Max Frisch (1911–1991)

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 one was a relatively quick read, and one that I very much enjoyed. Many other reviews exist of this book (even on LT) so I’ll just focus on the things I particularly liked.

Much of the book reads like an account of care-free, leisurely tourism through Mexico and Europe. The main character has trouble engaging with art, emotions and non-calculatable motivations that drive other people. Usually, these characters get stereotyped into unrelatability, but here I thought the main show more character’s confrontation with other humans, art and sunrises through mid-life crisis romance felt fairly genuine and sometimes even endearing (YMMV though).

Another thing I liked very much is the way that the layering of focalizers added to the characterization. Normally, the accumulation of occasional meta-comments and the choice of what the narrator focuses on or introduces would read like a clumsy omniscient narrator failing to conceal their set-up of the big twist, a joke with the punch-line set up telegraphed way too obviously. But since the book is framed as the main character retelling their experiences after the fact, the clumsiness comes across as self-delusion, a blindness to certain areas of life that are entirely in line with the kind of person the main character is.

I’m glad I read this. It’s a pity I didn’t get to it sooner. show less

İsviçreli yazar Max Frisch'in en ünlü yapıtlarından olan Homo Faber, romanın kahramanı Walter Faber'in kişiliğinde ayakları `hep' yere basan, salt akla inanan, dünya görüşünü yalnızca teknolojinin ve matematiğin verileri üstüne kuran modern insan tipinin trajedisini sergiler. Tartıya ve ölçüye vurulabilenin dışında ne varsa yadsıyan Walter Faber'in trajik yanılgısı, yaşamın tüm önceden kestirilmesi olanaksız akışları ve kimi zaman insanoğlunun show more yazgısını belirleyen rastlantıları karşısındaki körlüğünden kaynaklanır. Yaşamın `öte yanını' sürekli yadsımayı yaşam ilkesi olarak benimseyen Faber, sonunda bir dizi rastlantının kurbanı olur; bu rastlantılar, romanın doruk noktasında Walter Faber'i insanlığın yaradılışından bu yana günahların en korkuncu sayılmış bir günahın kucağına itecektir. Max Frisch'in gördüğü mimarlık öğrenimi, başka deyişle tekniğin ve matematiğin dünyasını tanıması, öte yandan da bir gazeteci olarak dünyayı dolaşmış, ayrıca İkinci Dünya Savaşı'nda insanların öncesiz ve sonrasız acılarıyla yoğrulmuş bir başka dünyayla yüz yüze gelmiş olması, Homo Faber'in neredeyse belgesel bir `insanlık durumu'na (conditio humana'ya) dönüşmesinin başlıca nedenleridir. Sanatçı kişiliği Thornton Wilder ve Bertolt Brecht'in belirgin izlerini yansıtan Frisch'in bu kitabı, yüzyılımız roman yazınının başyapıtlarından biridir.
AHMET CEMAL 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