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ausma23's review
4.0
Bernofsky’s biography of Robert Walser is infectious in its enthusiasm for its subject, whose literary ability was hard-earned, his success hard-fought, and his oeuvre largely overlooked until the 21st century. While reading, I found myself anxiously cheering for Robert’s first big break and continued literary success, despite knowing the truth about the slow, tragic end he came to. Walser’s determination to succeed at a craft he had little natural talent for is inspiring; he felt that writing was essential to being alive, and that the difficulty and suffering involved (which for him meant often living barely above the poverty line) was worth bearing. Writing was a means of transcending the banal society and literary culture that he always seemed to be operating (though not necessarily voluntarily) on the outskirts of.
In addition to characterizing Walser as a reluctant outsider, Bernofsky’s fascinating thesis is of Walser’s life and work embodying “the small,” in all meanings of the word: He physically wrote tiny microscript drafts of his works; he kept his radius of travel small, never venturing beyond the borders of Switzerland or Germany; and his short stories, themselves often only two or three pages long, typically feature minute observations and everyday moments. As I concurrently reread Jakob von Gunten, I was struck by how Jakob bemoans his smallness: “I’m so small. That’s what I’ll loosely hang on to, my smallness, smallness and worthlessness.” As Bernofsky’s biography explores, Walser was indeed prone to depressive lines of thought like this, but his self-conceptualization as “small” was also a response to his awe at the world around him. His protagonist, in all his Walserian mutability of spirit, desire, and action, also marvels at his “smallness,” viewing it with a confused sense of hope and motivation: “Me, I shall be something very lowly and small. The feeling that tells me this is like a complete and inviolable fact. My God, and do I have, all the same, so much, so much zest for life? What is it with me?”
Bernofsky excels at capturing the zeitgeist of the literary scene in Central Europe in the early 20th century as well as the geographical settings of Walser’s constant wanderings. Indeed, as she suggests (and perhaps even aimed to create a loose guide for), a reader could undertake their own Walserian trek around Switzerland and Germany, using the incredibly detailed information of the many places he stayed to map the eras of his life. Ironically, it’s towards the middle of the book, where Walser’s career is thriving and he’s regularly getting published, that the chapters stagnate and become a repetitive log of where his work appeared. Still, Bernofsky tries to maintain the pace by breaking up these plain facts with glimpses into Walser’s personal life and sociopolitical happenings across Europe during this era.
I was continually awed by what an immense undertaking and labor of love this book must have been to research and write given the large gaps in Walser’s life story, not at all helped by the fact that he was not a writer who wrote from personal experience often. Bernofsky somehow pieces together Walser’s varying and indecipherable mental states so precisely that there is a palpable mood shift from chapter to chapter. Her love for Walser’s work is tangible, yet she’s never fawning nor does she overlook the more uncomfortable facts of his life; for example, she doesn’t skirt around his at times cruel and unseemly behavior or allegations of abuse from his sister. Through her astute and lively writing style, she creates a living image of Walser and gives him the justice as a prose writer that he clearly deserves to be celebrated as.
In addition to characterizing Walser as a reluctant outsider, Bernofsky’s fascinating thesis is of Walser’s life and work embodying “the small,” in all meanings of the word: He physically wrote tiny microscript drafts of his works; he kept his radius of travel small, never venturing beyond the borders of Switzerland or Germany; and his short stories, themselves often only two or three pages long, typically feature minute observations and everyday moments. As I concurrently reread Jakob von Gunten, I was struck by how Jakob bemoans his smallness: “I’m so small. That’s what I’ll loosely hang on to, my smallness, smallness and worthlessness.” As Bernofsky’s biography explores, Walser was indeed prone to depressive lines of thought like this, but his self-conceptualization as “small” was also a response to his awe at the world around him. His protagonist, in all his Walserian mutability of spirit, desire, and action, also marvels at his “smallness,” viewing it with a confused sense of hope and motivation: “Me, I shall be something very lowly and small. The feeling that tells me this is like a complete and inviolable fact. My God, and do I have, all the same, so much, so much zest for life? What is it with me?”
Bernofsky excels at capturing the zeitgeist of the literary scene in Central Europe in the early 20th century as well as the geographical settings of Walser’s constant wanderings. Indeed, as she suggests (and perhaps even aimed to create a loose guide for), a reader could undertake their own Walserian trek around Switzerland and Germany, using the incredibly detailed information of the many places he stayed to map the eras of his life. Ironically, it’s towards the middle of the book, where Walser’s career is thriving and he’s regularly getting published, that the chapters stagnate and become a repetitive log of where his work appeared. Still, Bernofsky tries to maintain the pace by breaking up these plain facts with glimpses into Walser’s personal life and sociopolitical happenings across Europe during this era.
I was continually awed by what an immense undertaking and labor of love this book must have been to research and write given the large gaps in Walser’s life story, not at all helped by the fact that he was not a writer who wrote from personal experience often. Bernofsky somehow pieces together Walser’s varying and indecipherable mental states so precisely that there is a palpable mood shift from chapter to chapter. Her love for Walser’s work is tangible, yet she’s never fawning nor does she overlook the more uncomfortable facts of his life; for example, she doesn’t skirt around his at times cruel and unseemly behavior or allegations of abuse from his sister. Through her astute and lively writing style, she creates a living image of Walser and gives him the justice as a prose writer that he clearly deserves to be celebrated as.
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