The Precariat, a bookfair, a Nobel's take on entertainment

Thomas Gross wonders who belongs to the new societal class of what he calls the precariat (a hybrid of precarious and proletariat). Immigrants, interns, or freelancers? “Where will the money come from tomorrow? How secure is my job? Will the money be enough to pay for kindergarten? Which jobs can I do without a passport? What happens if I get sick? How do I want to live? How will I pay for my degree, what will I do afterwards? Why am I constantly thinking about work? Why won’t he do the housework? How do I want to live?”

For the literature section, Ulrich Greiner travels to India, the guest country at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, and visits the woman in charge, Nuzhat Hassan. “She must be in her mid-thirties and doesn’t seem daunted by the challenge of presenting India at Frankfurt. She has solved plenty of problems before. She used to be in the Indian police… She says: ‘Every year 77,000 new books are published. Forty percent are in English and the rest are in Indian languages. For us, however, English is an Indian language too.”

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27.04.2006

“That is death. Not the death of entertainment, but death in entertainment. And we are all paying for its maintenance, whether we want to or not. We are being provided for in the sense of ‘care’. And this is the ultimate incapacitation”, writes Nobel Prize for literature laureate Elfriede Jelinek in an article expressing her support for the Bayerische Rundfunk youth radio programme “Zündfunk” which is slated to be taken off air. “Entertainment is often bodily harm. It’s alright when people in the media sing and saw and sing with a saw or saw while singing or sleeping. As long as they remain alert. But the fun, which is being churned out incessantly as if public service media was a giant fun generator – this is wrong and should be banned from the public sphere. Because this generator does not power anything nor does it replace anything that itself would be capable of producing anything.”