Kaltenburg is a touching, thrilling and suggestive novel that meanders through the times remote from any shouting, and in the process brings to light the human being in all his poverty, passion, rage, sadness.
Kaltenburg Book Review in: Taz.
Sometimes I stand for a while spying through the peephole into the hall, even when I know I won't see a single person. I stand at the peephole and wait. No, I'm not waiting, I'm watching; the door is close. I stood that way as a child, first on a stool, then on a box, finally on a tiptoe. And I'm standing like that now. I hear breathing.
Marcel Beyer. Excerpt from: Spies. 2005.
This highly attenuated psychological thriller develops like a collection of dark clouds, shifting, merging and overlapping, but constantly tempting us to see shapes in a small series of endlessly studied and elaborated moments.
Ron Charles. Spies: Book Review. in: The Washington Post. 2005.
Reading Spies is like watching a random slide show of someone else's family. As each new frame comes up, you learn more about the subjects, the time in which they lived, the contours of their relationships. But in Spies, the slides are maddeningly out of place. For all the bright colors, all the smiles, there is a sense of foreboding underlying every picture.
Emily Grosvenor. Spies: Book Review. in: Books Slut. September 2005.
sky. In the leaves a sneaker, fur, from the
photo on the chest of drawers gazes a stranger. In
one place the fern is stirred, I see
you, the sky moves into the hair behind the ears.
Beyer, Marcel. "Fair copy drawing." in: Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock (Translators). Poetry International. 2004. (English).
And what is dust, I sometimes want to ask you
when of an evening someone steps momentarily
onto the patio, beats the doormat
on the stone balustrade, with short arms
and with an overdrawn face (why, dust is
Beyer, Marcel. "Dust." in: Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock (Translators). Poetry International. 2004. (English).
there, and dust surrounds us. I
can hear it, the plaster, the bristles scratching, and
down the road there barks
Beyer, Marcel. "Dust." in: Hans-Christian Oeser and Gabriel Rosenstock (Translators). Poetry International. 2004. (English).
It’s noon, you’re sitting behind the wheel
in an empty country road, a couple of Polish stations
are cutting in and out, nothing speaks in you, you’re on the point
of thinking you grew up mute, and then this: rape,
Beyer, Marcel. "Rapeseed." in: Michael Hofmann (Translator). Poetry International. 2004. (English).
hard edge, clean line, scattered, dense rape work,
hatched and cross-hatched rape, the field fills, the screen fills with rape,
rape up to your hairline, brimful of rape,
rape eyes, rape head, rape rustle, rape scrape, nothing cattle cake,
nothing margerine, nothing but rape.
Beyer, Marcel. "Rapeseed." in: Michael Hofmann (Translator). Poetry International. 2004. (English).
For me, writing begins where concepts are no longer fixed where something becomes fragmented, where I want to hear something beside what I was able to hear up until then.
Beyer, Marcel. Non-Fiction. 2003.
I am fascinated by the incredible knowledge about the world which zoologists I have met possess. You meet a spider researcher who is researching a species which lives on the leaves of a particular plant in Costa Rica. You think: 'Oh this is just a specialist and everything thing he knows ends at the horizon of this leaf.' And then you realise how wrong you are, because he knows just as much about others species of animals, about memory, genetics and so on. In my own branch of culture, literature, I meet lots of people who are thoroughly unambitious in what they want to know.
Beyer, Marcel. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 2003.
die Fliegen. Ende August. Ein Minigolfverlangen.
Nachzeichnung zwei, am Plastikvorhang scheiden
sich die Bilder, ich sehe dich gegen den Himmel
Beyer, Marcel. "Reinzeichnen." in: Erdkunde. DuMont. 2002. Paperback, 113 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3832160078.
Hochmoor, Gefälle, Zeichen und Bruch.
Tiefere Stiche, doch wir erzählen, unter
den Nestern, über den Adern, dem Schliff.
Beyer, Marcel. "Hochmoor." in: Erdkunde. DuMont. 2002. Paperback, 113 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3832160078.
Holztore, Nächte, festerer Griff. Keine
Geschichte, Poren und Lichter, nichts
bleibt zu zeichnen, nichts bleibt zu bohren,
nichts bleibt zu heben, nichts bleicht.
Beyer, Marcel. "Hochmoor." in: Erdkunde. DuMont. 2002. Paperback, 113 pages, Language German, ISBN: 3832160078.
The patient's signature is less neat than usual, notonly because of his agitated state but also, quite possibly, because the pen is so bedaubed with chocolate that it slips through his fingers.
Beyer, Marcel. The Karnau Tapes Vintage. 1997. Paperback, 226 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0099268264.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
