Hoppe

Hoppe (2012)

Hoppe is a novel in the form of an imaginary autobiography, in which Felicitas Hoppe invents an alternative childhood for herself in Canada and Australia in which she tries her hand at ice hockey and piano-playing before becoming a writer. Hoppe contains several allusions to classic works of children’s literature including The Pied Piper of Hamlyn, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The novel delights in its own postmodern metanarrative self-reflection and self-referential pastiche: it includes many interpretations of previous works by Hoppe, as well as reviews of, and academic articles about, Hoppe’s work by imagined literary critics and scholars. The novel ends with the discovery and publication of Hoppe’s works and its initial critical reception. By this means the novel both mystifies and demystifies the process of literary creation and the figure of the author herself, showing how an ‘author’ is not purely a self-made individual, but is constructed from within the literature industry by recognised critics and academics who serve as ‘instances of consecration’. In other words, an artist is inseparable from the cultural and discursive field in which their legendary status is constructed. On this point see Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire [1992]; English translation: The Rules of Art: Genesis and structure of the literary field, trans. by Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

In Chapter One we are told that Hoppe’s childhood in Hamelin and her four siblings are pure invention. According to the novel, Hoppe and her father Karl moved to Brantford, Ontario in Canada when she was a child. Karl Hoppe, who is an inventor in his spare time, works for Bell Telephone Canada. Hoppe describes her childhood friendship with Wayne Gretzky (born in 1961), who is considered by many to be the best ice hockey player ever. Hoppe participates in ice hockey tournaments and has piano lessons with Lucy Bell, a relative of Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone in Brantford in 1874. Lucy Bell trained with Flora Gould, the mother of the legendary Canadian pianist Glenn Gould who is also featured in Thomas Bernhard’s novel Der Untergeher (1983), translated into English as The Loser in 1996. Karl Hoppe and Lucy Bell have an affair together, but then Karl and Felicitas Hoppe leave Canada on a container ship bound for Australia.

Chapter Two describes the sea voyage from Canada to Australia aboard the Queen Adelaide (Adelheid); the ship and the Australian city are both named after Adelaide von Sachsen-Meiningen (1792-1849), the Queen Consort and wife of William IV, who ruled Great Britain in the 1830s. Hoppe meets a stuttering Polish sailor who becomes a sort of alter-ego for her. On arrival in Adelaide she writes a book about her brother searching for her in Adelaide but not finding her.

Chapter Three recounts Hoppe’s early years in Adelaide, starting with her friendship with her landlady Lucy Ayrton. Hoppe becomes friends with a blind cricket player called Joey Blyton and has piano lessons with Joey’s father Quentin. The chapter ends in a strange dream sequence: Hoppe realises with horror that she does not know who she is.

Chapter Four begins Hoppe’s years as a music student at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide, where she gets the nickname ‘The Cheshire Cat’. She marries a fellow student, Viktor Seppelt. The couple fly to New York where they soon separate. In the summer of 1984 she goes to Chittenango in Upstate New York where she works as a ‘mask manager’, choreographer and ‘parade specialist’ at a Wizard of Oz festival (p. 250). Then she goes to Hannibal, Missouri where Mark Twain grew up, and then on to Las Vegas.

Chapter Five relates Hoppe’s earliest memories of her mother Maria. Hoppe gets a job as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Oregon, and becomes friends with Professor Hans Herman Haman. She writes a German coursebook and completes her Masters dissertation on Till Eulenspiegel. She learns of Wayne Gretzky’s marriage to Janet Jones and phones to congratulate him. Hoppe bids farewell to Haman, leaving her writings with him. Haman ensures that her book Picknick der Friseure (1996) [Hairdressers’ Picnic] gets published. Every year, on the night of her birthday, Hoppe appears in the Inventors’ Room of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC; she manifests herself as a five year-old girl. The legend continues…

Further Reading in English

Andrew Wright Hurley, ‘Disappearing Act: Felicitas Hoppe’s Hoppe and Australian Myths’, in Anxious Journeys: Twenty-First Century Travel Writing in German, ed. by Karin Baumgartner and Monika Shafi (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019), pp. 127-42