the cold one

Maxim Biller, a German writer, sets his short story, The Maserati Years, in an apartment in Berlin. A few hours of a man's life are chronicled through clouds of cold breath, missed phone calls and messages, and getting up either to fix the drapes or go the bathroom. This man is void of any emotion or feeling; his emotional range is between hot and cold. He cannot commit to a real relationship whether it with a woman or whether it business (acting) related. All the action is contained within this one man's thought process, which does not connect to the outside world. The story begins with one of his lovers leaving a message to tell him shes pregnant and ends with her texting him it was a cold joke; that is the extent of his emotions and communication. Maxim Biller uses little breath clouds to divide the story into sections or stream of thought and simple syntax to emphasize the uncomplicated selfishness of his life. In such a short piece of fiction, Maxim Biller opens his readers eyes to a kind of despicable life, one almost not worth living. This man is living a wasted life and Maxim Biller makes that clear. You cannot live a fullfilling life only through physical connections with the world such as sex and money. I really enjoyed this story because it portrayed a stereotypical movie star and his demeanor in thought through, to the point, intriguing prose. The concept of a commercial/high end product like a maserati pulled all the aspects of the story into one concrete object, emblemtic of his life style.