WHYYYYY do I have to like stuff that apparently no one else reads/watches?

[moon_custafer]

I’ve spent the past couple of days giving into the urge to draw the lead characters from Stopfkuchen (1891), by Wilhelm Raabe.

I’m not sure if Tubby/Stopfkuchen/Heinrich has a moustache. The narrative doesn’t specify, but he is living in the late 19th century, so...?

Headline: AREA NERD REVEALS HOW HE WOOED FIERY REDHEAD
Tubby: Uh..... by treating her like a human being... I guess?
“But wasn’t her father a murd—-”
Tubby: “SORRY CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THIS IDYLLIC FARM”
Valentina: (putting down cookbook) “Look, If you don’t stop pestering us, I WILL let my husband tell you about his fossil collection until you beg for mercy.”

Comments

[sovay]

giving into the urge to draw

This link appears to be broken! Please fix it so that I can slightly share your fandom!

[moon_custafer]

Should work now.

[pedanther]

FWIW, your descriptions are making me seriously eye the copy of Wilhelm Raabe: Novels on Abebooks.

(There are also two copies of Stopfkuchen itself, if I decide I want to really stretch my minimal German. Or pay through the nose, since one of them's an 1891 edition and priced accordingly.)

They're also, since I'm currently working my way through le Carré's George Smiley novels, reminding me just a bit of George and Anne.

Also also, 1891 is definitely not too early to be a deconstruction of the mystery genre. The first flourishing of the English detective novel, with The Moonstone and so on, was in the 1860s.

[moon_custafer]

If you want to attempt the original, I did find it in German on Project Gutenberg: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/stopfkuchen-532/1

I do hope I’m not over-selling it, though.


The first flourishing of the English detective novel, with The Moonstone and so on, was in the 1860s.
Yes, and I posted a few months ago about a German novella from 1828 which is absolutely a detective story: https://moon-custafer.dreamwidth.org/565539.html (It’s also, hilariously, a full-on Romantic work— I think I described it as CSI: Young Werther.)

Also, I love The Moonstone (apart from everything else, there are so many shippable pairings).