The German Martin von Arndt was the first author who sent his text “Death is a postman with a hat” into the fray for this afternoon’s reading competition. Apart from Alain Claude Sulzer, who had invited the author, nobody was able to warm to the text.

Strigl: “The text doesn't excite me enough”

The content: Death seeks out the insecure son of a suicide victim as “tabula rasa” in the form of empty, registered letters that arrive at his place in regular intervals.

A text that despite its subject “is not as interesting” as it could be, says Daniela Strigl, who was asked by presenter Dieter Moor to comment on these “men’s problems”. Although there is the “suspense-motive”, thetext did not excite her enough. “Regardless of whether one sees this from a female or male perspective – it’s irrelevant in this case.”

“For me the text is tautologically too sedate"

For Ursula März the question arises whether in this case one is dealing with “macho or softy literature”. The “soft nature" of the protagonist is reflected in the style of text. For her the text is “tautologically too sedate”.

Mangold spoke about “awkward narrating”

“I wanted to say something as a man“, started Klaus Nüchtern, "even a man can be bored hearing about how men feel". As far as he was concerned, he was “already fed up with this idea of a thirty-something protagonist who lacks any kind of motivation”. Thie inertia of the protagonist transfers to the text: “That’s how I imagine the 50s were like. This guy is a bore”, was his conclusion.

Ijoma Mangold felt similarly. “The text is phoney": It starts with a secret – with a beat of the drum – but the remaining narration is unstructured". This kind of “awkward narrating” adds no “poetic value”.

Heiz: “I’m so sad”

Andre Vladimir Heiz’ disapproval of the text made him start to criticise it in French. His final verdict: “Why don't you write something else, I know one shouldn't say this, but I'm so sad". Not even Alain Claude Sulzer’s praise of the “ironic distance” of the “elegant" text could help anymore. In the end, even he seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for it: Fair enough, not “much praise, but a well developed text”.

Text by Martin von Arndt