The Robber

Excellent

Woo! Robert Walser dishes out words like "dumb cluck" with sparky warmth and shifts of tone that no other human author has ever come near. I promise. His work is more lively than any other author I've found.The plot of the story involves a rascal-like fellow and his romantic interests. If you read for plot, that should be all you need to know. It's not a straightforward narrative but it has a story arc that runs river-like to a natural climax and conclusion, including a trope (which I can't specify because "spoiler") that makes me pump my arms and scream. If you don't read for a plot then I am a friend to you on your travels, but the spread of virtues of this book are too exquisitely cooked and varied for me to sum up, but here goes.My favorite passage is a stretch of text where the narrator speaks to the reader ("you") and describes how to win over a lady performer who just impressed you in a music hall. I wish the book was printed with an index in the back, because you can jab your finger with closed eyes down on any page and find Walser hilariously discussing some topic or other like that. (Other examples: modern education, platitudes, motorists, how people behave in public.) That might sound out of line, but it's never inappropriate because it's always spurred on by the main character's mentality and surroundings.Walser has an extremely perceptive and imaginative understanding of social relations, and of conflicts of personality, which I might say is the main theme of the book. He's also acutely aware of his own shortcomings and anxieties, so that gets thrown into the mix too. Lastly, he brings a moving perspective to the most down-to-earth occurrences. His emotional awareness sometimes includes inanimate objects, and even this is 100% realistic to me. These talents give life to all his other books too.Walser writes with all kinds of interjections and short essay-like passages where he addresses some thesis, and all kinds of self-effacing double-takes where he humbles himself. But all of the digressions work perfectly and cohere into a whole, the flow (in English translation for me, anyway) is spotless and fluid and this rare persona shines through. Everything he says is perfectly inimitable, and precisely Walserian, yet unpredictable. He's the Thelonious Monk or Erik Satie of literature.This book is a tour de force. What else can I call it? Walser wrote Jakob Von Gunten which is pretty straight-forward, a few other novels that were either lost or destroyed, two novels that are finally being translated into English ("The Assistant" was released in July 2007, and "Geschwister Tanner" is in the works), and a huge amount of short prose pieces published in various places or not at all. The Robber is later, bigger, older than Jakob Von Gunten, and has a novel's richness and scope that the short pieces can't (though Walser makes impressive long-lasting commentaries even in single-page stories). It's nightmarish to consider that he wrote the few hundred pages of The Robber in micro-microscript on a few pieces of scrap paper that some idiot could have accidentally rolled up and smoked. You'll read about the manuscript situation in the intro by the translator and scholar Susan Bernofsky.This book blew apart my understanding of what literature can be and can achieve. And who an author can be, and who a person can be. Still, you should start with JAKOB VON GUNTEN because it's the best starting place-- don't be a bellyacher.I also have to give applause to the translator Susan Bernofsky, because every passage of this book is impeccable and unique, which I assume means the translation is superb.Here's an excerpt:"In wine lies something like a right to superiority. When I drink wine, I understand previous centuries; they too, I tell myself, consisted of things contemporaneous and the desire to find one's place among them. Wine makes one a connoisseur of the soul's vicissitudes. One feels great respect for everything, and for nothing at all. Wine shimmers with tact. If you are a friend of wine, you are also a friend of women and a protector of all that is dear to them. The relations, even the thorniest, that exist between man and woman unfold like blossoms from the depths of your glass. All the songs to wine that were ever composed ought to be acknowledged as justified. "For a Dätel, that's unsuitable," I was admonished not long ago in a certain house. Since then I have confined myself to gazing at this house from a distance, timidly and with a sensation of oddness. Dätel is the title for a soldier. In the military, you see, I was only a common soldier. Of course, this circumstance does me immeasurable harm. In this age of perspicacity, all things come under inspection, so why not, in particular, one's rank in the army? I see nothing amiss here."10 stars. You know what to do.

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!

