To my mind, it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. But it is something you cannot possibly escape: your psychological make-up is such that you are inclined to look back over your shoulder.
In school I was in the dark room all the time, and I've always collected stray photographs; there's a great deal of memory in them.
Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German.
I've always been interested in photographs, collecting them not systematically but randomly. They get lost, then turn up again.
Mine is a European imagination, shaped largely by my very promiscuous reading in German, French, English and, with greater difficulty, Italian.
It would be presumptuous to say writing a book would be a sufficient gesture, but if people were more preoccupied with the past, maybe the events that overwhelm us would be fewer.
