Now in paperback and featuring an interview with Ben Stiller; a guided group tour to concentration camps allows Stahl to confront personal and historical demons with both deep despair and savage humor
IN SEPTEMBER 2016, JERRY STAHL was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy.
The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl's lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling-out-of-control sadness, regret, and fear, not just for himself, but for the entire United States-would be appropriate. And where was despair more appropriate than the land of the Six Million?
Seamlessly weaving global and personal history, through the lens of Stahl's own bent perspective, Nein, Nein, Nein! stands out as a triumph of strange-o reporting, a tale that takes us from gang polkas to tourrash to the truly disturbing snack bar at Auschwitz. Strap in for a raw, surreal, and redemptively hilarious trip. Get on the bus.
Autorentext
Jerry Stahl is the author of ten books, including the best-selling memoir Permanent Midnight and the novels I, Fatty; Perv; Happy Mutant Baby Pills; and Bad Sex on Speed. A Pushcart Prize?winning author, Stahl's work has appeared in Vice, Esquire, the Believer, LA Review of Books, and the New York Times, among other places. He has written extensively for film and television, including HBO's Hemingway & Gellhorn, Bad Boys II, and the cult classic Dr. Caligari; series credits include Maron, CSI, and Escape at Dannemora, for which he received an Emmy nomination. Stahl has taught with the InsideOUT Writers program for incarcerated youth, edited The Heroin Chronicles for Akashic Books, and appears in the documentary series San Quentin Film School. He has two daughters, and lives with artist Zoe Hansen.
Klappentext
A guided group tour to concentration camps in Poland and Germany allows Stahl to confront personal and historical demons with both deep despair and savage humor
"Nein, Nein, Nein! is the unbelievable true story of a guided bus tour to Nazi concentration camps, told as only Jerry Stahl can tell it, with an acid wit as deadly serious as it is hilarious, insane, and weirdly life-affirming. The destinations he describes are real, but who else would dare to take us there? Stahl is fearless, gripping, and most unsparing about his own damned soul. I read everything he writes." ?Eric Bogosian, actor/playwright
"There's dark humor, and then there is Nein, Nein, Nein! Jerry Stahl manages a balancing act here that would put all the trapeze artists of the world to shame." ?Lucy Sante, author of Low Life
"A disturbing, funny, dark travelogue." ?Marc Maron
In September 2016, Jerry Stahl was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy.
The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl's lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling?out-of- control sadness, regret, and fear, not just for himself, but for the entire United States?would be appropriate. And where was despair more appropriate than the land of the Six Million?
Seamlessly weaving global and personal history, through the lens of Stahl's own bent perspective, Nein, Nein, Nein! stands out as a triumph of strange-o reporting, a tale that takes us from gang polkas to tour-rash to the truly disturbing snack bar at Auschwitz. Strap in for a raw, surreal, and redemptively hilarious trip. Get on the bus.
Inhalt
INTRODUCTION: Bus Plunge
CHAPTER 1: The Kramah! The Kramah! CHAPTER 2: Roadkill CHAPTER 3: Stalin's Syringe, Lucky Jews, and a Warsaw Cowboy CHAPTER 4: Google ?Polish Bus Rash? CHAPTER 5: Empathy Party CHAPTER 6: Revenge of the Kraków Soup-Cougher CHAPTER 7: Get Carter CHAPTER 8: A Brief Digression (?Meet the Jewgina!?) CHAPTER 9: Comfortable Shoes CHAPTER 10: The Maw of the Oven CHAPTER 11: Unworthy CHAPTER 12: Trauma Nosh CHAPTER 13: An Annoying and Self-Righteous Ogre CHAPTER 14: Restaurant Hangman CHAPTER 15: Munich CHAPTER 16: Bear Pit CHAPTER 17: Jedem das Seine CHAPTER 18: How Can the Dead Respect the Living? CHAPTER 19: Walking into Glass CHAPTER 20: In Nazi Times CHAPTER 21: Judgmental at Nuremberg CHAPTER 22: Dachau Blues CHAPTER 23: With Apologies to Ms. Thorne CHAPTER 24: Stanley Manly CHAPTER 25: Stepping on the Faces of the Dead CHAPTER 26: The Mortal Agony CHAPTER 27: Compassion Portal
Acknowledgments