Book review

Musician Bela B devastates himself in his new novel

Bela B: With "Fun", the Ärzte drummer succeeds in writing a bestseller that misses too many opportunities in terms of content.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Heyne Verlag (2))

In his second novel "Fun" (Heyne Verlag), thoroughbred musician and Ärzte drummer Bela B Felsenheimer focuses on the abuse of power and toxic masculinity in the backstage area of rock bands. In interviews, he denies any similarity to the real-life Rammstein case, but in terms of content and style, the 62-year-old fails with platitudes and generalizations.

For weeks, Bela B has been stressing in various interviews that the content of his second novel "Fun" bears no conscious resemblance to the real-life Rammstein case. In the almost 400-page tome, his second novel after the thoroughly successful "Scharnow" (2019), the drummer from Die Ärzte ventures into very slippery territory. From a fictional perspective, he describes in detail a week in the life of the successful German rock band nbl/nbl, who suddenly have to deal with problems that don't fit into their misogynistic world view before several days of open-air concerts in Sasenheim, Brandenburg. They are only ever interested in having a bit of "fun", as is made clear relatively quickly in the work - the fact that this so-called "fun" is only fun for the perpetrators, but that the victims suffer from it for the rest of their lives, has been known to everyone since the #metoo debate began.

Affected voyeurism
Several interlinked narrative strands bring us closer to different personalities, who become increasingly intertwined as the novel progresses. In the process, the author cheerfully falls into the cliché trap, which is sometimes congruent with reality. For example, there is the eccentric frontman in the band who is filled with an imperious aura, a sex-addicted drummer who won't take "no" for an answer, his bassist friend who has his family waiting for him at home while he has the women he wants delivered to him on a silver platter via his "fuckphone" by specially assigned security staff. Early on in the book, a backstage sex party degenerates into a shocking double penetration, which Bela B describes in such detail, thoroughly and repeatedly that it only serves voyeurism, not the cause.

As the film progresses, a range of themes develops that is also painstakingly and meticulously drawn through the media world by the example of Rammstein, highlighting toxic masculinity, perpetrator-victim reversal, abuse of power, intimidation, rape, groupthink or deliberate misunderstanding, but in doing so likes to skate along the expected with little suspense and is all too happy to wallow in the superficial. In interviews, Bela B Felsenheimer explained that he wanted to expose a system with the novel and used the overarching theme of rock bands as a representative of different positions where men with power lose the sense of how to behave respectfully and with decency. As a drummer who has been with one of Germany's biggest bands for more than 40 years, this approach is of course legitimate.

Sweeping and stupid
"Fun" fails because of its poor realization. With the exception of the gay second drummer of the fictitious band nbl/nbl, not only are all the band members pigs, but so are all the men featured, as the Ärzte themselves sang in one of their hit songs in 1998. In his slavering generalization of the situation, Bela B does not shy away from outlining almost absurd personality changes during the week depicted in the novel. A boat hirer becomes a republican-inspired creep and even the supposed father of a young woman who can no longer resist the aura of nbl/nbl singer Maler Meister is transformed from a nonchalant father with musical knowledge into a semi-pedophile monster who can't keep his urges under control. He does the female characters, whom Bela B would so much like to protect, no favors by letting their actions and activities slide into the inane trivial and thus not promoting sympathy for the tormented victim figures.

While the real people affected have increasingly been given a real voice in public in recent years, a book like "Fun" is not useful because even a cosmopolitan, politically left-wing musician and author like Bela B, who always moves with the times, cannot biologically get over the fact that he is in his mid-sixties, that, as a man in his mid-sixties, he is dealing with a topic from a privileged position that has clearly not been subject to any in-depth research and is far too much of a moralist than to really take a serious look at a problem that is still immanent in the rock and pop sector. Some of the protagonists' trains of thought and changes in behavior are completely ridiculous and can hardly be explained by reality, and the book ends with a crazy medieval crescendo that reduces any form of reason, logic and, yes, even seriousness to absurdity. "Fun" misses the chance to convert a thematic penalty kick because the author is too sure of his correct approach - a nuisance.

Readings in Austria
Later in the year, Bela B Felsenheimer will once again be on a major reading tour with "Fun" and can be seen several times in Austria. On April 29 he will read at the Orpheum in Graz, on April 30 at the Volkstheater in Vienna, on November 11 at the ARGEKultur in Salzburg and on November 13 at the Landestheater Linz. All dates and links to tickets can be found at www.bela-b.de.