Cherrypicker | Literature  The fortune and misfortune of fools

What do fools and tassels have in common? In a quirky hybrid between a joke book and a comic book, Robert Seethaler and comic artist Marcus Weimer explore this and other pointless questions. Above all, they prove that questions are more important than answers.

Austrian author Robert Seethaler and Marcus Weimer, one half of the comic duo Rattelschneck, have written and drawn a first-class nonsense book with Trotteln (Fools). The misunderstandings begin with the title and the cover. The fools are not fools, i.e. not village idiots, half-wits or duffers. Instead, the picture shows two tassels (in German, Trottel (fool) differs from Troddel (tassel) only by the different double consonants, the voiceless T and the voiced D), i.e. bundles of threads or cords, often with a knot or a decorative bead at the top. In earlier times, curtains were held together by a cord with two tassels. On the book cover, the cords of the two tassels come together in two human faces - which look a little dorky. It all started in a pub in Kreuzberg. Seethaler and Weimer sat together, talked, drank a few beers and started drawing in a sketchbook. When Weimer rediscovered Seethaler's drawings in his sketchbook the following day, he wrote him an e-mail. This e-mail exchange, which lasted about six months, forms the basis of the book and gives it a diary-like form, in which puns, witty drawings and occasional photographic snapshots alternate.

Pointless proofreading

The cabinet of curiosities features: Tarzan, who cheats on Jane with Liane (Liane is the German word for the liana plant), Porky Pig (in German: Schweinchen Dick), who meets the porn star Rooster Cock and, of course, Tassels again and again. They have absurd conversations, wish for the curtain back from the cleaners or are faced with unsolvable tasks. In one cartoon, two differently sized, monk-like figures walk past a café and a café visitor comments: ‘Ovid and Long Ovid, one more unpleasant than the other.’

Seethaler, who is often referred to as a literary star, is also caricatured as a superhero: with a blue costume and red cape. Another superhero is called Tranquiliser. His superpower is that he is so boring. All his opponents fall asleep immediately.

Every now and then an editor tries to intervene in the book with his comments, but these are either brushed off or simply ignored.

I'm sure it's possible to dismiss Trotteln as nonsense or escapism. But it would be much more appropriate not to look for a deeper meaning at all, but to engage with the jokes, associations and inconsistencies and see the whole thing as great fun. Everyone is free to be a fool who laughs at this marvellous nonsense, or a fool who finds it too stupid.  

May 2025