MASQUERADE

by Robert Walser ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 1990

William Gass's foreward here, aswirl with prose arabesques in ostensible homage to Walser's own, doesn't give much to chew on; but translator Bernofsky's preface is an especially good introduction to this strange, precious, French-style Swiss writer, whose little gems (and paste jewels, too, at least half the time) tickle the postmodern fancy. Christopher Middleton's collection of Walser's Selected Stories (1982) did not give over the flavors as strongly as this volume. Walser is filled with little Chaplinesque flips of the foot, always aerating whatever solidity his prose seems headed for: ""I'm dying, so to speak, of my inability to die, and my seriousness has made me go astray in the magic gardens of dissolution. Shimmering lake eyes, girls gazing radiantly at the art prints hanging, shall we say, in bookshop windows."" Enforced diminution was Walser's tonic scale, never more starkly than in the late work written when he was institutionalized, some of which is here. Interesting, hothouse prose by a writer who was quirkiness through and through.

Pub Date: April 11, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION