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© Hartwig Klappert
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Deborah Eisenberg
USA
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Deborah Eisenberg was
born in Chicago in 1945 and grew up in the suburb of Winnetka. In 1966
she moved to New York where she studied Social Sciences at the New
School for Social Research. She then had various jobs, including
working as a waitress and a secretary. She began writing after meeting
her partner, the playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, and made her
literary début with the play »Pastorale« (1982) which was produced by
the theatre group Second Stage. In the mid-eighties she published her
first story, »Flotsam«, in »The New Yorker«, later the opening tale in
her collection »Transactions in a Foreign Currency« (1986).
Eisenberg
has published four volumes of short stories to date, raising her to the
status of a master of the genre and one of the most distinguished
chroniclers of modern life in the great American city. Largely through
dialogue and insightful, precise depictions, she portrays the interior
landscapes of American characters paralysed by inflated expectations.
With a keen sense of phrasing, clichés and false self-images, she
unmasks the mechanisms of self-delusion and the flight from reality, as
well as the painstaking resistance against such things. However, the
protagonists do not reach any full realisations or decisive insight.
The title story of her volume »Under the 82nd Airborne« (1992) tells
the story of a woman whose dream of being a successful actress is
becoming increasingly unrealistic. After neglecting her daughter for
seventeen years – who in the meantime has been living in Honduras – she
arranges a meeting with her. However, a genuine rapprochement between
them fails to come about.
The German translation of Eisenberg's
most recent collection of short stories, »Twilight of the Superheroes«
(2006), is in progress. The tension in the work emerges from the range
of attitudes that accompany the different ages of life: cynicism and
hope, serenity and naiveté. »I think there are a lot of moral arguments
for fiction«, Eisenberg sums up the claim of her own work. »Fiction is
one the most effective ways to explore areas of mind that are extremely
subtle and the areas of human experience that can't be gotten to any
other way.«
Eisenberg's short stories have appeared in publications
such as »The New Yorker«, »Bomb«, »The Yale Review« and recently
»Kursbuch 163« (2006). The writer has received several grants including
the Lannan Foundation Fellowship and many distinctions, among them the
Whiting Writers' Award, the Award for Literature of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, five O. Henry Awards and the Rea Award for
the Short Story. Eisenberg teaches Creative Writing at the University
of Virginia and lives in New York.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Pastorale
Samuel French
New York, 1982
Eine lehrreiche Geschichte
Rowohlt
Reinbek, 1991
[T: Nikolaus Hanse, Sabine Hübner]
Reisen mit leichtem Gepäck
Rowohlt
Reinbek, 1991
[T: Nikolaus Hansen]
Im Paradies des Regengottes
Rowohlt
Reinbek, 1995
[T: Nikolaus Hansen, Sabine Hübner]
The Stories (so far) of Deborah Eisenberg
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York, 1997
Rosie besorgt sich eine Seele
Rowohlt
Reinbek, 2000
[T: Sabine Hedinger, Antje Landshoff, Nikolaus Hansen]
Twilight of the Superheroes
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York, 2006
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