6 - American Literature in Germany

Summary

Translated by Sally E. Robertson

Just as Rainer Maria Gerhardt (1927-54) became fascinated by American poetry in the late 1940s, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (1940-75) fell under the spell of American culture and literature twenty years later. In 1969, the anthologies Brinkmann edited on his own and in collaboration with Ralf-Rainer Rygulla served as a clarion call for a generation eager to depart from the conventions of the Adenauer era. The contents of the two volumes reflected this, particularly the composition of Acid. Prose texts by Charles Bukowski were juxtaposed with essays by recognized scholars, such as Leslie Fiedler and Marshall McLuhan, and interviews with pop idols, such as Frank Zappa and Andy Warhol; poetry by everyone from Ted Berrigan to Michael McClure was interspersed with comics and photos that often focused on sex and violence. The intention, wrote the editors, was to create an “overall climate” to convey “the big picture of a coherent sensitivity,” a picture comprised of “both the trivial and high culture . . . for which such terms as pop or subculture [were] inadequate.” In retrospect, Acid's politics anticipated the new complexity of the times; aesthetically it anticipated the Internet era, in which the boundaries between serious and popular culture seem to have disappeared. Characteristically, the editors began their book with a quotation from Rimbaud fan Jim Morrison of the American rock group The Doors, thus emphasizing that they sought to question traditional ideas of culture and propagate new heroes.