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For Bir Kadın, Bir Ev, Bir Roman — Wilhelm Genazino

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**A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel**

**A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel** is a novel published by the German writer Wilhelm Genazino in 2003. It recounts, from a first-person perspective, the development of a young man from a school failure to a writer. The novel is set around 1960 in an unnamed "southern German industrial city" and contains autobiographical elements. Its title enumerates the three goals set by the protagonist, named Weigand. In comparison to Genazino's other novels, the youthful age of the main character and the engagement with the tradition of the Bildungsroman are striking.

**Contents**

As a high school dropout around 1960, 17-year-old Weigand initially shows no interest in his mother's efforts to find him an apprenticeship. At job interviews, he refuses to communicate with potential employers. Instead, he begins writing articles for print media, sending contributions to a wide variety of magazines, from advertising flyers to the daily press. Ultimately, his mother does manage to find an apprenticeship for her son, who begins training at a freight forwarding company.

With his girlfriend Gudrun, a secretary at an engineering firm, he plans a conventional marriage with a joint savings account and premarital abstinence, even though he cannot build a genuine inner connection with her. During their encounters, he lectures her on literature and writers, partly out of enthusiasm, partly to avoid true closeness. When, during her mother's absence, she tries to orchestrate their first sexual intercourse, he allows himself to be distracted in the middle of foreplay by a radio program about Heinrich Böll. The relationship eventually ends in a cool separation.

At the freight forwarding company, the protagonist has his first sexual experiences with a married colleague, the approximately 30-year-old Mrs. Kiefer. After a company outing, the two, completely intoxicated, have intercourse on the bus bringing the drunk employees back. The encounter, however, remains without consequences.

Simultaneously with his apprenticeship, Weigand's journalistic involvement increases; he attends appointments for a local daily newspaper more and more frequently after work. During his vacation, he ends up working as an editor for the paper. Journalism opens up a counter-world to the subordinate work at the freight company for the first-person narrator. However, this feeling increasingly turns sour when he must recognize that local journalism primarily satisfies the need for recognition of various pompous individuals and basically looks down arrogantly on the events and the little people it reports on.

Through his press work, Weigand meets a colleague named Linda from another daily newspaper and quickly falls in love with her. Through Linda, who comes from northern Germany, he encounters a series of eccentric would-be literati and thus people who share his passion for literature. Linda herself is supposedly writing her first novel. She raves about Joseph Conrad and the sea and reports on a sea voyage to New York during which a sailor sexually harassed her violently. The narrator suspects that she is concealing a traumatic experience from him in this context.

At the freight forwarding company, Weigand earns respect when he courageously intervenes during a colleague's epileptic seizure. Through a chance meeting at the theater, a contact arises with the company's authorized signatory, who promotes Weigand to foreman. He now has to recruit day laborers daily to load and unload freight cars, ragged figures who are treated ruthlessly. With the task, Weigand's salary grows; with the promotion, arrogance and detachment from the lives of ordinary people increase.

His love for Linda ends in shock. The secretly beloved colleague hangs herself in her parents' house in northern Germany. Weigand travels to Linda's northern German hometown for the funeral and attends, without making contact with her relatives.

At another local press appointment, the narrator reports on a retired hobbyist who has built a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of matches. The 18-year-old helplessly observes his growing arrogance towards the small world of the retired couple, but it is only when the pensioner, asked if he had ever seen the original in Paris, answers that even as a retiree he wants to stay clean and therefore never goes to Paris, that Weigand finally resigns himself to the lowlands of local journalism.

He declines an offer to work as an editor via a shortened traineeship, arguing that he must first finish his studies. The novel ends with the narrator's decision to take his time and behave as an observer towards his life. He says goodbye to his parents and rents his first apartment. The book ends with the "flashing up of the first word" of his own novel. (Ch. 8)

**Themes and Motifs**

**Local Journalism and Literature**

A central theme of Genazino's novel is the critique of local journalism and the closely related staging of local events, which in 1960 were not yet called "events." A profound knowledge of the world of provincial editorial offices and beat reporting is evident. The foundations for these insightful milieu studies likely stem from Genazino's work as a trainee and editor at the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung from 1962–1965, as well as his later work as a freelance journalist and later as an editor at the Frankfurt satire magazine Pardon from 1969–1971.

In the novel, Genazino's journalists, in natural complicity with the organizers and local functionaries, produce "kitsch puddles" (Ch. 2) about events that thrive on showcasing ordinary people and their dreams. In doing so, Genazino succeeds in demonstrating mechanisms through local events that also aptly characterize contemporary media phenomena. The "Je-ka-mi" evening ("Jeder kann mitmachen" = Anyone can join in), a local singing competition that essentially thrives on the humiliation of its participants, anticipates media productions like "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" (Germany's version of Pop Idol).

The narrator experiences the "world of pompous individuals and club fanatics" during his local journalistic work (Ch. 1). Not only local bigwigs but also ordinary people, down to eccentric loners, dream of becoming the subject of a report. This fascination with media and prominence leads to a complicity that renders all criticism impossible. For the producers, this world is only bearable with cynicism and arrogance. The "share in the arrogance of writing and writers" (Ch. 1) that the protagonist gains in this way initially gives him self-confidence and opens paths to social advancement. At the same time, the profession of a local reporter fascinates through the possibility of "a more negligent lifestyle" (Ch. 1), especially compared to the hierarchical and bureaucratic structure of the freight forwarding company. But doubts grow after various local assignments and are directed primarily at the change in his own personality.

"Immediately I feared that the shabbiness of the hobbyist's life, by my describing it and simultaneously concealing it, became the shabbiness of my own life." (Chapter 7)

The reports on the events of everyday culture for the local section of the daily newspaper, from the idiotic film to Rex Gildo autograph sessions to the trashy amateur singing competition, make the narrator think of a "cartel of simple-mindedness" (Ch. 4), a feigned simplicity that wants to profit from the "enormous yield of folk simplicity" (Ch. 4). The arrogance of the producers is met with no laughter: "For only laughter and mockery were possible towards this cheap department store happiness." (Ch. 5)

When the narrator is commissioned to write a short report on the "Je-ka-mi" singing competition, which thrives on the embarrassment and humiliation of its participants, the "infamy" (Ch. 5) of the local reports becomes clear to him, "twenty lines about a mass grave of feelings" (ibid.). The insight "that stupidity was entertaining for the stupid" (Ch. 5) produces a feeling of melancholy in him.

The critique of the world of local journalism gains its sharpness from the contrast to literary writing, which the novel repeatedly addresses and paradigmatically demonstrates in several places.

