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March 2022Laborschläfer (Lab Sleeper)
Roman
by Jochen Schimmang
»It’s about the chain of associations that’s going on there. Not the dream remnants, could you pleaseforget Freud for a moment.«Rainer Roloff leads a secluded life. If you asked him about his employment history, he would describe himselfas a private scholar. Structure and routine are added to his life thanks to a long-term study on the influenceof sleep on memory, in which he takes part as a test subject. He regularly travels from Cologne to Düsseldorf,even during a pandemic, to record his thoughts after waking up in the laboratory.Roloff, one year older than the Federal Republic of Germany, is an ideal and productive subject, with anelephant’s memory and an awareness of the connection between the collective unconscious and individualmemory. Doctor Meissner, the director of the study, finds »very felicitous« most of what his test subject tellshim, a mixture of historical and personal memories and playfully absurd still-dream logic. But then thememory of the sleep researcher Dr. Meissner himself gets out of balance...Once again, Jochen Schimmang proves to be a master of a nonchalant melancholy, a subtle chronicler ofhistory of which he is the most sympathetic observer.
