How to place the mysterious Swiss writer Robert Walser, a humble genius who possessed one of the most elusive and surprising sensibilities in modern literature? Walser is many a Paul Klee in words, maker of droll, whimsical, tender, and heartbreaking verbal artifacts; an inspiration to such very different writers as Kafka and W.G. Sebald; an amalgam, as Susan Sontag suggests in her preface to this volume, of Stevie Smith and Samuel Beckett. This collection gathers forty-two of Walser's stories. Encompassing everything from journal entries, notes on literature, and biographical sketches to anecdotes, fables, and visions, it is an ideal introduction to this fascinating writer of whom Hermann Hesse famously declared, "If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place." Response to a Request Flower Days Trousers Two Strange Stories Balloon Journey Kleist in Thum The Job Application The Boat A Little Ramble Helbling's Story The Little Berliner Nervous The Walk So! "I've Got You" Nothing at All Kienast Poests Frau Wilke The Street Snowdrops Winter The She-Owl Knocking Titus Vladimir Parisian Newspapers The Monkey Dostoevsky's Idiot Am I Dreaming? The Little Tree Stork and Porcupine A Contribution to the Celebration of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer A Sort of Speech A Letter to Therese Breitbach A Village Tale The Aviator The Pimp Masters and Workers Essay on Freedom A Biedermeier Story The Honeymoon Thoughts on Cezanne
Author
Robert Walser, a German-Swiss prose writer and novelist, enjoyed high repute among a select group of authors and critics in Berlin early in his career, only to become nearly forgotten by the time he committed himself to the Waldau mental clinic in Bern in January 1929. Since his death in 1956, however, Walser has been recognized as German Switzerland's leading author of the first half of the twentieth century, perhaps Switzerland's single significant modernist. In his homeland he has served as an emboldening exemplar and a national classic during the unparalleled expansion of German-Swiss literature of the last two generations. Walser's writing is characterized by its linguistic sophistication and animation. His work exhibits several sets of tensions or contrasts: between a classic modernist devotion to art and a ceaseless questioning of the moral legitimacy and practical utility of art; between a spirited exuberance in style and texture and recurrent reflective melancholy; between the disparate claims of nature and culture; and between democratic respect for divergence in individuals and elitist reaction to the values of the mass culture and standardization of the industrial age.