About the Peter Alexander film *The White Horse Inn*, the novel states:

"The film dragged on for over an hour, constantly swaying back and forth between embarrassing and mendacious details. Its most important components (flat dramaturgy, stupid dialogues, silly plot, foreseeable storyline) were of oppressive simple-mindedness. Particularly torturous were the numerous and unmotivated musical interludes by Peter Alexander." (Chapter 4)

From this impression, the narrator generates the fragments of the newspaper report:

"Peter Alexander presents a bouquet of colorful melodies in his latest musical film... his enchanting charm eventually wins over even the shy chambermaid Elfie..." (Chapter 4)

Genazino has his local journalists dream of an alternative existence as writers. As poets and novelists, they want to discover another access to the world, orienting themselves towards great role models. "Anyone who wants may call themselves a writer or consider themselves one." But the narrator's doubts grow: The only thing the alleged writers cultivate is the gesture of a writer, which each tries to embody in their own way; no one actually publishes anything. What distinguishes the narrator from them? Perhaps the courage for quiet observation, the eye for astonishing images in the midst of the flow of everyday life. At the novel's end, the possibility of writing crystallizes for Weigand.

"Only in its very last line is the time finally right, there we see him waiting 'for the flashing up of the first word.' How magnificent they sound, these last six words lurking for the first word. But for them to become a Genazino sentence, one must read the preceding ones along: 'I looked down at my breakfast and waited for...' Again and again here, the magnificent is placed alongside the ordinary and inconspicuous, the aura removed from the one, played to the other. The everyday breakfast plate and the lurking for the moment of inspiration are very dependent on each other."

**Women and Love**

Weigand's love life reflects the hero's development. In the first chapters, the protagonist must primarily distance himself from his mother, who wants to structure and organize his life. His first love for Gudrun represents progress in this regard but remains a cerebral construct without sexual fulfillment. Weigand then finds his first sexual experience on a detour, in the sexual encounter with his married and significantly older colleague, Mrs. Kiefer. The narrator's true great love is then Linda, also a journalist and, like the protagonist, fascinated by literature.

Weigand's mother is primarily interested in her son's professional future. As a belated Oedipus, the narrator had advised her at age 14 to get a divorce (cf. Ch. 1), but the mother stayed in the marriage, "she became more mute and weaker from year to year" (ibid.). Like the participants in the singing competition observed by Weigand, the mother also dreams of another life and chooses a media star, Liselotte Pulver, as a role model (Ch. 5). "She watched all of Liselotte Pulver's films, sometimes she took me along. In every film, Liselotte Pulver was funny, confident, quick-witted, daring, humorous, and winning. In every respect, Mother was the stark opposite." (Ch. 5) Disillusioned, the narrator observes the ever-recurring failure of his mother's attempts to escape the dreariness of her life by orienting herself towards the role model.

At the beginning of the novel, the narrator plans a shared future with the secretary Gudrun. From furniture purchases to the number of children, everything is thought through, a joint savings account is set up. Yet real conversations between the two do not take place; Weigand instead delivers "grand lectures" on literature. His sexual interest in his fiancée is also limited. "However, at the time I was of the opinion that no person could be interested in another for an entire lifetime anyway. For most, among whom Gudrun perhaps belonged, not even an initial interest succeeded." (Chapter 2) On a last shared day at the outdoor pool, it becomes clear to both "that they are not a couple after all." (Ch. 4) Coolly, the savings account and the relationship are eventually dissolved.

Weigand has his first sexual experience heavily intoxicated with his older colleague, Mrs. Kiefer. Genazino stages the intercourse as an absurd situation on the bus among the drunk colleagues. They repeatedly fall asleep but eventually do sleep together. The encounter remains without consequences. When Weigand meets Mrs. Kiefer with her husband and child in a department store snack bar, he knows it will remain an episode. "Genazino is also a bleak master of helpless mating scenes."

Linda is Weigand's true love; she shares with him not only the journalistic activity but also the fascination with literature. She grants Weigand access to a literary scene, which, however, quickly proves hollow: The novel projects and lyrical ambitions turn out to be a mere gesture to make oneself interesting or to escape the lowlands of provincial journalism. Yet Weigand's fascination with Linda, whom he observes perceptively, remains. Reinhard Baumgart also sees the central tension of the novel in the character of Linda.

"This Linda, appearing and submerging again and again, introduces something into Genazino's quietly drifting prose that neither she nor we readers expect: tension – the simple, anxious question of how things will actually proceed with these two and their story. It, to reveal only this much, simply does not proceed; it breaks off abruptly. Linda's disappearance tears a large, painful hole in the book and also in its protagonist. And again one is amazed at how composed and gentle both know how to deal with grief as well: 'The news slowed down my thinking' – that's how nearly mute the loss is contemplated here."

Linda finally hangs herself in her parents' house. Her suicide does not turn the novel into a tragedy; the narrator continues his observations, even at Linda's funeral in a northern German town by the sea. The narrative style remains sober and distanced. Yet perhaps Linda's death does become a starting point for a serious literary career, "at the end... the old, questionable miracle, the transformation of pain and girlish sacrifice into lament and literature."

"But Genazino here not only skillfully unfolds in a few scenes the complex love story of two people who both try to flee from despised reality into art. Using Linda's fate, he also demonstrates how endangered hopes placed in one's own artistic work are and how catastrophically they can fail."

**Alienated Everyday Life in the Adenauer Era**

A theme of the novel is the alienated everyday life in the late post-war period: "People's faces were full of admitted horror." (Ch. 5) In the midst of the German "Economic Miracle," the traumatic impression of war and National Socialism remains present. Real communication about it does not occur.

Genazino makes the presence of dark war memories in the lives of the older generation clear primarily through Weigand's memory fragments of his own childhood, small incidental remarks, and scattered episodes. It is first the musty rooms of Café Hilde "with dark brown wallpaper" that recall the post-war period. "Café Hilde (and a substantial part of its patrons) was left over from the post-war period." (Ch. 1.)

People also suffer unspokenly from the consequences of the war. Gudrun's father fell in the war; mother and daughter live in a shabby basement apartment (Ch. 1). The IG Chemie speaker at the May Day rally, which Weigand reports on, "was a typical post-war face: gray, lonely, gaunt, wrinkled." (Ch. 2) Many older men are war-disabled, such as the one-armed editor of the business section (Ch. 4) or one of the neighbors from Weigand's childhood, who finally committed suicide in despair (Ch. 6). Other men are psychologically damaged, such as the strange visitor in the editorial office who wants a petition to Adenauer published, one of the "old, unkempt men speaking in a low voice" (Ch. 4) who can no longer cope with reality. At the novel's end, the narrator recognizes the effect of the dark memories on his parents as well: "The war had made my parents coarse, mute, and tired." (Ch. 8) Another indication of the historical situation is the regularly mentioned authors of post-war literature.

