Recently I finished read Malina, by Ingeborg Bachmann, an Austrian novel published in 1971.  I was pretty stunned by how good it was (it seems less good in English), and I would say I enjoyed it more, and found it deeper, than any of the famous 19th century Victorian novels by women.  The initial story line is a woman having relationships with two different men, one she lives with and the other who is married, more charismatic, and lives right up the street.

And so I have been looking into Bachmann more.  Her volume of letters with Max Frisch, her lover and the leading Swiss novelist of his time, is the best “letters book” I know.  After four hundred pages, with another 180 or so to go, I still am not bored.  It is called “Wir haben es nicht gut gemacht.” Der Briefwechsel.  (This November coming out in English…and probably the letters work well in English?)  Overall, it is remarkable how many ups and downs a relationship can have and persist.  It works best to read only a few of the letters at a time, so that the story does not go by too quickly.  One sees connections between the letters and the unfolding of Malina.

She also has letters volumes with Paul Celan and Henze, those are in my pile too.  (She and Henze were just friends.)  And just this year there was a wonderful new biography of Bachmann, namely Dieter Burdorf’s Dieses unruhige Ich: Ingeborg Bachmann.  I have started that.

There is a movie of Malina, an opera too, and a biopic about Bachmann and Frisch.  I have heard Max Frisch’s Montauk is partly about the Frisch-Bachman relationship as well.  And we haven’t even gotten yet to Volker Schlondorff, have we?

Bachmann has poetry in German, and a new edition of her short stories is coming out this fall in English.

It is wonderful to discover something/someone so new and unexpected.  And as I get older and know more, it happens less frequently than it used to.

I will continue with this.  Amazing (and charming) how many words people can spill about “stuff”!