Robert WalserThe Robbertranslated by Susan BernofskyUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2000Robert Walser’s last novel, The Robber, was found after his death, written on 24 sheets of paper, in a script so minute and indecipherable that it was thought for some time to be a code, or else a symptom of the schizophrenia with which Walser had been misdiagnosed.Although Walser died in 1956, having spent the last 26 years of his life in mental asylums --where he was reported to be “perfectly lucid and ready to converse on a wide variety of literary and political topics” -- this novel was not published in German until 1986.This book, in my opinion, will only appeal to a small number of people, but those people will love it enormously and at once. These are simply the people who, like myself, cannot help but adore a novel which begins, “Edith loves him. More on this later.”The novel is described as a game of “a narrative hide-and-seek”, by its translator, Susan Bernofsky, whose agile and delightful translations have fuelled a resurgence of enthusiasm for Robert Walser among English-speaking people. (I “follow” half a dozen writers, and try to read everything they write, but Susan Bernofsky is of only two translators whom I follow ' she chooses phenomenally interesting writers and translates impeccably and with zest.)Although Walser suffered from mental illness, and refers to it explicitly in this book, to dismiss The Robber as the ravings of a schizophrenic is both insulting and false, as will be evident to anyone who undertakes reading it. As W.G. Sebald wrote, “The Robber is Walser’s most rational and daring work, a self-portrait and self-examination of absolute integrity. . . . I can imagine how, while writing The Robber, it must have occurred to him on more than one occasion that the looming threat of impending darkness enabled him at times to arrive at an acuity of observation and precision of formulation which is unattainable from a state of perfect health.”However, if you are happen to be new to Robert Walser, this is not the place the start. (Feel free to disobey me: I¥d be very curious to hear about your experience ) Most newcomers to Walser begin with the short fictions, or the novella, The Walk, but personally I suggest starting with his quirky, appealing, and accessible first novel, The Tanners.Like any of Robert Walser’s quirky devotees, I love to read sentences aloud and copy them out. Naturally I adored the following: “There are, to be sure, persons who wish to extract from books guiding principles for their lives. For this sort of most estimable individual I am therefore, to my gigantic regret, not writing. Is that a pity. Oh yes.” (5)It was to my substantial embarrassment then, as I continued to read and to copy out passages I found delightful, that I discovered that I have no choice but to confess that I do turn to Mr. Walser for “guiding principles” on how to see and live and write. (It is no accident that I am a conspicuously under-achieving and unprofitable variety of person.)I wonder how many other eccentrics now do the same, how many misfits are now attempting to obey Walser’s counsel that just as “little children must endure diseases undeserved, and so we ought to let ourselves go a bit more indulgently, be calmer, learn to embrace our circumstances and make peace with ourselves as best we can.” (21)The novel, despite the compression with which it was generated, is thankfully not one unbroken mass, but is comprised of sections from four to ten pages long, which one learns to navigate in time.One of the most delightful discusses the plight of a teacher and addresses the subject of envy: “The fame of this professor of yours pleases me. I consider it of the utmost importance for us, the living, to learn to set aside our obsolete anxiety which makes the advantages of other appear to hinder us in our own development, which is by no means the case.” (29)Surely we would do well to keep in mind valuable pieces of advice such as the following:“The making of reproaches can become a mania worth laughing at, and a chastised person is invariably in better spiritual shape than his chastiser, who in fact is never more than a poor wretch, whereas the one found guilty is apparently, and also in actual fact, in a position to be bursting with health.” (97)Or how about this one, which I have personally verified at a number of parties:“When a person begins to speak of serious matters, eight listeners out of ten will share the conviction that he is beginning to, one might say, plummet downhill, as though everyone in high spirits were automatically at the pinnacle of human cleverness, which can’t be entirely true.” (97)Under-achieving misfits such as myself cannot help but be comforted by the news that, “Yes, there still exist persons who are continuing to grow and haven’t managed to come to terms with their inner and outer lives with terror-inspiring speed or in a trice or a twinkling, as if human beings were merely breakfast rolls that can be produced in five minutes and then sold to be put to use.” (48)The rare person who undertakes this book will find it studded with delights like these and full of the odd humble swagger of Robert Walser. What a marvelous book. If I am ever given the option to choose a miracle, I will ask that a lost Walser manuscript be discovered, and delivered to Susan Bernofsky.If you are still considering to undertake this very odd book, heed the following:“I now address an appeal to the healthy: don’t persist in reading nothing but healthy books, acquaint yourself also with so-called pathological literature, from which you may derive considerable edification. Healthy people should always, so to speak, take certain risks.” (59)