Overall, it concerns the psychological development of the Federal Republic, the inner state of mind and changes in everyday life, not grand politics. Genazino's novels are "from the beginning on the trail of the unconscious that underlies this society." Genazino characterizes the "stuffy air of the post-war period," its freedoms and constraints, through the everyday lives of people in cafés and canteens, in work as well as in leisure and consumer behavior.

Mass culture around 1960 counters the horror of repressed war with a saccharine distorted image, dreams of becoming a star like Rex Gildo or Peter Alexander, whom one emulates in embarrassing competitions, "Italian Weeks" at the Hertie department store, dreams of fame like those dreamt by the sickly retiree who built the Eiffel Tower to scale out of burnt matches.

"With a light hand, Genazino embeds this story of a successful self-rescue and a failed love affair in a portrait of the late Adenauer era. A very few, but atmospherically intense details suffice for him to make palpable the significant historical distance that separates us today from those years shortly before the beginning of the student movement. Yet unlike Wilhelm Genazino's gloomy flaneurs, Weigand does not demonstratively indulge in suffering from his times. Rather, he discovers it with a critical curiosity, but also an enthusiasm that wonderfully suits his youth."

Genazino's novel characterizes the simplicity performed in the media of the time as a profit-oriented fraud. From the fired editor who deliberately placed covert advertising in his articles to the Italy boom, the arrogant producers target the money of naive ordinary people.

"After the end of Nazi terror, the Germans entered a stillness of history. Now they are allowed to discover that there are simple blisses (straw hats, sweets, beach shoes) that are entirely sufficient for life." (Ch. 5)

Culture and consumption act as masks for the underlying traumatization. The narrator himself already felt "like a dressed-up doll" as a little boy (Ch. 5) when his taciturn father outfitted him with a traditional jacket and lederhosen as a little "artificial Bavarian" (Ch. 5). Childhood appears to him as the "origin of all ridiculousness" (Ch. 5).

Despite the booming economy, which also opens up job opportunities for the marginalized, ruthlessness in dealing with the socially disadvantaged persists undiminished. Every day, the freight forwarding company recruits day laborers at the employment agency branch. The "stench" in the day laborers' hall, "half ragged, bleary-eyed men" (Ch. 7), makes the narrator think of Dostoyevsky's *Notes from a Dead House*. Like the lowlands of local journalism, the career at the freight forwarding company also increasingly appears in a dark light: "I was not driven to be a miserable worker who judged even more miserable workers as usable or not usable. But neither did I desire to darken more and more at the daily paper and ultimately perish in my own arrogance." (Ch. 7)

In search of an alternative, the protagonist envisions himself as an observer who observes "things and events" (Ch. 7). He finds the courage to "waste" his time, to "eavesdrop on himself and the things in the passing of time" (ibid.).

"Weigand escapes the growing weariness with both activities only by turning to things in a new way: »It was as if I could watch my own gaze as it turned a mere collection of objects into a wonderful fraternization of things (...). Nothing happened, I felt the excitement of a new life« (A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel, p. 155 f.) »A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel« is the first part of a life-novel that once again catches up with, or respectively prepares for, Genazino's entire previous narrative work. From the position reached here, the future life gains an unequivocal validity – as a novel: »I did not doubt that I was moving within an unwritten novel« (A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel p. 160)"

Wilhelm Amann sees Genazino's placement of the plot in the early 1960s as a renunciation of spectacular historical events, referring to Genazino's concept of "historical stillness" quoted above. Weigand's efforts towards a literary counter-world therefore develop against a backdrop of "enduring petty-bourgeois values," as represented by Weigand's father, and which drove Weigand's mother into resignation.

**Workers and Employees**

Genazino's first literary success, the Abschaffel trilogy, had intensively explored the lowlands of the employee existence. Later, marginalized flaneurs stood at the center of his literary production. "A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel" now recounts, for the first time, from the perspective of an aspiring writer; it is Genazino's first artist novel. Nevertheless, Genazino here also engages with the everyday life of employees around 1960, which he contrasts with the lifestyle and appearance of workers.

First of all, there seem to be only hierarchical encounters between the social strata. At the freight forwarding company's outing, Weigand sees "workers and employees in *one* room" for the first time (Ch. 3). When Weigand looks for a seat, he initially feels "more drawn to the workers" (ibid.), but is then repelled by their behavior, by the "images produced by them" (Ch. 3). The "incomprehensible life of workers" is initially characterized negatively by the novel: "They did not seem to fight their dullness. It allowed them to come through life as half-dead." (Ch. 1) At the May Day demonstration, the workers appear like foreign bodies in public space. "They imitated a solemn strolling about, which failed because they only strolled about publicly once a year." (Ch. 3) On the other hand, Weigand is certain that none of the freight forwarding workers would snitch on him to the boss about his press work for the daily paper. He knows "that a worker did not open his mouth voluntarily, certainly not vis-à-vis a high-ranking boss." (Ch. 3)

On the company outing, workers and employees sit separately; the workers drink from the bottle and display unappetizing table manners, "... when a worker drank, the bottle in his hand said: We two, you and I, are afraid of the labyrinths of refinement; we will stick with the advantages of simplicity." (Ch. 3) The employees, by contrast, order glasses and, in their dark suits, maintain outward appearances.

In the novel, only the employees gain individual contours. The freight company's authorized signatory only dances with the workers' wives out of calculation. His harsh attitude towards the workers is expressed primarily in the day laborer episode. "Make sure you always have too few people, never too many. Workers must not be seen standing around idle, said the authorized signatory." (Ch. 7) When one of the already contracted day laborers holds his signed agreement close to his failing eyes, the authorized signatory takes it from his hand "and tore it up before his poor eyes." (Ch. 7)

**Double Life**

"At seventeen, I drifted into a double life without any particular intention." Even the novel's first sentence identifies the literary motif of the double life as a central theme. The narrator Weigand moves between various poles. Most conspicuous is the professional split between the commercial apprenticeship and the journalistic work. On a psychological level, however, one can also observe a splitting of the ego in the Freudian sense: In many situations, the narrator outwardly fulfills the demands of reality, adapting as a son, apprentice, or reporter to the requirements placed upon him. But in his thoughts, he imaginatively develops counter-worlds and word games that make the situation bearable for him in the first place.

