Synopses & Reviews
A beautiful and elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art reproductions, presents a little-known side of the eccentric Swiss genius: his great writings on art. His essays consider Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau, Fragonard, Brueghel and his own brother Karl and also discuss general topics such as the character of the artist and of the dilettante as well as the differences between painters and poets. Every piece is marked by Walser's unique eye, his delicate sensitivity, and his very particular sensibilities--and all are touched by his magic screwball wit.
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""Walser achieved a remarkable tone, in which perfect assurance and perfect ambiguity combine."" Benjamin Kunkel
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""Everyone who reads Walser falls in love with him."" The New Yorker
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""A Paul Klee in prose, a good-humoured, sweet Beckett, Walser is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer."" Nicholas Lazard The Guardian
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""Bold and idiosyncratic."" Susan Sontag
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""Singular--genius."
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""Singular--genius."
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""Singular--genius."
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""Singular--genius."
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""Singular--genius."
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""Singular--genius."
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""Singular--genius."
Synopsis
A special side of Robert Walser: his essays on art
About the Author
Robert Walser (1878-1956) was born in Switzerland. He left school at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence working as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant while producing essays, stories, and novels. In 1933 he abandoned writing and entered a sanatorium--where he remained for the rest of his life. "I am not here to write," Walser said, "but to be mad."Susan Bernofsky is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck, and the recipient of many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation at Columbia University and lives in New York.Lydia Davis is currently a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.Distinguished poet and translator Christopher Middleton lives in Austin, Texas. His awards include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Schegel-Tieck Translation Prize.