The Wounded Self: Writing Illness in Twenty-First-Century German Literature by Nina Schmidt (review)
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Nina Schmidt's study of illness writing in contemporary German-language literature not only fills notable gaps in scholarship on the primary texts she analyzes, but also knits together a wide range of scholarship on autofiction, disability studies, and (not only German) illness writing into an engaging study of great importance. Schmidt focuses on five texts from a wave of literary writing about illness that began around 2007: Charlotte Roche's Schoßgebete (2011), Kathrin Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht (2009), Verena Stefan's Fremdschläfer (2007), Christoph Schlingensief's So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! (2009), and Wolfgang Herrndorf's Arbeit und Struktur (2010–2013). Rather than engage with the texts according to their chronology of publication, Schmidt makes the important decision to order them according to the degree of fictionality the texts claim. Roche's Schoßgebete and Schmidt's Du stirbst nicht, although featuring protagonists that bear remarkable (and acknowledged) similarity to the authors, were both marketed as novels. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Schlingensief's and Herrndorf's cancer diaries—both of which are [End Page 421] multimedia works—have the highest claim to authenticity by way of genre identification. In the course of her study, Schmidt extensively analyzes each represented genre: the degree of proximity to the author's lived experience, how each forms a relationship with the imagined reader, and its advantages and risks as a vehicle for exploring one's own illness. At the heart is her argument that illness writing, which tends to be dismissed in the feuilletons and overlooked in scholarship, in whatever genre, has literary merit and deserves to be the object of scholarly analysis. She further argues that, rather than read illness in literature as a metaphor, scholars must understand illness as lived, bodily experience. By connecting illness writing to disability studies—a field rapidly gaining attention in (feminist) scholarship—Schmidt further frames the reading and writing of these texts as political: "To share [the knowledge gained from an experience of illness] with the reading public—against convention and despite the artistic and personal risks this involves—is recognized here as an ethical act" (6).
Schmidt's introductory chapter lays the theoretical groundwork for the future chapters, specifically in its exploration of various forms of autofictional writing, illness writing and its criticism, and disability theory. Schmidt has an extensive knowledge of these three separate bodies of writing and has the mastery necessary to bring them into conversation. Chapter 1 reads Charlotte Roche's second bestseller, Schoßgebete, as a "trauma narrative" (43). Here Schmidt is particularly interested in the function of disgust in the novel; she insists that, rather than simply trying to scandalize her readership, Roche is making use of disgust to explore the reader's ability to empathize with the protagonist and uses the disgusting body as an entry point to the "wounded mind" (64). This fascinating analysis sees past the media sensation of Roche and her novel and significantly expands scholarly conversations about Roche. Chapter 2 focuses on the trope of sight, specifically staring, in the Deutscher Buchpreis-winning novel Du stirbst nicht, by Kathrin Schmidt. The protagonist Helene, who suffers a stroke, awakens in the hospital having lost a "Bild von sich" (Du stirbst nicht 13). Drawing on disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theorization of "the stare" (as opposed to the gaze), Schmidt shows how Helene recreates a sense of self through staring at others and at herself. While Roche and Schmidt reject a one-to-one identification with their protagonists, Verena Stefan openly claims her identity as a breast cancer patient in Fremdschläfer, the topic of chapter 3. Although marketed as a novel, Fremdschläfer weaves together three very true stories: the narrative of Stefan's cancer diagnosis and treatment, her move to Canada, and her father's history of displacement after World War II. Stefan very...
