SOURCE: Stollman, Rainer. “Reading Kluge's Mass Death in Venice.” New German Critique, no. 30 (fall 1983): 65-95.

In the following parodic essay, Stollman uses the fictional character of Professor Noodlekopf to provide an interpretation of Mass Death in Venice.

Dr. Noodlekopf's Investigations

Having just read the story Mass Death in Venice by Alexander Kluge, Noodlekopf, Professor of German in the university town of B, wrinkled his brow in astonishment. Since he knew that his present condition might presage some new insight, he did not give up on the dry report of horror which, although its literary allusion was certainly clear enough, made an irritating claim to authenticity. So he decided to pursue the sources without delay.

The reading of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice yielded the following: in Kluge's story, “oppressive heat,” in Mann's narrative “repulsive sultriness”; Kluge's heat was authentic in 1969, whereas Mann's cholera outbreak as a result of...