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Title: The Robber by Robert Walser, Susan Bernofsky ISBN: 0-8032-9809-9 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: June, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Twisted-Up Air
Comment: The Robber is a guidebook for disappearance, an endlessly tangential map of the transient ghostliness of the ever-elusive self written by a gentleman who has politely bid farewell and stepped outside of his person. It is a precious hoot. It is a picaresque series of tiptoes around a goblin-infested forest. It is a shared narcissistic prism. It is a suite of rapid motions that spins in place. It is a needling delight, a frustrating pleasure.
Dear Walser has pulled out of thin air a labyrinth constructed of air.
Rating: 5
Summary: Our Robber is a humble man w/an inborn pride of thieves
Comment: In review of writers far worthier than I, and contemporaneous of Walser: Robert Musil said: Walser writes as "an ice-skater executes his long curves & figures...these little endlessnesses waft over into the void...as in the hours between a suicide's decision and final act(1914). The most Illuminated of all assessors of literary greatness, Walter Benjamin said (admittedly of Walser's anti-fairy tales of himself in drag of Cinderella and Snow White): "Walser begins where the fairy-tale leaves off"(1929). But none has equaled what Elias Canetti wrote as late as 1978, with an angry unmercy for all critics who live off other writer's wounds: Walser is 'The most camouflaged of all writers (who) never formulates his motives...his work is an unflagging attempt at hushing his fear...and that is why it is sinister (the work, not the words)...as he escapes everywhere before too much fear gathers in him...in order to save himself...his experience with the 'struggle for existence' takes him into the only sphere where that struggle no longer exists: the madhouse, the monastery of modern times."
This is Robert 'Robber' Walser's last novel written before his grand finale of silence upon admittance unto the mad houses of final quietude. Beyond even the beautiful miracle of Rilke's Elegies or Bruno Schulz's phantastics, it's as if a Henri Rosseau painting were stepped in upon by lovingly devoted thieves who only want to live there a while...I recall Aleister Crowley's words speaking of a friend's madness: "It was if a man had stepped outside of himself to go on a long walk". That is what happened, so they say, 'Robber Walser' Did upon completing this holy novella in the poetic excesses of his Blakean view of the world where all's Holy. Intermingled as it is, with his own Dostoyevskian Doppelganger & fleeting doves of the Holy Ghost; in one of the most intimate of doubles Literature's ever known. Here in these pages whispers the secret treasure of a Robber, a writer, & a Walker, all centered around 'one singular man' name of Robert Walser. The watercolour on the cover is by his brother, Karl Walser, circa 1894; they were close as a Theo to a Vincent in our Robber's heart. This is the only known photograph of Walser's Robber, who reminds me of a cross betwix Billy the Kid & Peter Pan? We cannot spiritually afford to give the 'plot' away as Walser's words are all about Freedom from the bondage of one's inner demons, and therefore costs an unpronounceable price beyond even American currencys can purchase, amen. For those without the right amount of time to dedicate to All Walser wrote, I would refer them to the Quay Brothers film: 'Institute Benjamenta'---which is a rare species of film indeed to capture the dream world of our hero 'Jakob Von Gunten' in cinematic black-n-white exposure. Of Walser's supposed 'Mental InStability', (however undersimplified) I feel his suffering comprises a beautiful exception TO suffering; a rare species of 'beautiful suffering' had from his own Superbly Sound Sensitivity to Sensations a great many regrettables shall most likely never become aware of without the Romance of a Robber such as Walser's being born along inside us...on a romantic lark such as this carefully pocketed jeweled compass is sure to lead its thieves far, far away, to where 'Here Be Dragons' is writ on old incunabular maps. One merely has to read Walser, so unlike the multitude of unstable geniuses one need not make the sign of the cross to ward off the evil peering from inside so many ingenious but dangerously depressive works. Inside Walser's heartrending Romantic prose his ever-active eternal spirit takes on alarming fleshly precedence though still omnipotent enough to take over the world dressed in cool sunglasses shading that evil eye; in luminous gowns made of 'white magical' tissue paper, all the better equipped to wipe away tears at the same time as reading. The Robber respectfully bows deeply before all that's worthy of beauty, including every woman ever born so graceful a creature, A-men? Walser never screams but shouts out to greet every overcautious reader who dares to tread his pages lovingly; he never runs but walks at an amazingly quick-pace through literature, town & city, and of course, the vast countryside that replaced words for Walser to wander in; falling down dead one Christmas day in the snow; & as William H. Gass so poetically envisioned him at the end, falling down upon a field: "smoothly white as writing paper". There is nothing in this book a Robber would pawn without an excess of tears hot enough to scald the vision & heart from which they were taken, so innocently, out of boundless admiration & unrestrainable worship! If you read only one writer or one book in all of Earthly existence, let it be by Robert Walser, a humble man with an inborn pride of thieves; who takes from his own rich Heart and gives Poetic alms to those poorer in spirit or in need of fellow grievance, commiseration, companionship, or simple celebration before those horrid if 'entertaining thoughts of suicide' are finally exorcised from the Book of Life. Walser's books are integral in every first-aid literary kit for bandaging burnt souls and crushed spirits. Each sentence is like a shot of hot fiery spirits to chase away throats sore from yelling all the time, and at the ones they love sadly screaming the most. The subtle irony of each paragraph is stretched across the boards of Literary history to flatten out the riddles & wrinkles of a Kafkian love of cosmically-inclined intrigues & double meanings. The mystery is deep as a sea full of Leviathans; and Walser navigates straight through the groping tentacles of mythological monsters to purge the heart of all its fictions. He is, along with Hoffman, Goethe, Kleist, one of the Magical Immortals in the realm of Germanic & Romantic Phantastics. And without equal whence it comes to the one & only artistic pre-requisite of mine: Sincerity!
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Title: Jakob Von Gunten (New York Review Books Classics) by Robert Walser, Christopher Middleton ISBN: 0940322218 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Selected Stories (New York Review Books Classics) by Robert Walser, Susan Sontag, Christopher Middleton ISBN: 0940322986 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 12 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Masquerade and Other Stories by Robert Walser, Susan Bernofsky ISBN: 0801839777 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1990 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo ISBN: 0375413308 Publisher: Unknown Publisher - Being Researched Pub. Date: 06 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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