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Looking at Pictures (Hardcover)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky, Lydia Davis, Christopher Middleton
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R590
Discovery Miles 5 900
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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A beautiful and elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art
reproductions, Looking at Pictures 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.
The Institut Benjamenta: a school of humility for the unambitious.
The young Jakob von Gunten arrives at this most curious of
educational establishments with the goal of becoming 'something
very small and subordinate later in life', a goal he sets about
achieving with laconic dedication and wry detachment. Irony,
scepticism, absurd images and sensations, disconcerting humour,
minor humiliations and minute observations mingle to form one of
the signature works of twentieth century fiction. First published
in 1908, a forerunner to and key influence on the work of writers
such as Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, Robert Walser's
masterpiece is a paean to infinitesimal unimportance, a celebration
of the marginal life that is the life of the mind.
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Microscripts (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky; Illustrated by Maira Kalman
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R605
Discovery Miles 6 050
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic,
shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper, covered with tiny
ant-like pencil markings a millimeter high, came to light only
after the author s death in 1956.At first considered random
restless pencil markings or a secret code, the microscripts were in
time discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of antique
German script: a whole story was deciphered on the back of a
business card. These twenty-five short pieces address schnapps,
rotten husbands, small town life, elegant jaunts, the radio, swine,
jealousy, and marriage proposals."
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The Poems (Hardcover)
Robert Walser, Daniele Pantano
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R1,000
R839
Discovery Miles 8 390
Save R161 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The first complete publication of Robert Walser's poems translated
into English. Admired by the likes of Kafka, Musil, and Walter
Benjamin and acclaimed "unforgettable, heart-rending" by J. M.
Coetzee, Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) remains one of the
most influential authors of modern literature. Walser left school
at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence while
producing poems, stories, essays, 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."
This first collection of Walser's poems in English translation
allows English-speaking readers to experience the author as he saw
himself at the beginning and the end of his literary career--as a
poet. The book also includes notes on dates of composition, draft
versions of the printed poems, and brief biographical information
on characters and locations that appear in the poems and may not be
known to readers. Few writers have ever experienced such a steady
rise in their reputation and public profile as Walser has seen in
recent years, and this collection of his poems will help readers
discover a unique writer whose off-kilter sensibility and
innovations in form are perfectly suited to our fragmented,
distracted, bewildering era.
Ranging from one-page fantasies to novella-length studies of
everyday existence, The Walk reveals the irresistible genius of one
of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Under-appreciated even
in his own lifetime, Robert Walser has nonetheless been recognised
by such writers as W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Franz Kafka, Herman
Hesse and J.M. Coetzee. Like Kafka and Sebald, Walser wrote about
the solitude and unease of human existence. Honest, wry and
idiosyncratic, his stories are snapshots of the lives great
artists, poor young men, beautiful women and talking animals alike.
Ranging from the realist to the allegorical, the short fiction
collected in this volume demonstrates Walser's uncanny ability to
capture both life's strangeness and its small joys.
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Comedies (Hardcover)
Robert Walser
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R667
R606
Discovery Miles 6 060
Save R61 (9%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Few writers have ever experienced such a steady rise in their
reputation and public profile as Swiss writer Robert Walser
(1878-1956) has seen in recent years. As more of his previously
little known work has been translated into English, readers have
discovered a unique writer whose off-kilter sensibility and
innovations in form are perfectly suited to our fragmented,
distracted, bewildered era. This book brings English-language
readers work by Walser in yet another form: dramolette. The short
plays presented here, inspired by the German theater Walser enjoyed
in his youth, while never meant to be performed, present scenes,
characters, and situations that comment on the brutality of fairy
tales, the impossibilities of love, the dark fate of the Christ
child (and Walser himself), and more. At the same time, like all of
Walser's work they are shot through with a humor that is wholly
genuine despite its shades of darkness. Gathering all of Walser's
plays, as well as his later, fragmentary dramatic writings,
Comedies will be celebrated by the many devoted fans of this lately
rediscovered master.
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Jakob von Gunten (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Christopher Middleton; Introduction by Christopher Middleton
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R487
R394
Discovery Miles 3 940
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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The Swiss writer Robert Walser is one of the quiet geniuses of
twentieth-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether
indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short
stories, essays, as well as four novels, of which "Jakob von
Gunten" is widely recognized as the finest. The book is a young
man's inquisitive and irreverent account of life in what turns out
to be the most uncanny of schools. It is the work of an outsider
artist, a writer of uncompromising originality and disconcerting
humor, whose beautiful sentences have the simplicity and
strangeness of a painting by Henri Rousseau.
