Max Frisch (1911–1991)

This novel is considered a classic in Frisch's native Switzerland, and I can see why. Written shortly after World War II, the book is a dense, often insightful, exploration of identity, guilt, obsession, co-dependency, fear of death and fear of life.

A man attempts to enter Switzerland by train but is "recognized" as the artist Stiller, who has been missing for over 8 years and wanted by the police in connection with a fraud case. The man, who says his name is White, is adamant that he is not show more "their missing Stiller." So the book begins with a decidedly Kafka-esque quality.

The story is told almost entirely via an exposition that leaves us deeply doubting the "reliability" of the narrator (mostly the title character via his jail cell notebooks) and contains long, long sentences and often page-long paragraphs. So it's not always the easiest of reading, but the often breathtaking quality of the writing, the keen observations of human nature supplied, and the liberal doses of very effective humor all combine to make this book into the classic it's become, at least in Europe. show less

This was Frisch's third mature novel, written after his break-up with Ingeborg Bachmann, a complicated exploration of fiction and role-playing as they enter into both real life and the occupation of storytelling.

The "I" figure of the book works through a baffling and contradictory series of possible scenarios involving himself and a character called Enderlin, who sometimes seems to be himself and sometimes a separate person. Enderlin in turn imagines himself as Gantenbein, a man who is show more pretending to be blind, and in that capacity marries the actress Lila, who seems to be (but isn't necessarily) identical with a woman Enderlin (or possibly "I") has met on a business trip to another city. Gantenbein also makes friends with a woman called Camilla Huber: his assumed blindness allows him not to notice that her pretended occupation of manicurist is just a front for prostitution, so he gives her pleasure by going to have his nails done whilst telling her stories. These stories are the only parts of the book in the past tense — everything else is narrated in the present or future/conditional/subjunctive ("But what if...?").

The idea seems to be that social identity is always a kind of pretence, or at least that we can never be sure that we experience an interaction or a relationship in the same way as others do. Frisch talked about truth as the absence that is left when we have explored all the fictions. I'm not sure! What stuck with me from this book was not so much all the sophisticated stuff about men in suits and women in smart costumes who spend most of their time in airports and business hotels and are obsessed with getting their smoking behaviour and whisky-drinking right, but the weird, untethered stories that open and close the book: an unidentified man who has left a hospital in panic, wearing only spectacles and a wrist-watch, runs through the centre of Zürich; the body of an unknown man floats serenely down the Limmat pursued by the police who have inexpertly been trying to fish it out, and does not come to rest until it has left the city centre altogether. show less

This was a very strange reading experience: a loose sequence of descriptive and narrative sections, encyclopaedic articles, bible excerpts and memories. It takes a while before you realize that the book revolves around the older man, Herr Geiser, a confused loner who lives in a valley in southern Switzerland, not far from the Italian border. Geyser is clearly intrigued by the signs of decline in his environment (landslides due to constant rain, ants in his house, bus connections that have show more been interrupted), but also in himself: he has difficulty remembering things and doing the most basic actions. He tries to hold on tightly to what he once knew and focuses on geographical and historical articles and bible fragments (from Genesis) about the earliest geological and biological history; Frisch also inserts these articles and fragments into the text, with the original layout (up to and including texts in gothic lettering).
Geyser also ventures into a rather perilous trip through the mountains, trying to resume a journey that he used to undertake. We also get a flashback to a rather difficult climb of the Matterhorn, 50 years before. Certainly towards the end there seems to be something seriously wrong with the man, he sometimes seems unconscious for hours, and eventually people (including his daughter) appear who speak to him like a child.
As a writer, Frisch keeps himself in the background, but his seemingly purely descriptive report harshly portrays the dementing process of an old man who is more or less aware of what is happening. And also the broader metaphor, the reference to the ruthless power of erosion, to the nullity of man, (which only ‘appeared in the Holocene’, so very late in the history of the earth) finally becomes clear. What is a human life? What is man himself and can he withstand the enormous power of nature and time? Frisch makes his reader sweat in this philosophical parable. show less

An old man retired to a Swiss village begins a descent into death and oblivion as incessant rains and thunderstorms seem to herald a general transformation of the landscape. In Geiser's last days the human is miniaturised until it practically disappears, as his mind increasingly falters and leaves the personal behind, and his attention becomes wholly consumed by the gigantic geological past of the planet and his canton. Very good.