Archive for February, 2008

The Assistant has landed

Across the pond, that is. The Penguin Modern Classics edition of the book, which isn’t out officially until Thursday of next week, is already finding its way to readers and producing the expected (by me at least) informed and interesting responses.
John Self — whose Ireland-based blog Asylum is one of those highly discriminating, compulsively interesting Brit Lit Blogs — offers a good review of the book and, as a bonus, gives us two things we didn’t have: photographs of the actual objet, and a tip on another recent book of interest to Walserien like me.

That book, Adam Thirlwell’s Miss Herbert, appears to be an eccentric sort of a volume (read John’s review and, for a good chuckle, the Complete Review’s overview of the reviews and critical reactions), but I’m intrigued to see Thirlwell’s brief discussion of Walser’s style. And of course eager to pay the tribute of my attention to a book that brought Walser another reader as thoughtful as Mr. Self.

Go see John’s pics of the book — I think Penguin did an excellent job with the packaging. (Though I’m still a strict partisan of the Suhrkamp edition with the moody Vallotton self-portrait.)

Sam :: Feb.29.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 4 Comments »

A grand account of mental ruin

Since October, Guardian Unlimited Arts Blog blogger Chris Power has been conducting “a brief survey of the short story.” So far, Power has covered Anton Chekhov, H. P. Lovecraft, Mavis Gallant, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Raymond Carver, Julian Maclaren-Ross, and Etgar Keret. All the pieces, and some other good posts on literary topics, are found here.

Part 8 in the series, published on February 11, is about Walser:

There is undeniably an element of self-portraiture to be found in one of Walser’s greatest stories, “Kleist in Thun” (1913), in which he recreates the German writer’s 1801 stay in Switzerland that saw his first plays come to fruition. Ten years later Kleist would shoot himself on the shores of the Wannsee in a suicide pact. Walser’s story captures both this incipient despair and the fevered compound of ecstasy and frustration involved in artistic creation. “He wants,” Walser writes of Kleist, “to abandon himself to the entire catastrophe of being a poet…What he writes makes him grimace: his creations miscarry.”

Susan Sontag has commented that “Kleist in Thun’s” concluding paragraph “seals an account of mental ruin as grand as anything I know in literature”.

Power’s piece is generally on the money and here and there insightful, particularly the connection he draws between Walser and Akutagawa. I was reminded that Robert’s brother Karl visited Japan right shortly after The Assistant was published. Here’s one of his paintings from the trip.

(Thanks for Dave Lull for the tip.)

Sam :: Feb.13.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 1 Comment »

A spontaneous and peripatetic art

I Am Dali tracks down the complete text of Michael Hamburger’s 1961 essay on Walser, which concludes with this thought:

It will always be easy enough to disparage Walser’s microcosms in favour of the more massive constructions of more ambitious prose writers, if only by hurling the brickbat of “journalism” at his shorter works. Yet his spontaneous and peripatetic art is as close to lyrical poetry as it is to journalism; and, now that so much of his work has been available once more, it will soon be unnecessary to apologize for Walser’s refusal to be a “great” or “important” writer. The totality of his work has already outlasted much that seemed great and important in his time.

“Good closer” indeed, as Dali observes. Read the whole thing here.

As a bonus, Dali also gives us a healthy portion the 1957 review of Walser’s first appearance in English. “‘The Walk’ is the longest in this collection; it is a tour de force of cunning improvisation that has no parallel in any literature.” Good stuff. Dali doesn’t cite the author – this was back in TLS’s days of anonymous authorship – but I would guess it’s Hamburger as well, judging by the over-the-top (though satisfying) praise of Walser’s work. Only a dip in the TLS Centenary Archive will tell us for sure.

Sam :: Feb.07.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 3 Comments »

Empathy for the world, impatience with the self

Now that The Assistant has been out for half a year, I thought it a good time to do a database search to see if any reviews had escaped my notice. So off I went last Saturday to the university library, spending the morning at a terminal, ineptly scouring the various digital resources to see what I could find.

I was surprised to discover only one item I had missed: Quinn Latimer’s review in the July-August 2007 issue of Modern Painters (not online). Doubly surprised, because I actually read Modern Painters, though not as regularly as I once did.

Liked this line:

This empathy for the world, and an impatience with the self and the restrictive structures into which it is always placing itself or being placed, produces the humility that gives the novel its ultimate tone.

Latimer draws an interesting comparison to Rilke as well:

Placing his empty suitcase in a corner, [Marti] suddenly concludes: “I have fallen behind in life.” The abruptness with which this revelation arrives and its straightforward syntax –” together, like a noose tightening — recall a similar revelation: “You must change your life.” This stark line ends Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” published in his collection Neue Gedichte (New Poems) the same year as The Assistant.

In my search, I was also able to locate a more complete text (though not yet the full-text; see “ineptly” above) of the July 1961 TLS cover essay on Walser which I’ve quoted previously. Turns out the author of the essay was poet and translator Michael Hamburger, who passed away just last year. I still think this is one of the best essays on Walser ever written.

Sam :: Feb.04.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 9 Comments »