Blasmusikpop

3 ideas

1. Tapeworm doctor and his Herodotean grandson

   Johannes Gerlitzen leaves the isolated Alpine village of St. Peter am Anger to study medicine in Vienna, becomes obsessed with tapeworms, and returns as a village doctor whose learning sets him apart from his neighbours. His grandson, Johannes A. Irrwein, grows up under his influence, reads Herodotus, and writes a history of the villagers in the style of the Histories while trying to escape to university himself. The novel uses this three-generation line to show how a taste for the wider world gets passed down inside a family that stays put.

2. Ethnography of your own home village

   Describing your own community in the style of an ancient historian writing about foreign tribes turns familiar customs into strange rituals, marriage politics, and tribal rivalries. In the novel, Johannes sets out to chronicle the villagers as Bergbarbaren from an observer's distance, but the writing draws him into participation and belonging rather than carrying him away from them.

3. Village football match opens the village

   In the novel, a match against St. Pauli gives the isolated village's football club a focus for its hopes of recognition and contact with the outside world. The shared preparations and the hosting of the visitors open the village to outsiders, rather than a set of decisions about winning and outside help.

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