The Meteor

In college I took a class on German literature in translation where I read Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I can’t remember the title of what we read, but I remembered I liked it. So I grabbed his play The Meteor at the library. I liked this too.

The Meteor tells the story of a Nobel prize winning author who keeps trying to die. He was in the hospital and died there and then came to again. He returns to an apartment where he once lived hoping to die there. Now a painter and his wife live in the apartment. The painter does not like this intrusion, but he goes along with things. Here the author dies a couple more times and comes back to life. Between deaths other characters come and go and he upsets their lives with claims that say he slept with one real estate baron’s wife. Other characters do die or run away from their husbands, but the author keeps coming back.

It was a humorous absurd play. Not so absurd that it’s pedantic or esoteric. A fun fast read that makes one think a little.