RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 “Glück malt man mit Punkten, Unglück mit Strichen” Peter Stamms Roman Agnes JF Monatshefte FD University of Wisconsin Press SP 266 OP 281 DO 10.1353/mon.0.0026 VO 100 IS 2 A1 HARTMUT VOLLMER YR 2008 UL http://mon.uwpress.org/content/100/2/266.abstract AB The first novel Agnes by the Swiss author Peter Stamm, published in 1998, attracted considerable attention. It relates, in an aesthetically subtle manner, a modern love-story which demonstrates the deep conflict between reality and fiction and, at the same time, the power of literature. The love affair between the first-person narrator, a Swiss non-fiction author who researches de luxe railway cars in Chicago, and Agnes, a twenty-five-year-old American doctoral student of physics, develops into an aesthetic question concerning the extent to which happiness can be described. – The present contribution examines in detail the literary divergence between imagination and reality which becomes evident in the love-story written down by the first-person narrator. It analyzes the reasons for the narrative experience of the failure of happiness. (HV; In German)