{Character Interview} Hans Jaeger of 'The Feet Say Run'

We’re thrilled to be talking to Hans Jaeger from Dan Blum’s The Feet Say Run.  It is a pleasure to have Hans with us today at Pimp That Character!

Thank you for your interview, Hans  How old are you and what do you do for a living?

I am eighty-five.  I started working in my father’s factory in Germany, making brass instruments before the war.  After the war I sold refrigerators for the Amana Corporation.  After that I became a kidney dealer for wealthy transplant-recipients.

Can you tell us about one of your most distinguishable features?

In spite of my age, my erection is firm as a senator’s handshake.

What would I love the most about you?

There is nothing to love or hate.  What do these words even mean?  I am who I am. 

What is in your refrigerator right now?

I am at present on a deserted island with a few survivors, hoping for a rescue.  There is no refrigerator.  In our food collection there are dove eggs, roots, snails, a coconut-like fruit we call “assfruit”. 

What is your most treasured possession?

My memories, especially of the women I have loved, but also of childhood, in the 1930s, in Germany. 

What is the trait you least like about yourself?

Some say that I committed a terrible crime.  That I fled.  My son believes this.  I will leave it to others to judge.  

Who is your best friend?

Her name is Dawn.  She is as young and beautiful as I am old and unbeautiful.  We play chess together.  We are equally matched.  She is the perfect opponent. 

Do you have children?

I have a son who has not spoken to me in decades. 

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I had few career aspirations.  Vague dreams, really, and all shattered by the war anyway, so it’s just as well I had no fixed plan.  But I knew I loved girls, even a young age.  I knew I wanted to fall in love. 

If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?

I probably am going to die tomorrow.  Yet there is nothing more to do.  My day will be the same as any other.  I will gather roots.  Keep the fire going.  Mix memory and delusion.  Dream. 

About the Author

Daniel A. Blum grew up in New York, attended Brandeis University and currently lives outside of Boston with his family. His first novel Lisa33 was published by Viking in 2003. He has been featured in Poets and Writers magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and most recently, interviewed in Psychology Today.

Daniel writes a humor blog, The Rotting Post, that has developed a loyal following.

His latest release is the literary novel, The Feet Say Run.

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About the Book:

Title: THE FEET SAY RUN
Author: Daniel A. Blum
Publisher: Gabriel’s Horn Press
Pages: 349
Genre: Literary Fiction

At the age of eighty-five, Hans Jaeger finds himself a castaway among a group of survivors on a deserted island.  What is my particular crime?  he asks.   Why have I been chosen  for this fate?  And so he begins his extraordinary chronicle. 

It would be an understatement to say he has lived a full life.  He has grown up in Nazi Germany and falls in love with Jewish girl.  He fights for the Germans on two continents, watches the Reich collapse spectacularly into occupation and starvation, and marries his former governess.  After the war he goes on wildflower expeditions in the Alps, finds solace among prostitutes while his wife lay in a coma, and marries a Brazilian chambermaid in order to receive a kidney from her. 

By turns sardonic and tragic and surreal, Hans’s story is the story of all of the insanity, irony and horror of the modern world itself.  

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