A Schoolboy's Diary brings together more than seventy of Robert
Walser's strange and wonderful stories, most never before available
in English. Opening with a sequence from Walser's first book,
"Fritz Kocher's Essays," the complete classroom assignments of a
fictional boy who has met a tragically early death, this selection
ranges from sketches of uncomprehending editors, overly passionate
readers, and dreamy artists to tales of devilish adultery, sexual
encounters on a train, and Walser's service in World War I.
Throughout, Walser's careening, confounding, delicious voice holds
the reader transfixed.
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The Walk (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky
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R305
R272
Discovery Miles 2 720
Save R33 (11%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A pseudo-biographical "stroll" through town and countryside rife
with philosophical musings, The Walk has been hailed as the
masterpiece of Walser's short prose. Walking features heavily in
his writing, but nowhere else is it as elegantly considered.
Without walking, "I would be dead," Walser explains, "and my
profession, which I love passionately, would be destroyed. Because
it is on walks that the lore of nature and the lore of the country
are revealed, charming and graceful, to the sense and eyes of the
observant walker." The Walk was the first piece of Walser's work to
appear in English, and the only one translated before his death.
However, Walser heavily revised his most famous novella, altering
nearly every sentence, rendering the baroque tone of his tale into
something more spare. An introduction by translator Susan Bernofsky
explains the history of The Walk, and the differences between its
two versions.
A New York Review Books Original. In 1905 the young Swiss writer
Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl,
already an important stage set designer, and immediately threw
himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city.
Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and
satirical observations on every aspect of the bustling German
capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters' galleries, and
literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the
Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram.
Originally appearing in literary magazines as well as the
feuilleton sections of newspapers including the Berliner Tageblatt,
the Vossische Zeitung, and the Frankfurter Zeitung, the early
stories are characterized by a joyous urgency and the generosity of
an unconventional guide. Later pieces take the form of more
personal reflections on the writing process, memories, and
character studies. All are full of counter-intuitive images and
vignettes of startling clarity, showcasing a unique talent for whom
no detail was trivial, at grips with a city diving headlong into
modernity.
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Drucke in Die Rheinlande
Robert Walser; Edited by Caroline Socha-Wartmann, Matthias Sprunglin
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R1,863
Discovery Miles 18 630
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the
Swiss writer Robert Walser. Narrated in Walser's inimitable,
playful language, these theatrical pieces overturn traditional
notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into
metatheater, even metareflections. Snow White forgives the evil
queen for trying to kill her, Cinderella doubts her prince and
enjoys being hated by her evil stepsisters; the Fairy Tale itself
is a character who encourages her to stay within the confines of
the story. Sleeping Beauty, the royal family, and its retainers are
not happy about being woken from their sleep by an absurd,
unpretentious, Walser-like hero. Mary and Joseph are taken aback by
what lies in store for their baby Jesus.
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Aufsätze
Robert Walser
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R416
Discovery Miles 4 160
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Thirty Poems (Hardcover)
Robert Walser; Translated by Christopher Middleton
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R534
Discovery Miles 5 340
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In a small, exquisite clothbound format resembling the early Swiss
and German editions of Walser s work, Thirty Poems collects famed
translator Christopher Middleton s favorite poems from the more
than five hundred Walser wrote. The illustrations range from an
early poem in perfect copperplate handwriting, to one from a 1927
Czech-German newspaper, to a microscript."
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The Robber (Paperback)
Robert Walser; Translated by Susan Bernofsky; Introduction by Susan Bernofsky
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R486
R402
Discovery Miles 4 020
Save R84 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The Robber, Robert Walser’s last novel, tells the story of a
dreamer on a journey of self-discovery. It is a hybrid of love
story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks
teaspoons, flirts with important politicians, plays maidservant to
young boys, and uses a passerby’s mouth as an ashtray. Walser’s
novel spoofs the stiff-upper-lipped European petit bourgeois and
its nervous reactions to whatever threatens the stability of its
worldview.
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Drucke Im Prager Tagblatt
Robert Walser; Edited by Bettina Braun, Barbara Von Reibnitz
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R1,650
Discovery Miles 16 500
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields
in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as
an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification:
++++ Aufsatze Robert Walser K. Wolff, 1913
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields
in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as
an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification:
++++ Poetenleben Robert Walser Huber, 1918
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".
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