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Art and Mirrors
| Article
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10630 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
1,871 Words |
| Author
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Erlis Glass
Erlis Glass is professor of German at Rosemont College and a
translator and book reviewer. |
DER MANN MEINER TRAUME
Doris Dorrie
Zurich: Diogenes, 1991
102 pp., $19.80
Doris Dörrie has had a striking career as a television documentary producer, film director, and the author or two previous collections of short stories. Born in Hanover, Germany, in 1955, she studied film, drama, and acting in the United States from 1973-1975. She spent three further years at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich. Dörrie made several well-regarded documentaries for German television between 1976 and 1981. Her first film, Mitten ins Herz (Straight through the heart) was released in 1983. Favorably reviewed in the New York Times in 1984, it was termed "an exciting feature debut" that "sustains the material's tension, interest and originality throughout." This was followed by Im Innern des Wals (Inside the whale), 1984, Manner (Men), 1985, and Paradies (Paradise), 1986.
Dörrie is best known for Manner, which delighted audiences with its wit and visual appeal. Presently, Dörrie is making a modest name for herself with her short stories, the first four of which "The man of my dreams" appeared in a volume entitled Liebe, Schmerz und das ganze verdammte Zeug (Love, pain and the whole damned mess), translated into English in 1989 (Random House). She followed this debut, which contained three of her film stories, with a collection entitled Was wollen Sie von mir? und 15 andere Geschichten (What do you want from me? and 15 other stories).
Referring to renowned German film directors Fassbinder, Wenders, Achternbusch, and several others, including Dörrie, Thomas Eisaesser argues that they exploit "basic theme and material" based on the assumption "that spectators respond not to content but to images: self-images, mirror-images, spectatorial subject-positions." (New German Cinema: A History). This assertion can also be applied to Dörrie's Der Mann meiner Träume (The man of my dreams). This novella appears by itself with a lovely illustration: Sandro Botticelli's Picture of an Unknown Man with the Cosimo de' Medici Medal (ca. 1474). The picture plays a crucial role in the story: It is the man of her dreams.
Antonia, the woman on whose feelings the book focuses with minute intensity, is a successful fashion model but is facing the downward curve of her career at the age of only twenty-five. Dörrie sketches her early experiences as the "establishment" member of a commune, where she is criticized for her
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