A GREAT AMERICAN WRITER'S CONFRONTATION WITH A GREAT EUROPEAN CRITIC-A PERSONAL AND INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING A hundred years ago, the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus was among the most penetrating and prophetic writers in Europe: a relentless critic of the popular media's manipulation of reality, the dehumanizing machinery of technology and consumerism, and the jingoistic rhetoric of a fading empire. But even though his followers included Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, he remained something of a lonely prophet, and few people today are familiar with his work. Thankfully, Jonathan Franzen is one of them. In The Kraus Project , Franzen not only presents his definitive new translations of Kraus but also annotates them spectacularly, with supplementary notes from the Kraus scholar Paul Reitter and the Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann. Kraus was a notoriously cantankerous and difficult author, and in Franzen he has found his match: a novelist unafraid to voice unpopular opinions strongly, a critic capable of untangling Kraus's often dense arguments to reveal their relevance to contemporary America. Interwoven with Franzen's survey of today's cultural and technological landscape is an intensely personal recollection of the author's first year out of college, when he fell in love with Kraus. Painstakingly wrought, strikingly original in form, The Kraus Project is a feast of thought, passion, and literature. “Soulful, counterintuitive, revealing.” ― Dwight Garner, New York Times on Farther Away “Engrossing, highly original...As a declared enemy of the easy response in an instant-access culture, Franzen finds in the unduly neglected Kraus a model of how to provoke readers while at the same time getting them to do some work.” ― The New York Times Book Review “It is the achievement of The Kraus Project to provide a solid picture of what makes Kraus incomparable and, paradoxically enough, relevant.” ― Bookforum “Kraus is one of the most uproarious and relevant writers who ever lived.” ― Slate Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom , and Crossroads , and five works of nonfiction, including Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth , all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California. Karl Kraus (1874–1936) was an Austrian satirist, playwright, poet, aphorist, and journalist. From 1899 until his death, he published the literary and political review Die Fackel. The Kraus Project By Jonathan Franzen, Matt Buck Picador Copyright © 2013 Jonathan Franzen All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-05603-0 Contents HEINE AND THE CONSEQUENCES (1910), HEINE UND DIE FOLGEN, NESTROY AND POSTERITY (1912), NESTROY UND DIE NACHWELT, AFTERWORD TO "HEINE AND THE CONSEQUENCES" (1911), NACHWORT ZU "HEINE UND DIE FOLGEN", BETWEEN TWO STRAINS OF LIFE: FINAL WORD (1917), ZWISCHEN DEN LEBENSRICHTUNGEN, LET NO ONE ASK ... (1933), MAN FRAGE NICHT ..., ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, CHAPTER 1 Heine and the Consequences * * * Two strains of intellectual vulgarity: defenselessness against content and defenselessness against form. The one experiences only the material side of art. It is of German origin. The other experiences even the rawest of materials artistically. It is of Romance origin. To the one, art is an instrument; to the other, life is an ornament. In which hell would the artist prefer to fry? He'd surely still rather live among the Germans. For although they've strapped art into the Procrustean Folding Bed of their commerce, they've also made life sober, and this is a blessing: fantasy thrives, and every man can put his own light in the barren window frames. Just spare me the pretty ribbons! Spare me this good taste that over there and down there delights the eye and irritates the imagination. Spare me this melody of life that disturbs my own music, which comes into its own only in the roaring of the German workday. Spare me this universal higher level of refinement from which it's so easy to observe that the newspaper seller in Paris has more charm than the Prussian publisher. Believe me, you color-happy people, in cultures where every blockhead has individuality, individuality becomes a thing for blockheads. And spare me this mediocre chicanery in place of one's own stupidity! Spare me the picturesque moil on the rind of an old Gorgonzola in place of the dependable white monotony of cream cheese! Life is hard to digest both here and there. But the Romance diet beautifies the spoilage; you swallow the bait and go belly-up. The German regimen spoils beauty and puts us to the test: how do we re-create it? Romance culture makes every man a poet. Art's a piece of cake there. And Heaven a hell. Heinrich Heine, however, has brought the Germans tidings of this Heaven, to which their heart is drawn with a longing that has to rhyme someplace and that leads in subterranean passages directly from the countinghouse to the Blue