Mein Leben als Noiseband

Clemens J. Setz’s Mein Leben als Noiseband is a collection about grief, fixation, distorted care, shame, online cruelty, damaged families, and the strange ways people try to make contact with others. The stories often begin in ordinary situations, then bend into obsession, fantasy, horror, or absurdity.

“Das Lesebändchen in der U-Bahn” opens with a man remembering that his wife miscarried after six weeks. Years later, he begins seeing the lost child as if he had grown into a young man. He encounters him in public places, always at a distance. One winter day he sits opposite him on the Vienna underground. The train stops in a tunnel, giving the narrator precious extra time. He watches the young man read, tries to identify the book, notices a woman looking at him, and feels a strange paternal pride. When the train moves again, the young man gets off. The narrator closes his eyes so he will not have to watch him leave. Afterward he walks through the snow, consoling himself that the “son” seems strong, self-sufficient, and uninterested in finding him.

“Der Mylar-Komplex” concerns Ulrich Lukaschek, once known as “Mylar Boy,” who as a teenager cared for six severely disabled men imprisoned in a circular structure called the Mylar complex. He claimed he had been recruited by an unknown man and simply continued after the man disappeared. The narrator visits him years later because one of the rescued men, David, became his adopted or foster son. The narrator carries a photo of David and wants answers: did Ulrich know David could speak? Did he talk to him? Ulrich is polite but evasive, preoccupied with how authorities later treated him. The conversation moves between sympathy, suspicion, horror, and gratitude. The narrator nearly attacks him emotionally, but they part with a strange reconciliation: Ulrich says the narrator and his family cared for David “fantastically.” On the bus home, the narrator shows David’s picture to a woman and calls him his son, overcome by grief and love.