Assistant

Robert Walser

Penguin??Books

Originally published in 1909, this is the journal of a boy attending a school for butlers.  It is, to some extent, a parody of the monumental novel about education for "life."  Walser's concern is for all small and ephemeral feelings, and his prose displays the essential naivete of an artist who creates as if self-reflection were not a barred door but a bridge of light to the real.  Like many writers who have followed him, he is an explorer of the youthful mind as an unspoiled source of wit and wisdom.

Jakob Von Gunten

Literature & Fiction

Classics

University of Texas Press

How to place the mysterious Swiss writer Robert Walser, a humble genius who possessed one of the most elusive and surprising sensibilities in modern literature? Walser is many things: a Paul Klee in words, maker of droll, whimsical, tender, and heartbreaking verbal artifacts; an inspiration to such very different writers as Kafka and W.G. Sebald; an amalgam, as Susan Sontag suggests in her preface to this volume, of Stevie Smith and Samuel Beckett. This collection gathers forty-two of Walser's stories. Encompassing everything from journal entries, notes on literature, and biographical sketches to anecdotes, fables, and visions, it is an ideal introduction to this fascinating writer of whom Hermann Hesse famously declared, "If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place." Response to a Request Flower Days Trousers Two Strange Stories Balloon Journey Kleist in Thum The Job Application The Boat A Little Ramble Helbling's Story The Little Berliner Nervous The Walk So! "I've Got You" Nothing at All Kienast Poests Frau Wilke The Street Snowdrops Winter The She-Owl Knocking Titus Vladimir Parisian Newspapers The Monkey Dostoevsky's Idiot Am I Dreaming? The Little Tree Stork and Porcupine A Contribution to the Celebration of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer A Sort of Speech A Letter to Therese Breitbach A Village Tale The Aviator The Pimp Masters and Workers Essay on Freedom A Biedermeier Story The Honeymoon Thoughts on Cezanne

Selected Stories

Contemporary

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

The Assistant by Robert Walser―who was admired greatly by Kafka, Musil, Walter Benjamin, and W. G. Sebald―is now presented in English for the very first time. Robert Walser is an overwhelmingly original author with many ardent fans: J.M. Coetzee ("dazzling"), Guy Davenport ("a very special kind of whimsical-serious-deep writer"), and Hermann Hesse ("If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place"). Charged with compassion, and an utterly unique radiance of vision, Walser is as Susan Sontag exclaimed "a truly wonderful, heart-breaking writer." The Assistant is his breathtaking 1908 novel, translated by award-winning translator Susan Bernofsky. Joseph, hired to become an inventor's new assistant, arrives one rainy Monday morning at Technical Engineer Karl Tobler's splendid hilltop villa: he is at once pleased and terribly worried, a state soon followed by even stickier psychological complexities. He enjoys the beautiful view over Lake Zurich, in the company of the proud wife, Frau Tobler, and the delicious savory meals. But does he deserve any of these pleasures? The Assistant chronicles Joseph's inner life of cascading emotions as he attempts, both frantically and light-heartedly, to help the Tobler household, even as it slides toward financial ruin. Tobler demands of Joseph, "Do you have your wits about you?!" And Joseph's wits are in fact all around him, trembling like leaves in the breeze―he is full of exuberance and despair, all the raptures and panics of a person "drowning in obedience."

The Assistant (New Directions Paperbook)

Reference

New Directions

• A unique collection of German-language writers bound by a Bohemian sensibility• Canetti is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1981)The literature of the Wiener Moderne exhibits biting social satire and other related aspects, first emanating from Karl Kraus (1874-1936), a prolific writer, difficult to classify, who reminds people of Jonathan Swift. Novelists and essayists Hermann Broch (1886-1951) and Elias Canetti (1905-94), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981, were likewise marginalized, to a large extent as Jews. Robert Walser (1878-1956) is Swiss, and to a large extent like the other three authors in this collection, had no less a desire to upset the social applecart. Among the works included are substantive selection from Krauss's The Last Days of Mankind and Aphorisms, Bloch's "The Anarchist," selections from Canetti's Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fe, and Walser's Jakob von Gunten.

Selected Short Writings: Karl Kraus, Hermann Broch, Elias Canetti, Robert Walser (German Library)

elias-canetti

HERMANN BROCH

karl-kraus

History & Criticism

Continuum

Der Gehulfe (German) (German Edition)

Literary

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Der Spaziergang (German) (German Edition)

The modernist poems of Robert Walser alongside the stunning watercolors of Thomas Schütte Pairing a selection of recent watercolors from 2011 and 2012 by Thomas Schütte with a selection of previously unpublished poems by Robert Walser, written between 1924 and 1933, this book is a deeply personal exploration of our everyday selves, choreographed by one of the greatest living artists. This book is dedicated by the artist to the gallerist Donald Young, who invited the artist to participate in an exhibition dedicated to Walser in Chicago in 2012. Published in original German with new English translations of each poem and with an introduction by Dr. Reto Sorg, director of the Robert Walser Archives. 68 color illustrations

Thomas Schütte: Watercolors for Robert Walser and Donald Young

Arts & Photography

Cahiers d'Art

Fritz Kochers Aufsätze

Fisical_Book

Der Gehulfe

Suhrkamp Verlag

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Books by Robert Walser