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A Schoolboy's Diary And Other Stories (2013)

by Robert Walser(Favorite Author)

4.02 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1590176928 (ISBN13: 9781590176924)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

NYRB Classics

review 1: Walser and I are never going to be best buddies, it seems to me. I really don't have much to say here except that I found this collection thoroughly underwhelming. In the introduction, Mr. Ben Lerner presents us with a few quotationts from such luminaries as W. G. Sebald and Susan Sontag, wanting to convey to us the strange nature of Walser's prose, its dreamlike quality. "Was I reading Walser just now?" his readers seem to ask. I can hardly remember. This is coated in language of virtue. Here's the alternative: based on this collection of stories, which by the translator's own admission was cobbled together from various sources, some of them already translated, I think the ephemeral nature of Walser's prose owes much to the fact that it is often flat-out forgettable. It i... mores quaint, perhaps, but also frivolous, often awkward or tooth-achingly sweet. Especially the short pieces in part II fall victim to Walser's self-induced mediocrity. And that's that.
review 2: A new collection of Walser's prose pieces, ably translated by Damion Searls, who successfully captures Walser's whimsical moods--from heights of ecstasy, to sudden, dismissive anger. Walser's prose is the verbal equivalent of Van Gogh: intense, emotionally-charged, experienced as if seeing the world for the first time. Searls edited the collection to focus on pieces dealing with schoolboy experiences and those of young men in the military, so there is a cohesion here that gives the book a unity and solidity. Walser's mood is often giddy and given to abrupt change, and delights in the minutiae of life. . . Always a joy to read. less

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