen through the eyes of a child.

Claudia Paganini’s “Golden Mountains” is a fascinating piece, reminding one, at times, of Musil’s early novella The Perfecting of a Love, with its floating, cerebral imagery. The theme of shifting images and fragmented identities is left behind with Carolina Schutti’s two stories, which are some of the most enjoyable pieces in the collection. Schutti, a researcher and Canetti scholar, displays scholarly precision in her writing, and her story “Kellstein” is full of humor and wit (it would be surprising if one of her influences were not Robert Menasse). A brief tale about a dimwit as hilarious as Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius, this story is so delightful and unexpected that it is worth purchasing the collection for the sheer pleasure of this one well-crafted story.

The final piece in Changing Addresses...