If one compares Genazino's shaping of the double life theme with other examples from literary history, the author's position becomes clearer. Bertolt Brecht shapes the motif of the double life in *The Good Person of Szechwan* through the dual role of Shui Ta / Shen Te. Out of despair over the failure of morally good behavior in the reality of capitalism, Shen Te invents and plays her cousin Shui Ta, who, knowing all the tricks, plays the keyboard of ruthless economic life. Brecht's concept is clearly founded in a Marxist social theory. Although Genazino, in the novel, also takes into view the problem of ruthless exploitation, for example through the example of the day laborers, his critique of society is constructed fundamentally differently. Weigand's moral conflicts do not revolve around the poles of morality/love versus profit/career, but more around arrogance and modesty, adaptation and secret refusal. Weigand's path is the search for individual meaning in an environment of societal platitudes and stupefaction. Genazino does not suggest collective resistance but rather the search for a satisfying niche existence:

"I believe that the individual is indeed threatened by the advancing globalization and economization of the entire world. If one is not capable of finding a few subjective, personal life techniques that provide, as it were, an individual world alongside, then I see things very gloomily."

Genazino considers the formulation of a "utopia for an entire society" to be a boundless overestimation of oneself. Genazino's perspective is the "outermost edge of a *private* utopia"; a "liberation" is only possible "individually, in a punctual manner." In the sense of Beckett's "solace of escapes," his writing describes "the negative to positive escapes."

Another point of comparison would be interpretations of the motif that arise, for instance, in the wake of *The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde*. In his novel, Robert Louis Stevenson shaped the contrast between the adapted bourgeois life embodied by the scientist Dr. Jekyll, and the double existence as a criminal (Mr. Hyde), in which Jekyll can live out his dark, instinctual side. While Stevenson's double life functions to open up a space for the drives suppressed in the Victorian era, the relief provided by the double life works fundamentally differently in Genazino. Both as a journalist and as an apprentice, Weigand behaves in an adapted manner. The mere knowledge of the respective alternative life sphere relieves the narrator when he comes under pressure. When the authorized signatory at the freight company temporarily bullies him, the thought that he will later write about him consoles him. On the other hand, the income from the freight company allows him to limit his adaptation to "kitsch puddle" journalism and to decline the offered traineeship.

Another aspect of the double life is the targeted securing of literary writing through a day job. While writing the novel, Genazino held a lecture on literary lack of success during the autumn 2002 conference of the German Academy for Language and Literature. In this speech, he quotes William Faulkner with the recommendation to his fellow writers to secure their lives through a second, manual profession. He contrasts this realistic view with the massive financial problems of great authors like Robert Musil and Undine Gruenter, who, due to a "majestic" sense of self, fundamentally refused any occupation outside of writing.

"One does not even need to invoke Faulkner's idea for this. Models for a double life existed (and exist) in German literature as well. I recall the older models Joseph von Eichendorff and E.T.A. Hoffmann, who worked as jurists by day and emerged as active Romantics in their free time; I recall Kafka, Döblin, and Benn, whom we can no longer imagine without their bourgeois professions."

He points out that Musil had studied mechanical engineering and could have worked as an engineer, meaning his undeserved lack of success was the product of his "world-scorn and arrogance." Similarly, Italo Svevo exclusively sought his "salvation" in writing. "A crasser overvaluation of writing can hardly be imagined." With a veiled reference to his own novel project, Genazino explains how Svevo failed with his first novel *Una Vita*, which depicts the life of a clerk who wants to become a writer. He concludes from this that there can be no claim to success in culture, not even the right to reception. Moreover, the writer is dependent on the confirmation of others, without being able to offer them recognition in return. "According to Hegel, such one-sidedness is condemned to failure or to unhappiness with oneself." The lack of recognition leads many authors to a form of self-affirmation that could be described as eccentricity. Wilhelm Genazino ends his reflections on literary failure with the defensive remark that he is "taught that every writer is his own producer of illusions and that not even writers should give advice to writers." The novel "A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel" can also be read as a literary reflection on the extent to which a double life can be the basis for a successful writer's life. In the novel, Genazino formulates a considerably clearer answer than in his speech. Precisely because of his conscious decision for a double life and against the arrogance of the writer, Weigand gains perspectives, both for himself as a person and as a literary observer.

Tilman Spreckelsen sees the balance between refusal, unease with the working world, planless daily structuring, and self-observation on the one hand, and "the recognized necessity of earning a livelihood" on the other, as a characteristic of many of Genazino's figures. Weigand, the hero of the novel, also seeks precisely this compromise. In doing so, the "distrust of rules and customs" often leads to the "obsessive observation of the surroundings and one's own person, to a rapid alternation between estrangement or the feeling of a frequently and inventively conjured embarrassment and occasional euphoric moments." This often leads to the loosening of connections.

In the novel, Weigand repeatedly enters into bonds, only to relativize or completely dissolve them later in a determined manner, for example the relationship with his girlfriend Gudrun or in the field of daily journalism. In doing so, according to Spreckelsen, Weigand consistently tries to avoid any embarrassment, as he encounters it in its purest form, for instance, at the singing competition. What appears embarrassing to Weigand is, above all, the naive attempt to emulate role models without "adequate self-observation" and without a sense of the effect on others.

**Literary Form**

**Chronology**

The material of the narrative is largely arranged chronologically with regular brief flashbacks to the narrator's childhood. The narrated time begins approximately at the turn of the year 1959/1960. Like the author Wilhelm Genazino (born January 22, 1943), the narrator Weigand is 17 years old at this time. "Mid-February" the mother finds the apprenticeship; on April 1st, the narrator begins his apprenticeship at the freight forwarding company (Ch. 1). On the last Sunday in May, Weigand receives the offer to work as a freelancer on a flat-rate basis (Ch. 2); 14 days later, the company outing takes place. The narrator starts the temporary position at the "Tagesanzeiger" on Monday, July 2nd, for 3 weeks. At the end of this assignment, the narrator mentions that he has now turned 18 (Ch. 7). The theater visit, where he privately encounters the authorized signatory for the first time, takes place one weekend after the vacation assignment; on the following Monday, Weigand is promoted to foreman. One week after starting work as foreman, Weigand declines the traineeship (Ch. 8). Shortly thereafter, he rents the apartment.

**Leitmotifs**

In the course of the narrator's everyday observations, certain themes and motifs recur leitmotif-like. For example, impressions of people's lives in the late post-war era, of the lifestyles of ordinary people and workers, of the behavior of children and their mothers are not developed systematically but are depicted subtly in marginal notes and small observations.

