The dentist, dispensing humdrum wisdom and painkillers with godlike aloofness, objects to violence, real or imagined, advocating universal Sickcare and a diet preventive of caries as a cure-all. Under the influence of local anesthesia, Starusch's imagination releases h erotic fantasies and the very violence he tries to combat in his pupils, one of them a militant Maoist. In a casual throwaway, the author reveals his true identity - Field Marshal Schoerner. Thus among other episodes we see Krings, one of Hitler's most ferocious 'fight-to-the-finish' generals, return from Russian captivity and engage in sandbox reconstructions of Germany's battles, determined to win them this time. Reality and fantasy, the actual and the repressed, overrun the screen in a mirror image of German history. Gagged in his chair, the patient projects onto the screen his past and present with the fluidity and visual quality of the movies. Starusch, a bachelor aged forty teaching 'German and history (two inseparable subjects), undergoes protracted treatment by a dentist who uses TV to distract his patients.
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