Ruf! Mich! An!
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''Ruf! Mich! An!'' (Call! Me!) is a German novel published in 2000, Else Buschheuers first. Widely described as
soft porn Softcore pornography or softcore porn is commercial still photography, film, imagery, or even audio that has a pornographic or erotic component but is less sexually graphic or intrusive than hardcore pornography, defined by a lack of sexual p ...
, it was a best-seller, and although disliked by most reviewers when it first appeared, has since been much discussed by critics, some of whom argue that its seriousness was underrated.


Background

Buschheuer is from
East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
and after
German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...
wrote a column for a magazine for East Germans, ''Super-Ossi'', under the name ''die rasende Else'' (raging Else), then became a TV editor and reporter. When she wrote the book she had been a weather reporter for three years, an unusually fast and successful adjustment to capitalism. The novel reads as if written by a
West German West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republic after its capital c ...
, a critic wrote in ''
Die Welt (, ) is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE. is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group and it is considered a newspaper of record in Germany. Its leading competitors are the ...
''.


Plot

''Ruf! Mich! An!'' is set in Berlin at the end of the 1990s. The protagonist, Paprika, is a self-described sociophobe who lives in an "anonymous" apartment building in Daimler City on
Potsdamer Platz Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building, Reichstag (Bundestag, German Parliament Building), and ...
that is "wall-to-wall autistics", celebrates her birthday with the one person with whom she is close—herself—and operates a successful advertising agency almost entirely by means of
SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...
exchanges with her assistant. She is characterized by "exaggerated techno-consumerism": she constantly channel surfs, conducts business in the bathtub and on the toilet using a headset, orders in almost all her food, buys ten jars of
asparagus Asparagus (''Asparagus officinalis'') is a perennial flowering plant species in the genus ''Asparagus (genus), Asparagus'' native to Eurasia. Widely cultivated as a vegetable crop, its young shoots are used as a spring vegetable. Description ...
just because she finds a parking spot in front of the grocery store, then gives them to a
panhandler Begging (also known in North America as panhandling) is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a beggar or panhandler. Beggars m ...
, fantasizes about running barefoot through chocolate
truffle A truffle is the Sporocarp (fungi), fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus, one of the species of the genus ''Tuber (fungus), Tuber''. More than one hundred other genera of fungi are classified as truffles including ''Geopora'', ''P ...
s, orders them delivered, then says she does not recall ordering them because she has "short-term memory loss due to excessive cellphone use". She shoots her expensive widescreen TV through the screen in a fit of pique and complains that "the world is unfair" because her TV is wrecked but
Roger Willemsen Roger Willemsen (15 August 1955 – 7 February 2016) was a German author, essayist and TV presenter. Biography Willemsen was born and passed his Abitur in Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, locat ...
is still alive. One of the two men with whom she associates, Dietrich, a bartender whose prime motive appears to be finding "something fuckable", describes her as "a consumer cripple with an amputated soul", which she admits to with pride. The other, Robert, is a
concertmaster The concertmaster (from the German language, German ''Konzertmeister''), first chair (U.S.) or leader (UK) is the principal first violin player in an orchestra (clarinet or oboe in a concert band). After the Conducting, conductor, the concertma ...
who can only get excited at the thought of long-dead film divas of yesteryear. Paprika's most characteristic sexual activity is masturbating to the late program on
Arte Arte (, , ; ' ('), sometimes stylised in lowercase or uppercase in its logo) is a European Union, European public service Television channel, channel dedicated to culture. It is made up of three separate companies: the Strasbourg-based Europea ...
; the first edition of the novel reputedly fell open at this scene. However, one day when she calls information, the operator gives her his own phone number. She enters an anonymous
sado-masochistic Sadism () and masochism (), known collectively as sadomasochism ( ) or S&M, is the derivation of pleasure from acts of respectively inflicting or receiving pain or humiliation. The term is named after the Marquis de Sade, a French author known ...
sexual liaison with him recalling that in Laclos' ''
Les Liaisons dangereuses ''Les Liaisons dangereuses'' (; English: ''Dangerous Liaisons'') is a French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in four volumes by Durand Neveu on March 23, 1782. It is the story of the Marquise Isabelle de Merteu ...
'': he calls himself Valmont. He summons her by SMS and abuses her, until suddenly he does not, and she falls apart from thwarted addiction, throwing her cellphone into the toilet, ripping the phone cord out of the wall, and drinking
Laphroaig Laphroaig distillery ( ) is a single malt Scotch whisky distillery on Islay, Scotland. It is situated on the south coast of the island, near Port Ellen, at the head of a small bay known as Loch Laphroaig. The Lagavulin and Ardbeg distillerie ...
from the bottle. Instead of Valmont, an East German bumpkin, Maik, appears on her doorstep, so she shoots him and dumps his body in front of his own door for his wife, Mandy.


Reception

Buschheuer conducted an effective marketing campaign for the book while deprecating it: she described it as "this garbage I coughed up" and posted her own one-star review from a fictitious incensed East Berliner at an online bookstore. Critics panned it; most importantly, in the ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The (; ''FAZ''; "Frankfurt General Newspaper") is a German newspaper founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt and is considered a newspaper of record for Germany. Its Sunday edition is the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'' ( ...
'' it was condemned as "one of the fattest, dumbest puffballs in the prolific jungle of so-called 'New German Literature'". The ''
Berliner Morgenpost ''Berliner Morgenpost'' is a German newspaper, based and mainly read in Berlin, where it is one of the most read daily newspapers. History and profile Founded in 1898 by Leopold Ullstein, the paper was taken over by Axel Springer AG in 1959 a ...
'' described it the next year in a review of Buschheuer's next book, ''Massenberg'', as an "action-poor collection of deliberately provocative statements, hate lists and sex scenes, sneezed onto the page". It was generally seen as soft porn.Foell, p. 280. Nonetheless it became a bestseller, and an audio book appeared the following year. Partly because Buschheuer was subsequently a witness to the 2001 World Trade Center attacks and her online journal from that time was widely read and appreciated as good reporting, some, particularly in academia, have subsequently argued that the book was not taken seriously enough. In 2004, Kristie Foell judged it an up-to-date and recognizable critique of "degradation through Westernization". In 2007, it was the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Oliver Benjamin Ham in which he argued that it presents the "gendered body" of the protagonist as "the main mediator and battle field of the divisions and tensions in Berlin between East and West Germans". In 2010, Tabea Dörfelt-Mathey saw it as an incisive portrait of the 1990s, built up out of details and lists in a manner reminiscent of
Bret Easton Ellis Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one of the literary Brat Pack (literary), Brat Pack and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique as a writer is the expression of extreme acts ...
' ''
American Psycho ''American Psycho'' is a black comedy horror novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the First-person narrative, first-person by Patrick Bateman, a wealthy, narcissistic, and vain Manhattan investmen ...
'', with a protagonist who problematizes the female role: she acts like a man until in playing the part of Eugénie to "Valmont", she becomes weak. Dörfelt-Mathey saw the widespread negative reviews as responses to preconceived notions of what women should write. In 2012 the novel was rendered in
Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
as a drag performance scripted by Falko Köpp and featuring Mandy Cleenex."'RUF! MICH! AN!': Uraufführung nach dem Erfolgsroman von Else Buschheuer in der Leipziger Moritzbastei"
Leipzig Live, October 8, 2012 .


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruf Mich An 2000 German novels