Some of the motifs run through several of Genazino's novels, such as references to Franz Kafka, which appear in the "Abschaffel" trilogy as well as in the novel "Der Fleck, die Jacke, das Zimmer, der Schmerz" from 1989 and have appeared again and again ever since.

On one hand, the references to Kafka trigger reflections on literature; Kafka is the "key witness for the immeasurable but unwholesome knowledge of literature." On the other hand, Kafka stands for the "rift between oneself and the world," which, however, also has a comic side. In the novel, Weigand kisses Gudrun passionately after giving her a long lecture on Kafka. Both consider this a "sign" of their love, but the narrator suspects that he "was kissing right through Gudrun and thanking Kafka in the background because he had made [him] so lively again." (Ch. 1)

In another situation, Weigand gives his mother Kafka's *Letter to His Father* to read. Upon his mother's enthusiastic reaction, the narrator asks if she would invite Kafka to lunch sometime. It remains open whether the mother only pretends to engage in this "game." (Ch. 1) Franz Kafka also becomes a connecting element between Linda and Weigand: He gets to know her when, at the press table during the May Day rally, he compares one of the speakers more to himself with Kafka. Upon her competent answer, Weigand realizes that he "had for the first time encountered a person who was similarly strongly steered by literature as I was." (Ch. 2) "It is a delicately hinted love, where even a fleeting brush of the hip while rising from the armchair creates great sensations. With Linda, he can talk about Kafka; she counters with Joseph Conrad."

Kafka also stands for the double life, for the coexistence of day job and literature, the "tension between literature and life" that Weigand also experiences. Helmut Böttiger sees Kafka as one of Genazino's most important literary role models. "Literature – that is also the sore point of Wilhelm Genazino. ... It was no coincidence that Kafka was a clerk at a Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, and therefore a considerable number of Genazino's characters have similar professions."

Weigand's and Genazino's project is to shape the abysses of their own lives, everyday observations, and hardships into texts, to transform them into literature. Kafka appears here as the great role model, perhaps because of the radicality with which he literarily processed the catastrophes of his life with fine irony. "Kafka is a constant reference point for Wilhelm Genazino – he serves him as evidence for the strange and exciting connection between literature and life, as well as a guarantor for his 'theory of concealment.' At the most vulnerable, most open, most intimate point, there is always Kafka. Genazino seems to genuinely have fun smuggling Kafka into each of his books."

**Bildungsroman**

The scholarly literature initially discusses the question of how Genazino's novel relates to the literary tradition of the Bildungsroman, more precisely the adolescence novel. Wilhelm Amann sees Genazino in the tradition of Wilhelm Meister, since Weigand, like Goethe's protagonist, tries to escape the employee existence as an artist. Like Gottfried Keller's *Green Henry*, Genazino's Weigand must process the defeat of a school expulsion and a damaged family life and is, moreover, also a diligent autodidact. Unlike the modern form of the Bildungsroman, however, Weigand's development is not aimed at "disillusionment" and "radical extinction of the subject." Gustav Seibt also sees an unagitated variant of the genre in Genazino's work and, due to the short length and the renunciation of pedantic education, speaks of a Bildungsroman in "bonsai format."

Tilman Spreckelsen also sees elements "of a classic initiation story," such as leaving the parental home, the first sexual experience, the first apartment of one's own. At the same time, Spreckelsen also sees signals to the contrary: There is no community of adults into which Weigand wants to integrate; he asks himself "whether one is not dealing here with an anti-initiation, with the cunning refusal of belonging, which discreetly – and all the more effectively – takes place in the guise of readiness for integration." Spreckelsen sees the specific strategy of Weigand and other Genazino protagonists in a compromise formation. Despite inner distance to the working and media world and deliberate wasting of time, they do not lose the sense for successful life strategies.

Claudia Stockinger sees a role model for Weigand in Franz Kafka and his double life as an author and employee and points out that the hero of Genazino's Abschaffel trilogy already saw himself, in light of *The Metamorphosis*, as an animal crawling on the floor of a snack bar. In the Abschaffel novel as in "A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel," the allusion to Kafka appears satirically distorted by the context: Weigand had given his mother Kafka's *Letter to His Father* to read and then asked her if he might bring Mr. Kafka home for dinner sometime.

Reinhard Baumgart, in his review for *Die Zeit*, emphasizes the special form Genazino gives the concept of the Bildungsroman. The developmental concept is hidden behind a specific mixture of banality and moments of inspiration.

"Again and again here, the magnificent is placed alongside the ordinary and inconspicuous, the aura removed from the one, played to the other. The everyday breakfast plate and the lurking for the moment of inspiration are very dependent on each other. Every new attempt at spiritual ascent is humbly grateful when it runs out of air even before takeoff. One notices, then, only after a while that Genazino here is actually recounting his Stephen Daedalus, his Tonio Kröger, and Malte Laurids Brigge, the portrait of the poet as a young man and a young dog, the gradual making of writing while living. And on top of that, a farewell to the parents, through moving out into his first apartment of his own."

Genazino stages Weigand's move out of his parents' apartment in an outwardly undramatic way, but nonetheless makes clear the deep break of his protagonist with the previous generation. In view of the planned move, the father is primarily interested in the impending loss of the son's financial contributions to the family budget. Weigand answers the father's unspoken question about his financial situation with silence: "For the first time, he was the one who became the victim of a silence between us." (Ch. 8) In the face of his departure, the narrator reflects on his childhood fear that the mother would be rubbed down by the father like a bar of soap until she completely dissolved. He wonders if the mother only became "a bit coarse" (Ch. 8) through the husband, or had always been "ungentle." He sums up his departure in an inner monologue as a farewell to "parental junk."

**Narrator and Author**

Genazino's variant of the Bildungsroman is developed from the perspective of an ironically distanced first-person narrator. The narrator usually remains close to the inner experience of 17-year-old Weigand; only in a few places is this figural narrative stance broken, and the temporal distance between the experiences and their recording is made clear. "At that time I still did not have the courage to call life incomprehensible," it says, for instance, in the fifth chapter. The clearest authorial remark is found in the last chapter: "The war had made my parents coarse, mute, and tired. Only twenty years later was it possible for me to properly empathize with this leftover war life."

Excerpts from the protagonist's 17th and 18th year are narrated, supplemented by regular brief flashbacks to childhood. The novel begins at a breaking point: the failure at the Gymnasium (high school). Beyond the establishment of a professional existence, it is about gaining life goals, a perspective as a writer.

