August 18, 2003
Kein Werther Mehr (No More Werthers)

I don't know what Goethe would have done with Blogger, but Phillip Lenssen proposes the Sorrows of a Young man blog, "Being a Palimpsest of Goethe's Werther." Remember how you felt when you were 20 and someone ate your whole heart? It's like that, but in German ( though Lenssen's blog is in English).

Since, as Lenssen points out, the original publication of Goethe's "die Leiden des Jungen Werther" started a suicide contagion, it's worthwhile to consider such a blog -- with it's circulation being theoretically far wider than Goethe's -- as its own kind of WMD. Like the lethal Infinite Jest entertainment, but upside down and backwards.

Posted by kevin slavin at August 18, 2003 05:38 PM
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I signed up to have "Werther" sent to me in email installments. Yikes! Now I'm trying desperately to stop the flood of drainage into my computer. What dreck! What a ponce! Goethe's character is simply someone you really, really want to take a stick to, someone you want to tell, "Get over yourself!" This character doesn't need to get in touch with his "inner child" -- he IS his "inner child," and one that begs for a damn good spanking!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to tracking down the original web site where I signed up for this perfumed fart of a story and put an end to it!

Posted by: BeeDee on December 3, 2004 08:29 AM
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