Jürgen von der Lippe • Sextextsextett

Jürgen von der Lippe, born in 1948, has been a successful master of subtle humor and a host on stage and on television for decades. He lives in Berlin and is the recipient of the Bambi, the Grimme Prize, and the Golden Camera, among other awards. His latest books—*When I Stretch, I Sing Ballads*, *The King of the Animals*, *Noodles in the Wind*, and *Sex Is Like Flour*—remained on the bestseller list for weeks. 

It’s hard not to gush about my new book—even for me. Just the title alone, *Sextextsextett*, is both a tongue-twister and an icebreaker in conversation. What does it promise?   Everything you want and more: plenty of zeitgeist—sometimes timeless, sometimes mindless—and answers to pressing questions like: What role does language play in hair loss? How do you mindfully break up with a partner? What are the differences between Goethe’s erotic poetry and that of Hermann Löns?  What does the feminist movement “Equal Breasts for All” want? Who said, “The genitals are the true focal point of the will,” and what name could you give your own? Schopenhauer. So that quote comes from him; the other one is up to you. 
How many meanings can the sentence “I have a finger in my butt” have? Quite a few texts reflect my xenologophilia—my love of foreign words—which I then like to explain through jokes, such as malapropisms, the confusion of similar-sounding foreign words. “Yesterday afternoon I was deflowered. You mean confirmed! No, that was this morning. One of the most mysterious and at the same time most universally applicable sentences in the book—if not in all of literature—is: I’m awake now.  
I don’t want to say any more than that for now.”