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Speaker(s): Steven Uhly

A few words from Steven Uhly:

Who is writing when the author writes? Whenever I'm asked how I write my novels or how I develop my plots or if I know how the story will end while I'm writing, my answer has something to do with that first question.

Because the one who talks about writing is not the one who writes.

That sounds contradictory, but it's not. When I talk about this subject, what I'm doing in fact is to translate myself into the discourse language or, in other words, into the language of the ego. How is that? Fernando Pessoa discovered the link between the ego and the binary code of our every day language. He stated that a monism will always cause a dualism and a dualism will always cause a monism. With this argument, Pessoa described the reason why we think and feel in dualistic options: hope and fear, sympathy and antipathy, good and bad, I want this, I don't want that, etc. We need to make decisions all the time, and we are responsible for them. This requires a binary code, and it requires an identifiable entity capable of assuming the responsibility for the decisions made: the ego is our mind’s inherent monism.

Now, when in my real life I meet an antipathetic person, I try not to get in touch with him or her, and if I succeed, I may forget this person after five minutes. It's a dualistic choice. But if I want to describe an antipathetic person in a novel, I cannot proceed in the same way. I have to integrate this person into my consciousness. The same applies to anything disagreeable. Therefore, writing a novel is a non-dualistic activity. And it helps develop a non-dualistic view of the concept ‘reality’. How does this work and what does it mean for the mind? Who am I when I’m not using my ego? What is reality in this connection?

This is, in short, what I would like to talk about.

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Steven Uhly was born on 6th June in 1964 in Cologne (Germany). His father was Bengali, his mother is German. Steven Uhly grew up with her and his Spanish stepfather. In 1995 he gained a doctoral fellowship by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (Academic Foundation of the German People). In his thesis, Uhly investigated patterns of reflexivity in three contemporary novels: ‘The Name Of The Rose’ (Umberto Eco),  “An Invincible Memory” (João Ubaldo Ribeiro), and ‘The Gospel According To Jesus Christ’ (José Saramago). The thesis was evaluated with the grade Valde Laudabile (very good), the oral defense with Summa Cum Laude (excellent). Uhly received his doctor’s degree in 1999. From January 2002 to July 2006, he was in charge of the German Institute of The Federal University of Belém do Pará and of Porto Alegre (Brazil) teaching German and Portuguese literature and language. After returning to Germany, Uhly gave proseminars and advanced seminars at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich for one year. Then he decided to leave the university. In 2010, Uhly published his first novel “My pickled Life” (Mein Leben in Aspik) in the publishing house Secession Verlag Zürich/Berlin. In 2011, he published his second novel “Adam’s Fugue” (Adams Fuge). For “Adams Fuge” Uhly received the literary award of the city of Munich (Tukan Preis). In 2012, he published his third novel “Lucky Child” (Glückskind). Michael Verhoeven will film the novel in 2014.

Uhly lives in Munich, at present he is writing his fourth novel, which is to be finished in 2014.