Focus on German Studies, Volume 20 (2013), pp. 179-180.
ULF ERDMANN ZIEGLER. Nichts Weißes. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012. 259 pp. 19,95 €.
Marleen Schuller dreams of creating the perfect typeface — a typeface that would make “Futura look like LEGO bricks and Helvetica look like fear” (12). She wants to construct a typographical white noise so absolutely normal in appearance that the reader would not contemplate the shapes and contours of the individual characters for even a nanosecond.
Typography is more than just a passion. Just as scent defines Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s environment in Süskind’s Parfum, typography actively shapes the way Marleen interacts with the ever-evolving world around her. Train windows, for example, are described in terms of their curves and proportions. Marleen categorizes the different personalities of the people she encounters with words like intaglio and offset printing. This unique way of experiencing and comprehending the world finds its roots in Marleen’s severe dyslexia. While this analphabetic quirk forces her to read the few books she picks up at a labored pace, it also grants her an intimate awareness of individual letters. Logos and typesets constantly catch her penetrating stare as she contemplates their lines and balance.
Just as the moveable types in a typographer’s type case forgo standard alphabetical arrangement to better facilitate the act of page setting, segments of Marleen’s life, both large and small, are arranged anachronistically. This illuminates her growth and highlights her encounters with the different stages that make up the history of typographical technology.
Young Marleen’s world includes black-and-white Western television series and books like 1984, where the main character constantly hunts for signs of the past. She has a deep appreciation for old buildings, old scripts, and old presses. By the end of the novel, however, Marleen’s quest has moved her from these trenches of nostalgia into the forward-facing present among the skyscrapers and computer-powered corporations of New York City. Her path includes typesetting with 19th-century hot lead techniques during her apprenticeship with an old-fashioned press in Nördlingen, phototypesetting in Paris, and, finally, working with personal computers in New York.
This journey through technology’s progression is accompanied by historical milestones and a movement through language. Marleen’s supporting characters initially speak various German dialects, phonetically and artfully rendered in the text. As Marleen’s world becomes more cosmopolitan, regionally-colored German is replaced by the sounds and printed forms of French and finally by the current lingua franca, English.
Two particular relationships punctuate Marleen’s life, acting like commas interrupting Marleen’s typographical quest. The first tumultuous relationship is with her father, Petrus, an advertising executive whose major successes include a campaign introducing o. b. tampons into West German households. In order to further his career and find himself, abandoned his family and moved to India. The second relationship holds a mirror to first. Marleen falls in love with Franz, a pretentious fellow graphic design student who favors method over praxis and is the only person Marleen’s own age who ever listens to her. He appears and disappears from her life with some frequency, making his final appearance in Paris. He leaves her for good then, alone and pregnant with his child, to find himself by entering the Catholic Church.
Marleen is finally able to find a home by turning her eye to the future. She finds a new family for her and her son in the company of an untraditional household in the land of opportunity. Embracing analphabetism and symbology, she achieves independence from nostalgia with the creation of a modern hieroglyphic script for use on the computer.
Ulf Erdmann Ziegler renders the world of typography and graphic design expertly, thanks in no small part to his background in art. His previous novels, Hamburger Hochbahn, Wild Wiesen, Autogeographie, and the essay collection Der Gegenspieler der Sonne were published by Wallstein. A former art editor for the tageszeitung and the 2008 recipient of the Hebbel Prize, Ziegler has also written extensively about photography. Nichts Weißes, his first work with Suhrkamp, was shortlisted for the 2012 Deutscher Buchpreis and for the 2012 Wilhelm-Raabe-Literaturpreis.