`Whim His Master'

When I’m reading a book professionally – that is, to review it – and especially when it’s a book I’m not enjoying but feel morally obligated to finish, I’m always dreaming of the next book I want to read exclusively for pleasure. That happened this week and I knew precisely the writer-as-reward I was awaiting. For me, the category-defying fiction of Robert Walser represents undiluted enjoyment. Start reading one of his stories and give up all expectations about your ultimate destination. His prose shares with Emerson’s, of all people, a loose-limbed, good-natured spirit of improvisation. It’s not like the surrealists and their grim experiments with automatic writing. Walser is nearly always playful and without agenda. His stories often begin with the narrator taking a walk, and their rhythm has the serendipitous spirit of a ramble without itinerary.

At random I opened Masquerade and Other Stories, translated by Susan Brodsky, with a foreword by William H. Gass, to a one-and-a-half-page sketch, “Food (I),” written in 1911. Here’s how it opens:

“Veal fricandeau is frightful stuff. Beef à la mode is horrid. Cheese eaten with tea is splendid. Some people like to eat fried potatoes with cheese. Macaroni? My favorite dish. But it has to be reeking with cheese, has to be absolutely dripping with cheese. Actually I’m fascinated by kitchens; I’d probably have made a good cook or chef. The poetry I’d have cooked up would have been far better, far tastier than what springs from the cold, pointy nib of my pen. I’d have been able to serve a duke to satisfaction.”

Do you see how quickly this sort of thing could turn awful? Without Walser’s carefully modulated discursiveness and tone of wonder, any stumble into irony, earnestness or self-conscious cuteness would make it insufferable. How often does prose make us simultaneously salivate and laugh? In his foreword, Gass gets its right:

“His is the perfect stroller’s psychology. To his eye, everything is equal, to his heart, everything is fresh and astonishing; to his mind, everything presents a pleasant puzzle. Diversion is his principal direction, whim his master, the serendipitous the substance of his daily routine.”

Another story, from 1919, “The Last Prose Piece,” begins like this:

“This is likely to be my last prose piece. All sorts of considerations make me believe it’s high time this shepherd boy stopped writing and sending off prose pieces and retired from a pursuit apparently beyond his abilities. I’ll gladly look about for another line of work that will let me break my bread in peace.”

And here’s the poignantly prophetic conclusion:

“`What one man doesn’t like may still please another,’ I reasoned and sent the piece off to Cuba, which showed not the slightest interest. I think the best thing for me would be to sit in a corner and be silent.”

This is a good time to again recognize the ongoing efforts of Golden Rule Jones to bring Walser to a wider English-language audience. Chief among them is his translation-in-progress of Carl Seelig’s Wanderungen mit Robert Walser. Here’s a sample from Seelig’s first meeting with Walser, at the nursing hospital of Appenzell-Ausserrhoden in Herisau, on July 26, 1936:

“From an adjoining building came the esteemed 58-year old poet, accompanied by the warden. I was struck by his childlike expression, red-flushed cheeks, blue eyes, and trim, golden mustache. He was already turning gray at the temple. His well-worn collar and necktie were set somewhat crookedly, his teeth not in the best condition. When Dr. Hinrichsen wanted him to button the top button of his vest, Robert rebelled: `No! The top button must remain open!’”

Sam’s most recent addition to “Wandering with Robert Walser” is a bibliography of Walser’s work in English translation. His blog has become a clearinghouse for Walseriana. Sam’s work is the truest, most useful form of criticism.