Killing time

Waiting is a ubiquitous, mundane experience and is thus uneasy on the radar screen literary criticism. Yet, as William (Purdue Univ.) reveals in this analysis of novels by seven prominent 20th-century German and Austrian authors, waiting is fundamental to social hierarchies and integral to the power dynamics structuring modern life. In a lengthy introduction, the author explains different philosophical and sociological concepts of waiting and time and outlines the reasons why waiting and corresponding metaphors of time attracted the attention of Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Anna Segher, Uwe Johnson, Ingeborg Bachmann, Wolfgang Hilbig, and Marlene Streeruwitz. Her main thesis, carefully articulated through close reading, is that rituals of waiting function to keep disenfranchised groups or individual characters subjugated and that the texts linguistic structures also reflect perceptions of time. For each of the works she selects - Kafka's Der Vershollene, Mann's Der Zauberberg, Segher's Transit, Johnson's Mutmassungen uber Jakob, Machmann's Malinam Hilbig's Ich, Streeruwitz's Nachwelts - William documents in great detail how characters cope with (self) imposed regimens of waiting and what this waiting exposes about sociopolitical and personal imbalance of power.