Die große Mischkalkulation: Institutions, Social Import, and Market Forces in the German Literary Field ed. by William Collins Donahue and Martin Kagel

Abstract

Reviewed by: Die große Mischkalkulation: Institutions, Social Import, and Market Forces in the German Literary Field ed. by William Collins Donahue and Martin Kagel Ari Linden Die große Mischkalkulation: Institutions, Social Import, and Market Forces in the German Literary Field. Edited by William Collins Donahue and Martin Kagel. Paderborn: Brill Fink, 2021. Pp. x + 251 pages. Paper $57.00. ISBN 978-3770565696. In 1913, Kurt Wolff of the newly established Kurt Wolff Verlag offered something of a confession to Karl Kraus, with whom he would soon form a professional relationship: "I for my part consider a publisher to be . . . a kind of seismographer, whose task is to keep an accurate record of earthquakes. I try to take note of what the times bring forth in the way of expression and, if it seems worthwhile in any way, place it before the public" (Alexander Wolff, "How Kurt Wolff Transformed Pantheon into a 20th-Century Publishing Powerhouse"). While it may be rarer today to encounter this kind of sentiment among the gatekeepers of German literature, Wolff's statement nonetheless points to the fundamental role that the publisher—and the literature enterprise as a whole—plays in placing literature "before the public." In the terser and less self-aggrandizing words of one of the contributors to this illuminating new volume: "Ohne Betrieb keine Literatur" (130). And yet essential as the Literaturbetrieb is to literature (its institutions and agencies, not just the "business" thereof), many of us critics ignore this dimension in our scholarship and do so at our own peril. Die große Mischkalkulation, an edited volume containing contributions by academics, authors, translators, filmmakers, dramaturges, and librarians, largely aims to correct this oversight by providing numerous perspectives on the current state of the "German literary field." In so doing, it contributes significantly to our understanding of what this field entails in its entirety, attending, as the editors write, to the "material conditions that underlie the production, dissemination, and consumption of literature" (3). In Part 1, Geoffrey Baker convincingly argues for the necessity of a central, physical space (Berlin) despite our increasingly virtual world, while Marike Janzen carefully articulates how the "Mischkalkulation"—a central motif of the volume, as indicated by its title—of small publishers involves the process of weighing short-term financial loss against potential long-term gain in the form of prestige, and how such a calculus [End Page 401] is to be situated within Germany's longer history of Bildung. Heidi Madden makes a case for onsite research stays at libraries and archives in Germany, which, along with book fairs, provide invaluable resources for accessing both older and contemporary German-language literature. Claire A. Ross, Sarah Traylor, Necia Chronister, and Ulrike Wiethaus champion the yet untapped potential for literary studies to play a more active role in the Literaturbetrieb, given that academics are often the ones reviewing, assigning, and promoting the work of authors. Finally, David Gramling's interview with the "Black Dominican queer femme feminist" (8) author and activist SchwarzRund provides unique insights into multilingualism in German publishing, minorities in German academia, and intersectionality in the German literary and publishing world. Part 2 addresses the fate of the book, the enterprise of literature in the digital age, and the challenging process of filming literature. While Matthias Pabsch argues that the physical book has in no way become a thing of the past, Steffen Richter highlights many of the complexities that have arisen in virtue of digitalization, including the way literary criticism has been "decentralized" (124). Volker Schlöndorff's recollection of his first encounter with German literature—namely, Günter Grass—has implications that extend beyond his autobiography. Part 3 addresses the evolving relationship between literature and literary criticism over the last few decades. Victoria Bläser and Rolf Parr discuss televised literary criticism as a kind of middle-ground between pure entertainment and the academic reception of literature; Julian Preece suggests that the longstanding rivalry between Günter Grass and Marcel Reich-Ranicki was both singular as well as revealing in terms of the general insight it offers into the ambivalent relationship between author and critic; and Thomas Scholz's interview with then literature editor of...