228
M I CH AEL RO LOFF
I had intended to develop the insubstantiality and rootlessness of
this
kind of existence even further-which was a result of not taking any
kind of stand-but this volume hasn't been written yet.
ROLOFF:
Yes.
Fluchtpunkt
received a less enthusiastic reception from
the
German critics than your other books. Or, rather, many critics said
that you had written good things before and were likely to write good
things afterwards.
WEISS:
Yes. For instance, there are people who prefer
Fluchtpunkt
and
Leavetaking
and then there are others who prefer
Kutscher
and
Gespriich der Drei Gehenden.
I believe the reasons for that are purely
thematic, because if people judge one thing negatively and the other
positively it is actually because one of them likes this theme and not
the other, and vice versa.
Fluchtpunkt
is a purely realistic book while
Kutscher
is not immediately commensurate with an outer reality. It
is for most people more of a fantastic book while for me it is just as
realistic as
Fluchtpunkt.
But as far as I am concerned none of my
books are finished, they are only part of a series of things which can
be
developed further, so that
Fluchtpunkt
is not a finisl:ted work. And
I am dissatisfied with the end in
Fluchtpunkt,
which actually has
been
grafted on in order to give the book some kind of ending. I don't
think
that is good; that was not successful. But of course one can't satisfy
anyone completely anyway.
ROLOFF:
I read somewhere that
Gespriich der Drei Gehenden
was not a
fragment but part of a novel. Is that so?
WEISS:
No, it is a finished book, but a book which had to remain a
fragment. The form of the book is such that it can never
be
brought
to an end. It lies in the nature of the book that it can never
be
any–
thing but a fragment because
it
is an interior monologue and an
interior monologue goes on as long as one lives.
ROLOFF:
Yes. It struck me as an intentional fragment, too. Even though
it is divided into three parts, or, rather, the three parts are assigned
to three different narrators, Abel, Babel, and Cabel, who could alr
be
one and the same narrator but who are not quite the same. But
Gespriich der Drei Gehenden
differs from your other books in that
the
element of the purely narrative is introduced, what one would call
the element of "tall tales" in America, so that one gets the feeling
that these three different but nonetheless very similar persons, who
tell stories while walking alongside one another in order to amuse
themselves, exaggerate these stories . . .
WEISS :
Yes. That is right, that is the outer form, that is how one
is
supposed to be able to read it. But this conversation, I believe, can
go on indefinitely, no matter whether one conceives of the 'book
as
p
