The Things That Happen

The »thirteen everyday fantasies«, with which Karl Heinz Bohrer moves on to shorter, modest forms after his scientific study of hate, are not so mundane: they show the handwriting of a restless intellectual who, in the concentrated form of short prose, provides information about selected sensitivities, preferences, empathisations, disturbances, even antipathies of a long life. Bohrer sets the tone with a suggestive account of a train journey to Brussels – at the height of the 2018 heatwave – that literally threatens to derail in an apocalyptic experience, before moving on to the foundations of our emotional life: to the origin and nature of resentment, for example, to the roots of friendship and alienation, to reflections on isolation, loneliness and being alone, and to narcissistically mirrored self-perception.

Thus unfolds a rich panorama of very different thoughts and memories, in which the author, as is his wont, does not mince his words and allows the reader to experience the everyday as an exciting encounter with ultimate unfamiliarity.

»It is a terrible thing to think that in the future we will only be able to hear the stubborn voice of Karl Heinz Bohrer in books. But at least there are these anything but Everyday Fantasies to remind us of an unusual writer, intellectual and friend.« Michael Krüger, Die literarische Welt

»[Karl Heinz Bohrer's] posthumous but fully polished book [The Things That Happen] shows him once again in the glory of his subjectivity, it provides a personal key to his enormous oeuvre.« Gustav Seibt, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»What Karl Heinz Bohrer reveals in The Things That Happen is a way of thinking that is as pleasurable as it is defiant. ... What Bohrer orchestrates here, the tonal variety and nuance, the span between cultural history and anecdote, speaks directly to readers and engages them for a long time.« Fridtjof Küchemann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»[Bohrer's older texts in particular offer] an illuminating and fascinating read to help us understand the intellectual history of the old Federal Republic ...« Chris W. Wilpert, Jungle World

»A thoroughly enjoyable read!« General-Anzeiger

»… one never emerges from Bohrer’s texts indifferent or with a shrug. Following him on his winding paths of discovery is an adventure in and of itself every time.« Eike Gebhardt, Deutschlandfunk Kultur