Of living and talking - about football, lulls and finals
The ball, knowing only too well who kicked it, flies away, poet of choice Brit Michael Hofmann. It's a powerful image, possibly, of the meteoric commercialisation of a simple sport. A sport that has many commentators, many opinion leaders, millions. But soon more the so called designated connoisseurs and commentators are annoying us. When you love a thing, it's hard to stomach someone who is only half good at talking about it. Football commentary reveals vulnerabilities - to fuzziness, lack of differentiation, opportunism. Marcel Reif is exempt from this. He says himself, "I don't remember big games so much as big moments in sometimes small games..." In "Nachspielzeit", published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, he looks back and forward, tells small and big stories in front of and behind the scenes of football, the panem et circenses of our time. He is joined for the 90 minutes of this evening by critic, referee and author Christoph Schröder.
Text source and further information about this event: http://literaturhaus-frankfurt.de/programm/termine/marcel-reif-nachspielzeit-2017-05-30/
