The Heavy Burden of Being Ordinary. Considerations on Robert Schneiderʼs Novel Die Offenbarung

The Austrian writer Robert Schneider had significant success with his first novel Schlafes Bruder/ Brother of Sleep, which sold about one million copies and was translated into over 36 languages. The following novels were not nearly as successful, although they had a favourable reception from the reading public. This paper explores how Schneider describes the destructive dimensions of ideals in his sixth and so far latest novel, Die Offenbarung/ The Revelation. Whereas most of Schneider’s characters are usually geniuses and thus outsiders or misfits, Jakob Kemper, the protagonist of the novel Die Offenbarung, is characterized precisely by the lack of any feature that could take him out of anonymity. Kemperʼs fear of being ordinary generates an endless number of failures. His whole existence is described as a long chain of humiliating personal and professional situations, defeats, and rejections. At the same time, this novel represents Robert Schneider’s attempt to reply with self-irony and disarming humour to his vocal critics, who often placed his works at the edge of trivial literature.