The Archive of Feelings - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Peter Stamm Klappentext "Given a second chance with an old love, a coolly detached archivist questions the life he could have had, and whether it's not too late to live it. Forty years ago-almost a lifetime-he confessed his love to a classmate and close friend, Franziska. Now, living in his late mother's house with the obsolete archive of the newspaper he once worked for, he looks back on days spent poring over files and clippings, increasingly withdrawn from the world. His occasional relationships never amounted to anything, and the memory of Franziska-who became pop singer Fabienne-continues to haunt him as she appears in the media. When the two cross paths again, the possibility of a different life feels achingly real. But should he risk the comfort of his ordered existence for a romance that might never match what he imagined?"-- Leseprobe There was a bit of rain earlier, now the sky’s just half-clouded-over with tough little clouds whose rims are picked out in the sunlight. The sun itself has dropped from sight, disappeared behind the wooded hills, and the temperature’s fallen correspondingly. The water level in the river is high, a white foaming backwash forms at the steps, I can almost feel the power of the moving water as though it were flowing through me, a powerful, living stream. A hundred yards upstream, where the water plunges over the weir, the gurgle has made way for a loud, full-throated roar. Although roar isn’t quite right either, it’s a little imprecise in its many meanings and associations, what doesn’t roar, the river, the rain, the wind. The ether roars. Sounds of water—I should start a file on them, though I wonder where it would go in my system. Under Nature, Physics, or even Music? Sounds, smells, light phenomena, colors, there’s so much missing from my archive, so much that’s never been described, taken on, computed. I walked along the path that follows the river up into the valley. Franziska has joined me, I don’t know where she’s sprung from, perhaps she was lured by the water, as was the case always for both of us. Suddenly she’s walking by my side. She doesn’t say anything, she just smiles to me when I look over at her, a sort of roguish smile that I could never quite fathom, which is maybe why I love it so much in her. She nods, as though encouraging me to speak, to act. That causes her hair to tumble down across her face, and she brushes it back. I feel like reaching out and touching her neck, kissing it. I love you, I say. I reach for her hand, but there’s nothing there. Sometimes she appears abruptly like that, without my so much as thinking about her, she accompanies me for a bit, and then she vanishes as quickly as she arrives, and I’m on my own.   How long have I been walking? Half an hour, an hour? Ahead of me, a black beetle is crossing the path, and I stop to watch it. I wonder what kind he is? There are hundreds of thousands of different insects, and I can hardly name a dozen: ladybirds, May and June bugs, cockroaches, woodlice, millipedes, grasshoppers, bees and wasps, ants, that’s about it. There are so many things I don’t know. The milky shades of spring, with the stronger colors of summer already looming, the breeze, which isn’t cold, but isn’t warm yet, and makes me shiver a little, not cold, a sensation on the surface. I took the footbridge and walked back on the other side of the river. The path here is wider and less frequented, in a few places the ground is soft, puddles have formed that reflect the electricity cables overhead and the clouds. As I approach the edge of town, the noises get a little louder. The nameless path I’m walking, the little allotment gardens, some of them already dug in readiness for spring planting, others still in their winter sleep, and a few of them completely neglected, presumably not tended for years, and behind them the railway line, and a little behind tha...

Product details

• Authors: Michael Hofmann, Peter Stamm
• Publisher: Other press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 05.12.2023
• EAN: 9781635422757
• ISBN: 978-1-63542-275-7
• No. of pages: 192
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 204 mm x 13 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature