German Crapshoot

All of literature is a crap shoot involving dice, playing cards, critical reputations and other so-called games that pertain to chance.

Image from ‘The Breakthrough,’ Swedish tv series, 2025.

The young Germans going right-wing, so out of touch with the times, no? Or are they? It’s difficult for me to believe they were actually born in Germany, these AfD people.

Yet I seem to be related in some way to these young Germans, having had a German grandfather and German grandmother in my immediate family at one time. So the news the other day that the German right-wing had received more votes than expected caused me to believe that perhaps Artificial Intelligence (AI) was involved, that AI was in action when young Germans were going to the polls! Thus I could see, or thought I could see, their young little souls shrinking right before my eyes.

It’s just like the other writers among us to profess curiosity and complete acceptance of the Other, but in our hearts we know that nothing will ever change. And so we are surrounded by this prevailing thought, that nothing ever really changes, that nothing itself has a way of becoming younger and younger almost every day without ever changing.

Some of us got lucky in literature, some of us stumbled into it and were blessed by discovering what we’d never known, surprised, even shocked. And literature is there for us, literature is always lurking more or less behind the scenes. Movies are made, sometimes very good movies, out of literature, opinion pieces are written, reputations established, recitals held in foreign capitals featuring world-class divas but nothing ever changes other than the cosmetics applied.

We’re all lucky and we’re all doomed, doomed to the great fortune of knowing nothing ever changes.