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Werner Kofler. Herbst, Freiheit. Reinbek bei Hamburg. Rowohlt. 1994. 119 pages. DM 28. ISBN 3-498-03481-2.
In the beginning we find our narrator, or author (the two are, as often as not, interchangeable) in a hotel room at night, recollecting past events of his own life as well as those of others--musical and historical figures such as Alban Berg and Archduke Franz Ferdinand--in this hotel and others. While in some of these recollections he is in hotel rooms and restaurants with a woman, he is now alone, as if he had been left by the woman in question. And since the hotel seems virtually to be exuding an odor of suicide, he is soon contemplating suicide himself.
To judge by some of the stories of at least...