No title (1957)

“Nothing is harder than to accept oneself." - Max Frisch.

Walter Faber is a paradigm of collective identity v/s self-identity, rationality v/s irrationality and providence v/s concurrence; counter positioning free will. You cannot find yourself anywhere except in yourself. Frisch portrays the contradictory worlds of methodical reasonableness and the quandary of being a mortal. Walter believes in what he nurtures. As a technologist working for UNESCO, he lives in the present and connects with the world through scientific implications of his free will. Walter truly believes that it is mere a sequence of coincidences that fashions a man’s life, not fate. He defies the very nature of human sentiments sheltering his vulnerabilities through an itinerant lifestyle and transitory associations. Nevertheless, when circumstantial occurrences go beyond coherent justifications revealing the blatancy of Walter’s concealed emotions; the dichotomy of fate and coincidences are collided. Walter’s encounter with Herbert, his travel to the tobacco plantation, facing his uneasy past through Hannah and the sexual relation with Sabeth banishes Walter’s logic of concurrent consequences and imposes the idea of destiny. His obstinate belief that a man should not be held responsible for the actions he did not choose is shattered when guilt overrides his conscious after knowing Sabeth’s true identity. He appreciates the value of forgiveness, a concept which he had alienated himself from.

A man is a not a machine but an incongruous creature. Frisch talks about the influence of industrial age and its significance in etching human mentality. The evolution of scientific technologies has assured human beings the capabilities of capturing the materialistic wonders controlling every aspect of human survival.

Above all, however, the machine has no feelings; it feels no fear and no hope ... it operates according to the pure logic of probability. For this reason I assert that the robot perceives more accurately than man.

Walter’s fixation with the technology constantly asserts the conflict between the modern world and the so called primitive thought processes. To a spiritual mind, death is the ultimate liberation of a soul. Whereas in a scientific setting death is seen as a failure of the aortic pump. Frisch toys with the post-modernism attitude towards technology suggesting that even though technology can make life easier it cannot define the workings of human connections. Walter’s practicality in every decision shielded him from the absurdity of emotions and fear making him helpless and nauseated in his own personality, is analogous to the resolution of Antoine Roquentin in Sartre’s Nausea:-

I was thinking of belonging, I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that the green was a part of the quality of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, 1 foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered, in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature. And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things; this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, was only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness. I kept myself from making the slightest movement, but I didn't need to move in order to see, behind the trees, the blue columns and the lamp posts of the bandstand and the Velleda, in the midst of a mountain of laurel. All these objects . . . how can I explain?.......... I realized that there was no half-way house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance. If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenity were concerned. (Jean Paul Sartre; Nausea)

The underplayed incestuous approach and the irony in Walter’s analysis on abortion as a logical outcome in a civilization, shows that even though ‘man plans’ the absurdity of fate makes technology a pitiable surrogate of human identity. Ultimately, Walter’s trepidation of death and emancipation from his social identity as an engineer, proves that “Man the Maker” relates to how an individual classifies oneself from a hollow world where one cannot suffer nothing.
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A novel of slowing down and being left behind by the world and technology, and the imprisonment that that world might bring. ( )

That book is probably one of those which get a worse review from me because I had to read them in school and what's worse to disect every single sentence for additional meaning.

I think the book itself might be all right, but talking about it for weeks and weeks and being forced to read it just takes all of it good aspects away. When we were through with it I just found it complicated and confusing. I might reread it some time and change my mind about it, but 'till then I can't really think well of this book. ( )

The main problem I have with Max Frisch's Homo Faber is its implausible Oedipus-like meeting of people. You truly need to suspend your belief. I see a similarity to Voltaire's Candide where the didactic need to show the reader certain events drives the story. Mr. Faber also learns that he doesn't live in the best of all possible worlds, a fact Frisch's Wirtschaftswunder generation only learned later when the American defeat in Vietnam crashed the world economy. Frisch's mechanics of life does not foresee the birth of complexity and systems thinking. Faber lives in a complicated and deterministic not a dynamic and complex world. While the story partially plays in South America, Faber isn't exposed to the butterfly effect.

Overall, I am a bit disappointed as it does not live up to its reputation as a classic. What I liked most are the description of the different modes of transport. Faber flies, drives and navigates across the planet on his fateful journey. ( )

I can see the point of it, and enjoyed the language and style, but I wasn't really convinced by the whole "engineering vs. Greek tragedy" thing. The symbolism seemed a bit too heavy-handed, somehow, and Faber's character a bit too one-sided. Maybe it's simply a mistake to read serious books when you have a cold. Or maybe I've just read too much Thomas Hardy: if you half-close one eye and hold it up to the light, Homo Faber is basically The mayor of Casterbridge updated to the 1950s and done in stream of consciousness... ( )