Rocko Schamoni’s connected novels Sternstunden der Bedeutungslosigkeit (2007) and Tag der geschlossenen Tür (2011) are about the (everyday) life of a modern good-for-nothing, for whom the system of the normal not only seems unattainable, but also not desirable. This system revolves around the areas of work, consumption and love and is intertwined with the logic of the cultural construction of two genders. The analysis of the novels intends to show not only that the image of the outsider portrayed in them contains an ambivalent form of masculinity that is held against the semantic field of normality. It further aims at illustrating how the texts aesthetically model the fragility and ambiguity of contemporary constructions of masculinity in order to discuss how these fit into the German discourse of Popliteratur around the new millenium.
