X Schneeberger: “suisseminiature”
Published: Monday, Nov 27th 2023, 10:40
Updated At: Tuesday, Nov 28th 2023, 00:58
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Following the award-winning debut "Neon Pink & Blue" (2020), X Schneeberger's second novel invites readers on a "grand excursion to little Switzerland" in Melide. Schneeberger sketches Switzerland as a self-referential theme park that revolves around itself.
DJ Goldjunge, La Rabiata and Die Campiç are obviously dancing high and with feather boas in "this dilapidated amusement park of the last century" as if the whole of Switzerland were their ballroom. From the Lion Monument to the Heidorf or Château Chillon.
But behind the "nationalistic, militaristic, historicist kitsch façade of idyllic Switzerland", abysses open up: it is about humiliation, the experience of racism, sex work and addiction; it is about power and military secrets; but also about cleaning toilets for one's own artistic freedom.
Campiç writes and in the evenings in the Lovemobile, the three of them read their musings to each other - and correct and edit them. This is the basic constellation in Schneeberger's confrontation with his own writing and with Switzerland: querness, discrimination, objectification, colonial entanglements, father's assault rifle, but also against the fiction of a Swiss story "after Tell, Holmes and Heidi".
As a reader, you are left out of the loop, because in "suisseminiature" three old acquaintances meet in their long-standing reference system: between true-to-scale miniatures and lines of verse by Heine, the interweaving of fact and fiction, the density of allusions to historical events or literary or pop-cultural associations only hint at how many references have been missed.
The quality only becomes clear when a thread of association breaks down and the reading becomes fun or hits you right in the pit of the stomach. And in the labyrinth of mirrors behind the Lion Monument in Lucerne, the colonial era suddenly becomes clear. If you don't want to miss anything, please refer to the list of sources. Otherwise, Heine applies: "The world and life are too fragmentary / I have racked my brains for a long time".
*This text by Philine Erni, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
©Keystone/SDA
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