Peter Wortsman

I originally took this as a serious book about Berlin and something I could learn enough from to make me want to travel there, or at least to feel satisfied in my reading of it enough to save a future trip for someplace else I might need to visit more importantly. Frankly, the text was dead and I was disappointed.

"…my circumcised identity hanging prone between my legs."

Instead of maintaining an interesting and serious stance within his text, Peter Wortsman, the author of this travelogue, cannot help himself but refer in any way he can about his obvious love object, his penis. Because of his repeated exposures of his privates to anyone reading, the book is perhaps unforgettable, but certainly for all the wrong reasons. I cannot quite put my finger on what was the most extreme of the problems here for me except to say his silly idea of being clever and amusing, as well as somebody we might be overly enamored with, reminded me too much of another popular writer I completely despise by the name of David Shields. They have the same problems with delusions of grandeur.

After reading several books written by the great W.G. Sebald I suppose I have been spoiled over what a good travelogue should be. It is not Ghost Dance in Berlin. Not by a long shot. Forget what the blurbs on the book say, this book is for camera-toting bus-riding sissies and not for a gal on foot with a pack on her back and the courage of a Panthera Onca. Sebald comes at you with all the fervor and historical bald truths he can muster. Plus he makes it riveting. This Wortsman guy thinks he's tough because he can fantasize an attack on a moron the likes of Henry Kissinger, sidle up next to him in the German john, and proudly shake his love-club in the face of Henry at the urinal. Wortsman is sickening to me and more than disgusting. How a translator of such work as the great artist Kleist's can stoop so low as this, and with a subject like Berlin so absolutely interesting and relevant to our time. Plus he makes all men look bad, and that really pisses me off.… (mais)