My local newspaper (Basler Zeitung) comes with a special ‘Culture’ magazine every day complete with all the latest music, cinema and theatre critics and columns. Once a week the magazine has some additional columns and appreciations.
Now it seems that we don’t have any decent columnists in Switzerland any more and so the BaZ has decided to bless us with the German author Sibylle Berg. She has got to be one of the most pretentious and foul mouthed columnists this world has ever seen. On top of that she really seems to have some serious sexual frustration bottled up. I have rarely read someone so belligerent, insulting and plain rude in a printed newspaper. Is this what happens to the so-called German ‘new avantgarde’ authors once they’re passed their ‘best before date’? If you have a look at her homepage you’ll get my drift…
In her weekly column called Bergblick - where she claims to explain us the world – she published a piece called Freundschaft (Friendship).
She thus ‘explains’ us that there really isn’t anything more annoying and off putting than people imposing their partners or spouses on a friendship: “(…) All these stupid expectations that end in soul rape. You are my friend and so you have to like my partner or be interested in my kid. Non, damn it, I don’t. I – dear friend – have a relationship with you. We understand us well, share the same humour, hobby, background, something and that has nothing to do with your sexual life, your choice in partners. I don’t want to learn to like your 25-year old girlfriend, I don’t want to talk with her about her apprenticeship in medical care, I don’t even want to talk to her at all, because I don’t give a shit about her. (…) ” Talk about a serious commitment problem.
There are so many things wrong with this article – a part from the tone that would prompt any decent editor to refuse publication.
First, she cannot help herself to associate ‘partner’ with sex. Throughout the article she never talks once about love, but only about this: “… what keeps a couple together is neo-erotical anyway and is not anybody else’s business …”. Marriage (she does in fact talk about married couples here…) as a simple sex choice? There are easier ways today to get that.
Second: the woman seriously cannot tell colleagueship from friendship. What separates a colleague from a friend is the fact that you ARE interested in every aspect of the others life. A colleague is someone that you go golfing with once a week or that you work with. A colleague is realised within this predefined category of your life and his main aspect is that he will not try to be limited to that category. A friend on the other hand is someone you share more categories with. A friend is someone that wants to see you happy and is glad to be a witness to the workings of this happiness. Everything else is just egoism and sociopathic behaviour and only goes to prove that you obviously have not one real friend in your life, Miss Berg.
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