"The reader accompanies this young, taciturn person, sunk in reflections about himself and his environment, on his path from external determination to self-determination, past the stations that every adolescent must pass through: slow detachment from the parents and their 'junk' of an uncompleted divorce, mutual attrition and finally accomplished flight into silence, first sexual experiences and desires with and without meaning, gaining the strength to extricate oneself from a stagnating relationship, and – most importantly – the slow becoming aware of what one actually wants to achieve in life."

Some reviewers search the novel for autobiographical traces of Wilhelm Genazino, seeing in the youthful hero an image of the writer Wilhelm Genazino as a young man.

"The parallels to Genazino's biography seem obvious: The nameless city could well be Mannheim, and Genazino, who began writing as a freelance contributor to newspapers, published the novel 'Laslinstraße' in his early twenties, which depicts the escape dreams of a student towards the end of the Adenauer era. But it is irrelevant whether Weigand, 'clumsy to the point of behavioral emptiness,' bears traits of the young author. It is not that one admires Weigand; on the contrary. Because he regards life only as an alibi for writing, he sometimes gets on one's nerves quite a bit – precisely because he so often hits the bull's-eye. 'From time to time people needed a few deviations so that they could continue living all the more unchallenged in their circumstances.'"

Wilhelm Ammann also sees the multilayered nature of the narrator's ego partly grounded in the fact that the "perspective of a remembering ego" suggests "proximity to the experiences of the empirical author." At the same time, he sees tendencies towards a "fictionalization of the narrator's ego," surprising for the reader, in the late mention of the narrator's name in the second chapter. In this context, Ammann speaks of the "construct of the 'implied author.'" The play of identities between author and narrator continues in a surprising authorial remark cited by Ammann. Nearly at the novel's end, it says:

"The war had made my parents coarse, mute, and tired. Only twenty years later was it possible for me to properly empathize with this leftover war life." (Chapter 8)

The novel's connections to Genazino's biography, the confusions of author and narrator, are certainly also based in the theme of the aspiring writer. Like Genazino, Weigand also seeks his access to a writer's existence through journalistic activities. Genazino himself has confirmed that the novel follows his vita in essential aspects:

"That is indeed, in certain parts, modeled on my life, this slow distancing from the parental home and also from the world of school. But one must add that all this was already shaped by an early experience of writing. I actually began working for newspapers when I was still a student; first for the local newspapers there. To my amazement, I was quickly successful at it: It is, of course, a magnificent experience when, as a 17-year-old, you are successful at what you want to do. And that essentially predetermined my career path."

Like Weigand, Genazino was "a complete school failure." Genazino states that he was expelled from the Gymnasium "because of daydreaming and because of inability" and too great an interest in writing. At that time, instead of doing homework, he wrote "for four local newspapers."

Even in terms of stylistic devices, the novel leads a "double life": With the means of the experienced author, Genazino characterizes the beginning of a literary career by attributing these very stylistic devices and thoughts to his youthful alter ego. In doing so, the novel develops a "hierarchy of author concepts – from reporter up to novelist." Corresponding to this hierarchy, many journalists in the novel dream in vain of the "ascent" from wage writer to free writer.

The relationship between author and text is also addressed within the novel. For example, at a press conference of the Italian Tourist Board, while waiting for the speaker, Linda and Weigand discuss the relationship between text, life, author, and reader. Since the reader knows that neither Weigand nor Linda actually has writing experience, a certain irony hangs over the debate. Additionally, it is clear from Weigand's relationship with Gudrun that his utterances on literature also serve the function of courtship. Despite this double-layered nature of the dialogue, the two touch upon fundamental questions of writing.

"Writing is a movement that seeks to familiarize us with pain, said Linda. Isn't it the other way around? I asked; doesn't the one who writes transform the complexity of life, i.e., its pain, into the clarity of a text? That is an illusion, said Linda. (...) The illusion of clarity arises, said Linda, because the text is always clearer than the life of the person who wrote it."

The naive yet brilliant statements by Linda and Weigand formulate questions about literature and witty remarks that transcend their horizon and, moreover, appear absurd given the waiting situation. Does the author think of the reader when writing? Is the author ultimately the addressee themselves, explaining to themselves the pains that led to the text's creation? How can "the most unclear living beings that exist produce something as clear as texts?" Is literary theory compensation for disappointment with literature? Is literature the expression of the "author's distance from the world?" The conversation breaks off; the good-looking Dr. Alessio enters, celebrated by the ladies present.

**Linguistic Counter-Worlds**

**Distance through Language Games**

More significant than external biographical parallels, however, is likely the depiction of the thought and writing processes of the aspiring author. Like Genazino, Weigand is fascinated by words and word creations that hit feelings, images, and situations on the head. The situation at the job interviews appears "semi-bitter" to the protagonist, and through the fascination with the term, which he discovers on an advertising poster, he loses touch with real communication (Ch. 1). Neologisms like "historical stillness" as a characteristic of the post-war period or the new verb "to darken" (Ch. 7) for the changing self-image of the young journalist could be attributed just as well to Genazino as to his protagonist. Reinhard Baumgard sees in Weigand another "collector of inconspicuousnesses"; he is, like Genazino, a "specialist for epiphanies." "From the simple observation that in a café, every guest standing up pulls the tablecloth, which the waitress or kitchen help then hastily straightens again, he develops a brooding phenomenology and poetics of the INCESSANT: »Or did I produce the INCESSANT only in my head or perhaps only in my gaze?«"

The words become a counter-world to everyday life, which is felt to be oppressive; reflection on language functions as a way out of all entanglements, as an antidote to the world of "normality" and adaptation.

"That his mood, like that of the whole novel, nonetheless remains only semi-bitter and does not become entirely bitter, is due to the words. The words provide life assistance when they suddenly appear out of nowhere, like the word 'semi-bitter,' from chocolate advertising, and sink into the hero's consciousness. He wants to occupy himself with words. Read and write, nothing more."

According to Claudia Stockinger, observation elevated "to an artistic act" bestows meaning on the disparate objects and events of everyday life. "Genazino's poetics of 'meaningful seeing'" transforms the shop window of a coal merchant into a work of art; in the spirit of Romanticism, Weigand turns to things, poeticizing them.

"It was as if I could watch my own gaze as it turned a mere collection of objects into a wonderful fraternization of things: a mystery with myself at its center." (Ch. 8)

Roman Bucheli, in the *Neue Zürcher Zeitung*, also emphasizes the protective function of the conceptual engagement with reality. Weigand keeps "adversity" at bay by keeping himself out of it "with the means of language." "He clings to individual words that fly towards him, and solely through the enumeration of things he loses 'the feeling of being at the mercy.'"

