Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors

In 1978, Rainer Werner Fassbinder told an interviewer for the German television series Life Stories that he was writing a novel. “It’s a story about someone who one day can no longer move and faces the choice of either finding out . . . why he can’t move or no longer breathing,” he said. Cigarette smoke is wafting over his face. His shirt unbuttoned halfway to his belly. “And he decides to find out why he can’t move anymore. And in the end he can move again.”