Introduction

Going into this interview, I had no real agenda, not even a set of prepared questions, because I conceived of it initially as two old friends taking up a conversation that had been interrupted by COVID and other vagaries of personal and professional life. I first met Barbara Honigmann and her husband, Peter, in 1996. We connected again briefly when she visited Rutgers in 1999; but I only got to know her better when she visited Duke for a month-long stay as a writer in residence in spring of 2013. We were both without on-site spouses, which gave us the time to supplement the many official activities surrounding her appointment with informal Sunday-morning walks and meals. Initially, the conversation below was conceived of as a natural extension of those perambulations.

Recording it for possible publication was almost an afterthought. It occurred to me that she’d of course say something really interesting and that later I’d regret not having preserved it for posterity. Initially, we’d been invited for Shabbat dinner, and Barbara suggested that I come early so that we could have our own chat just prior to that. But when I mentioned a recording and potential publication, she balked, remarking that that definitely sounded like work, which of course has no place on the Sabbath. So we settled on Friday morning, while Peter was out shopping. Without fully intending it, I was moving our discussion further and further away from the spontaneous exchange I had first proposed. And there was another snag. I was beginning to feel—as readers will notice in the very first exchange, below—the tension between my relationship as a friend and my role as a critic. I wanted to broach the sensitive matter of her uneven literary reputation. But how to do that without risking offense? My solution, if that is what it was, was simply to dive in.

My conjecture that Honigmann is in some quarters underappreciated, though shared by critics who admire her work (and who do not confuse accessibility with sophistication), elicited what I hope are fruitful reflections on the distinctiveness of her writing and its place within contemporary German letters. They reward careful consideration. Although in receipt of numerous important prizes indicating broad recognition, Honigmann is clear-eyed about those aspects of her writing that frustrate conventional and generic conventions.