Weigand conquers distance through the distance of the literary observer, through mental sketches, word creations, and reflections. In this process, the observer gets very close to things. "When I was despondent as a child, I would walk through the apartment and open all the drawers. I reached into the open drawers and rummaged randomly in the things. The despondency soon ended, and the engagement with an object began." (Chapter 8) This patient interest in things is constitutive of Wilhelm Genazino's writing. In an interview with Jochen Kölsch, he has illustrated his phenomenology of the extended gaze with examples. The patient observation of sparrows using a discarded music cassette for nest building, for instance, stands as an example of patient observation of the world, be it people, natural processes, or things. "Today I write, so to speak, for the sake of the objects and to become aware of this disenchantment or enchantment – because both are very closely related."

Things – according to Roman Bucheli in his essay "The Desire to Save" – are, for Genazino's figures threatened by disappearance, "reassurance of existence." This concentration on things, the holding on to inconspicuous objects beyond their use value, is at the same time an expression of inwardness.

"Thus, from Genazino's books, an at once extremely discreet and curious subject looks at us, which reveals very little about itself except what is indirectly discernible... It is not what the observer sees that is the focus of interest, then, but rather the reaction of the observer himself, and thus the sensation which observation triggers in him."

Marit Hofmann sees the self-observation of the observer as Genazino's commitment to constructivism in the sense of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. "An individual in the modern sense is someone who can observe their own observing." At the end of the novel "A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel," this is paradigmatically implemented when Weigand seems to recognize himself as a novel character and transforms into a novel writer, "into the narrating subject." Marit Hofmann quotes Genazino's speech for the Bremen Literature Prize, in which the author identified reading and writing as forms of resistance against self-images imposed by institutions. Inner images, the conquest of language, and deviation are ways to defend against the "degradation to an object of investigation."

Genazino himself sees his "marginality" "in writing and in perceiving" as effective protection, also against public interest in his person. As an observer observing himself, he creates a relieving distance.

An expression of ironic distance from the post-war world are also the humorously chosen names of many novel characters. "The most comical thing about this affectionate little novel are the names of its characters – there is Mrs. Finkbeiner and Mr. Frühwirth, Mrs. Siebenhaar, Mr. Wettengel, and Albert Mußgnug. The 'extremely irritable lyricist' is called Mr. Schube and the pensioner Erich Wagenblaß,..." That the hero is called Weigand ("fighter" or "hero") has at least an ironic overtone.

**Resistant Imagery**

Characteristic for Weigand and Genazino is also the search for meaningful images. A nursing woman on a passing coal barge reminds Weigand of paradise images from childhood religious education, where animals and people finally live together in harmony and peace: "The image of the white child's head and the white breast right next to a black pile of coal was staggering." (Ch. 7)

Genazino counters images of harmony and eroticism with real cruelty: images of boys inflating frogs until they burst, the day laborers' hall, the image of Linda hanged – for the narrator, "the ordinary war" (Ch. 7). Bucheli quotes Genazino's conception of the image as a "refusal of narration"; furthermore, the image opens up space for the "reader's novel."

Genazino has attempted to define the phenomenon of the "extended gaze" as the "enduring perplexity of attention." "Perplex is a word from Latin, it means: being baffled, being taken by surprise, being speechless." Against modern philosophy's emphasis on language as the sole source of consciousness, he claims an independent significance for seeing, even for the infant. The "gaze-acquaintance with the world" may be an underestimated source for the development of the self. This perception through observation, however, is fragmentary from the beginning, despite the initial hope for an "unproblematic connectedness with everything and everyone" through the eye. From this disillusionment, Genazino develops a perceptual strategy:

"We now see affectively, that is, we ourselves begin to look at the world with enigmatic gazes. We return, in other words, the riddles to the outside world that we were not spared in perceiving it, and indeed on the level of the exchange of glances. We now have a learned enigmatic gaze ourselves, which mixes aspects and details as suits the needs of our inner life."

From the lack of "phenomenally faithful" memory arises, according to Genazino, an "unexpected, delayed sovereignty." From the "deficient child's gaze," the "adult viewer" happily creates "the meaning-theater of the epiphany-maker." In a further development of James Joyce's concept of epiphany, Genazino develops the "conscious catching up of meaning ..., which supplies us with new ideas. The extended gaze carefully takes apart everything it sees and reassembles it anew ... The ongoing disassembly and reassembly of images is our technique for coping with the problem that even the extended gaze cannot see everything at once and not everything immediately." Genazino calls this technique the "sophisticated perfection of our childish seeing." The novel demonstrates the free handling and daring combination of different imageries through various examples.

The novel's end exemplifies Genazino's concept of perception through a small scene. A child carrying a loaf of bread home falls. It is observed by tourists and café patrons. The child manages to hold onto the bread during the fall so that it remains undamaged.

"The child discovered its observers and looked at them one after another. First the two women, then me, then the Americans. In the chain of glances, the secret and the public life softly touched each other. The child basked in the homage of its beholders and briefly lifted the bread up, then disappeared. I did not doubt that I was moving within an unwritten novel. I looked down at my breakfast and waited for the flashing up of the first word." (End of the novel)

Gustav Seibt speaks of a "harmony of art and life, which gives the genre its final turn," in reference to this scene. Werner Jung relates Genazino's literary processing of this small scene to the phenomenology of perception in Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He quotes from Genazino's aphorism collection "Vom Ufer aus" the sentence: "Ideas arise through long looking."

"Whether through this long looking, through intensive contemplation, or through a more fleeting glance and a sudden noticing – Genazino is always concerned with this core: the construction of the text from the perceiving gaze, whose developmental possibilities and phenomenality the writer tests in ever new constellations or simulations..., that is, presents in narratives."

Anja Hirsch places Genazino's imageries in the context of "disappearance." One's own disappearance is thereby "existential fear as well as pleasure." The self finds its identity "through glances ..., never completely, always only as part of something, refracted by the Other, people as well as things, but above all always in motion." For Anja Hirsch, the engagement with linguistically rendered images is a central task for Genazino's readers.

"Reading Genazino – that means participating in a basic movement inscribed in all texts by this author: Turning away from a previously picked-up image, the art of disappearing from the described scene in time, of interrupting the narrative, of leaving, in reading as in writing, interstitial spaces in which the perceived image can charge itself and remains veiled what should remain veiled."

