Literature Peter Stamm's new stories: omissions are his trademark
In the new collection of stories "Auf ganz dünnem Eis" by Thurgau author Peter Stamm, what he does best becomes even clearer than in his novels: leaving things untold.
08.10.2025, 06:15
SDA
"Alles über den Mann" was the title of Peter Stamm's first published text thirty years ago, which appeared in the satirical magazine "Nebelspalter". Stamm still writes about "the man" today, often from the perspective of "the woman". His astonishingly traditional conception of both sexes is revealed time and again.
The nine stories in the new volume "Auf ganz dünnem Eis" are no exception. The first-person narrator in the eponymous story is a classic seductress. She plays with two men, one of whom is fixated on her bottom, while the other dreams of being a hard-working homebody at the stove. And is this how the good girl wants to make up for her failures as an actress? As a reader, you don't really warm to such a heroine. Not to mention the heroes.
As simple and reduced as Peter Stamm's stories are in terms of content, they are often very complicated. For example, by having the acting heroine rehearse a role at home and talk about it with her boyfriend at the same time, he confuses the reader at the beginning of the story. Only gradually does it become clear that the first-person narrator and the role are not one and the same. But by then, the reader is already as disoriented in the text as the protagonist is in her life. A successful effect? In terms of craftsmanship, yes, but you do feel a little led around by the nose.
The unspoken
More seductive are the omissions, a trademark of the 62-year-old author. He doesn't tell us what drives his characters to their often irrational actions, what happens between them. As you read, you sense that something is there, but it remains unspoken, in limbo.
In latent expectation, you float from story to story, sometimes on Lake Constance, sometimes in the Murmansk region, and only occasionally stumble across a sentence like this: "(...) I was never sure whether what we were writing arose from the depths of our desires and fantasies or whether it was born in the moment, a spontaneous creation in this empty space where everything was possible and nothing mattered." You might almost think that Peter Stamm is writing about his own actions here. But no, it's about a late-night chat from cell phone to cell phone.*
*This text by Tina Uhlmann, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
