SOURCE: Jacobson, Manfred R. “Patrick Süskind's Das Parfum: A Postmodern Künstlerroman.” German Quarterly 65, no. 2 (spring 1992): 201-11.

In the following essay, Jacobson explicates Das Parfum in terms of the traditions of Küstlerliteratur and literary postmodernism.

Its immense popularity notwithstanding, the critical reception of Patrick Süskind's Das Parfum has been quite mixed, as well as fraught with contradictions and disagreements. It this novel a “brilliant fable”¹ or “a ridiculously improbable piece of verbose claptrap”?² Is it an “allegory of the Third Reich”³ or a treatment of the totalitarian personality?⁴ Is one of its most significant themes that “hell is other people?”⁵ Is it a “Künstlerroman?”⁶ Is Süskind's narrative technique conventional⁷ and he an epigone,⁸ or do “we close the book with the presumably postmodern feeling of having been twitted”?⁹ These are just a few of the many opinions found in reviews of Das Parfum...