Like other motifs of the novel, some of its images can be traced throughout Genazino's oeuvre. As early as 1993, Genazino compiled the illustrated book "Aus der Ferne," which comments on old postcards and photographs with short texts. The cover image is a view from a high window: In the snowfall, an old tram with a trailer drives through the picture, next to it an automobile from the pre-war period. This view from above of a passing tram is reflected upon and reinterpreted again in the novel. To feign a hashish intoxication, Weigand, standing at the window, describes his "perceptions" and hallucinations regarding this image to Linda's other party guests in the style of the "drug books" by Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac:

"Far below, on the street, a yellow-lit streetcar slowly passed by. As foreseen, it came to a stop at the stop. I began to describe the streetcar, as an image within an image, as a streetcar just driving into another streetcar and then out of it again. With the doubled streetcar, I was immediately successful." (Ch. 3)

For Anja Hirsch, such further processing means "the photo books are to be understood as a preliminary stage to all other works." The productive engagement with a segment of reality arrested by photography is also characteristic of Weigand's handling of visual impressions. A segment is isolated and captured by means of the "extended gaze." Through the combination of various details, new combinations and meanings then emerge. In processing into text, literary role models play an important role for the aspiring author.

**Reviews**

The novel long appeared on numerous recommendation and bestseller lists and is also used as school reading. The novel was received consistently positively by critics.

Reinhard Baumgart places an emphasis of his review for *Die Zeit* on the aspect of the double life. Besides the break between the activities as a journalist and the freight forwarding apprenticeship, he sees the doubling also in the perception of the world:

> "In any case, everything perceived here also leads a double life, transforms itself 'incessantly' into the calm flow of narration: Just a moment ago 'simply there,' it has now become wording, text, literature. And in this score, everything the young observer sees together stands side by side as if with equal rights – his day laborers in the freight company's depot and their hopelessly patient nature, breadcrumbs on a swimming pool blanket, or mother and child in the café. And he constantly trains his gaze and language before our eyes in writing exercises, asking himself: Are his sentences 'perhaps only beautiful, but not sincere; or intelligent, but sad; or perhaps beautiful and sad, but unfortunately not true; or...'?"

– Reinhard Baumgart: Orpheus in Ludwigshafen, Wilhelm Genazino sorgt für ein paar Stunden spröden Entzückens, *Die Zeit*, 13/2003

Simone Dattenberger, in *merkur-online*, places the genesis of the writer at the center of her review. The moment the routine young press writer becomes a writer is when he reflects upon his writerly arrogance.

> "The young poet, from whose perspective everything is perceived, also checks himself in everything, his gaze, his judgment. 'I sat there and could not free myself from the idea of my arrogance. Possibly I was just a little city monkey who wanted to live out his resentments inconspicuously.' Only once this level of consciousness is reached – and herein lies Genazino's loving wisdom – does the birth of the writer begin."

– Simone Dattenberger: Böll oder Busen, Genazinos neuer Roman, Merkur-Online from March 14, 2003

Uwe Wittstock praises Genazino's adolescence novel in *Die Welt* as an outstanding literary achievement:

> "Nevertheless, Wilhelm Genazino's 'A Woman, an Apartment, a Novel' is a true gem, and probably the best thing Genazino has ever written: A successful mixture of an ironically sparkling artist novel, a tender, doomed love story, and a suggestive evocation of the early sixties."

– Uwe Wittstock: Fliehen wir in die Kunst, Wilhelm Genazinos neuer Roman ist ein wahres Juwel, Welt Online from March 5, 2003

He sees the novel as a positive turn away from the overly negative heroes of earlier works. Literature becomes, for Weigand, a way to conquer the neurosis developed from a bleak childhood. Genazino develops this "psychic self-rescue" of the hero from a "completely unforced, plausible constellation." As a freelance journalist, Weigand finds a way to detach himself from oppressive everyday life through the distance of the writer. In the same vein, Anne Kraume in the *TAZ* sees Weigand as a special case among Genazino's novel heroes:

> "Weigand is alone and basically has nothing against being so. Shortly before parting from his girlfriend, he notices that literature also serves the function of being a 'separation lever' for him – between him, who reads, and those who do not. The danger in this, and he becomes aware of this too, is the arrogance he threatens to fall into with his sense for nuances, for words, and for the embarrassments of other people. If he therefore decides at the end of the novel against a career as an editor and in favor of sovereign time-wasting, it is also because he can avoid the threatening arrogance in this way. And here the hero of this novel ultimately differs from those of earlier ones: He is young and still has much time, which he can waste by eavesdropping on things."

– Anne Kraume: Den Dingen lauschen, Ein Leben aus Wörtern: Wilhelm Genazino begibt sich für seinen neuen Roman „Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman“ zurück in die Adenauerzeit, TAZ from April 1, 2003

Gustav Seibt also evaluates the novel positively in the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*, with reference to the Bildungsroman genre:

> "How does the soul's struggle between the freight forwarding company and the local paper end? Contrary to expectation. The young writer turns down an offer for a permanent position at the newspaper. He is bothered by the compulsion towards euphemistic lying in journalistic writing, the barely concealed arrogance behind it. The book exposes this decision as one for true life and true art simultaneously. The young man discovers ever more beauty when he observes purposelessly; and he has enough Kafka in him to appreciate the undercover existence as a clerk. He wants to behave towards his life 'as an eavesdropper.' It delights him when a worker pronounces the word 'Gefühl' like 'Gefäul' – whoever is gifted with such joy does not need to take up the profession of a writer, and will never wish to step into kitsch puddles. Genazino's quiet Bildungsroman ends with a harmony of art and life that gives the genre its final turn."

– Gustav Seibt: Die halbbitteren Lehren des Lebens, "Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman": Wilhelm Genazinos Bildungsroman im Bonsai-Format, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung from April 9, 2003

Roman Bucheli relates the double life theme in the *Neue Zürcher Zeitung* to Gottfried Benn's double existence as a writer and doctor. Unlike Benn's pathos-laden conjunction "Dionysos – including varicose veins!", the narrator Weigand suffers more from the split but at the same time wants to maintain the tension-filled double existence, for example, by declining the traineeship.

> "Wilhelm Genazino, in this lucid book, not only depicts the young man's awakening to literature, but has also, beautifully and incidentally, inscribed into the story a reflection on the profoundly humane nature of storytelling, and has, finally, created a wonderful self-portrait: Wilhelm Genazino tells us how someone learned to listen into and look into reality, and he tells it to us as someone who has never done anything else, who perpetually eavesdrops on and questions the phenomena of life and transforms everything with never-cooling affection into art."

– Roman Bucheli: Hineinhorchen in die Wirklichkeit, "Eine Frau, eine Wohnung, ein Roman" von Wilhelm Genazino, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from March 29, 2003

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