|
|
|
|
|
|
|
HELP | |
|
  $9.80 List price:
Sale Trade Paper
Ships in 1 to 3 days
More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Other titles in the New York Review Books series:
New York Review Books #10: Jakob Von Guntenby Robert Walser
Staff Pick
Admittedly, as I read the first dozen or so pages, I wasn't sure how much I would be able to enjoy the "analytic fictional soliloquy" of a precocious teenager. It turns out, immensely. Robert Walser writes nearly flawlessly, crafting a prose that is seamless and bewitching. A century old, Jakob von Gunten reads as if it could have been written this decade (save, of course, for the fact that young Jakob would undoubtedly be ingesting a wide array of mind-numbing, soul-dispiriting pharmaceuticals, and, thus, wouldn't near even the most nebulous of insights). In Jakob, the Swiss writer has constructed a disarmingly believable character, one replete with a temperament both quizzical and inquisitive. This ridiculously sensitive young man is not only curious about himself and others, but, too, about his and others' place in the world around them (a proclivity notably absent even from most adults). With wisdom well beyond his chronological age, the title character is obviously prone to vacillating between the peaks of self-assuredness and the nadirs of self-doubt. With little action to sustain the narrative, it is Jakob's observations and introspections that make this novel so charming and endearing. Mingling the arduousness of youth with the limitations of class-bound aspirations, Walser, at once, deftly portrays the idiosyncrasies of the former along with the frustrations of the latter. While the language and syntax of Walser's writing are something special to behold, his characterizations may be some of the finest in modern letters. I found myself, throughout the book, wishing he'd authored companion volumes about Kraus, the Herr, and the Fräulein. Wishing too I was for the indulgence of being able to witness Jakob as seen by the others. I was also easily given over to considering Jakob as literary kin to both Joseph Joubert and Fernando Pessoa (or rather, one of his heteronyms — perhaps the nephew of Bernardo Soares). It's easy to be won over by Walser rising to the challenge of not allowing Jakob to succumb to uncertainty and despair, which surely would have been the easier literary course to pursue. Instead, Jakob's precariousness is tempered by a humor and optimism that makes his personality all but leap off the page. Jakob von Gunten is mesmerizing, and it is of little wonder Walser was envied by the likes of Kafka, Hesse, Musil, and Sebald. From Jakob von Gunten: One day I shall be laid low by a stroke, and then everything, all these confusions, this longing, this unknowing, all this, the gratitude and ingratitude, this telling lies and self-deception, this thinking that one knows and yet never knowing anything, will come to an end. But I want to live, no matter how. Recommended by Jeremy, Powells.com Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:The Swiss writer Robert Walser is one of the quiet geniuses of twentieth-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short stories, essays, as well as four novels, of which "Jakob von Gunten" is widely recognized as the finest. The book is a young man's inquisitive and irreverent account of life in what turns out to be the most uncanny of schools. It is the work of an outsider artist, a writer of uncompromising originality and disconcerting humor, whose beautiful sentences have the simplicity and strangeness of a painting by Henri Rousseau. Synopsis:The Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) is one of the quiet geniuses of 20th-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether indifferent to worldly success, Walser ended his life in an insane asylum, but left a body of work that was admired by such contemporaries as Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka. Walser is an outsider artist of whose beautiful and capricious sentences have the simplicity and strangeness of a painting by Henri Rousseau. Jakob von Gunten is Walser's masterpiece. It is the story of a 17-year-old runaway who is taken in at a school for servants, the Institute Benjamenta. Jakob, whose frankness and utter lack of pretension make him resemble Holden Caulfield, records the life of the school, as well as his impressions of its directors and fellow students, in a book that is at once a celebration and a satire of the utopian ideal of community as well as an account of mysterious initiation. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
Other books you might like
Related Aisles
| ||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
Don't Miss
