Werner Schwab

The dog’s mouth Sepp calls himself Dirty Sepp. And he is sitting in dirt: between a deteriorating farm, a scrap heap and a trough of blood and guts. He is sitting in the dirt of his own fantasies of power and impotence. His alcohol-infused tirades are steeped in hate and self destruction. Disabled in war, he grabs at schnapps bottles, butcher’s knives and scythes with his “world war hands”. Nobody ever wanted him, he’s sure of it.
His son doesn’t want him, either. He wants to put distance between himself and his father and might have done it if his car hadn’t broken down, if he himself hadn’t already lapsed into defeatism. So he has to keep on dreaming: of his father’s death, of renovating the house, of a bulldozer clearing away his father and the whole dirty mess.
The wife is clean and strict. She puts Dirty Sepp’s bed by the door and barks out orders and complaints.
Dirty Sepp carries the big word “world” around with him. Nothing less than the world with its demanding wars and its torturous disregard and nothing more than the confines of his family drive him around and to and into madness. He lies down in front of his dog, whom he has trained to kill him.
“Language drags the characters behind it: like tin cans that have been tied to a dog’s tail. You can’t do anything without language.” (Werner Schwab)
Mein Hundemund is the last part of the tetralogy of the ‘faecal’ dramas and follows on from Die Präsidentinnen, Übergewicht, unwichtig: Unform and Volksvernichtung oder Meine Leber ist sinnlos.