I love this book, the story of an awkward character and his brother guided by his “heart”. And one of the most captivating night walks I ever read. ( )

«Non sono niente altro se non uno che ascolta e attende, come tale però perfetto, perché ho imparato a sognare mentre attendo».
p. 275

«Non ho nessuna paura di prendere anche io una forma, ma formarmi definitivamente è una cosa che desidero fare il più tardi possibile».
p. 276

Questo è il mio secondo Walser. Ci ho messo un po' a tornare a questo autore perché cinque anni fa La passeggiata proprio non mi era piaciuto. Mi ero sentito obbligato a leggere Walser per l'ampio coro di lodi che continuavo a trovare in riferimenti culturali per me importanti, ma il mio giudizio finale sul libro era stato negativo, espresso dall'aggettivo "adolescenziale". Ora torno a questo autore con un'opera più ampia e "solida" (benché precedente) e apprezzo - credo - quanto cinque anni fa non riuscivo ad amare. La piacevole sensazione è quella di aver limato alcune mie asprezze e rigidità che avevo accumulato ed essere tornato a un senso dello stupore che posso definire, di nuovo, "adolescenziale". E stavolta uso il termine in chiave positiva. L'aspetto che più ho apprezzato di questo libro (pur appesantito, devo dirlo, da dialoghi e soliloqui troppo lunghi e ridondanti) è la capacità di descrivere l'inatteso dell'incontro, vero meccanismo narrativo che sorregge l'intrecciarsi delle vicende dei cinque fratelli Tanner. In questo senso, questo libro è un oggetto piacevolmente misterioso, pieno di svolte narrative in cui è il caso a determinare quanto seguirà. Non do un voto pieno a questa mia lettura per il motivo citato sopra (trovo il libro troppo lungo), ma aver trovato e apprezzato questa diversa chiave di lettura dello stupore in Walser è prezioso e mi guiderà senz'altro a leggere qualcos'altro di suo. ( )

Ci avevo gia' provato in passato, ci ho riprovato ora. Ma sembra proprio che Walser non sia una lettura per me.
Simon è soave come un monaco zen, ma tutta questa natura, e sentimenti, e arrossamenti pudici, e Klara che ma non sembra ma di fatto è un po' zoccola, e i monti, e la luna, e il sole, e i dipinti, e le poesie.
Ecchepalle.
Manca solo che esca Heidi con le sue caprette poi abbiamo fatto filotto.
Ho bisogno di periodi corti, illetterati, veloci, moderni, catatonici. Devo ritirare fuori qualche libro di Lansdale e lasciare gli svizzeri ai loro orologi a cucu' (cit.). ( )

The Tanners has a wonderful lightness of tone that is vivid and delivers rich insights. The novel moves quickly along delighting the reader. The theme seems to be about the inability of conformity to make us happy; it is also a meditation on work and idleness, self-exile and esthetic joy—especially of the natural world but also of artistic expression. Protagonist Simon Tanner is one of the great free spirits of literature. His speeches are a delight and at times quite funny. He speaks to authority with all the headstrong yet polite resolve we usually fail to muster in life. The central concern of the characters seems to be one of ecstatic engagement with the world, which they achieve with a giddy ebullience. I am reminded of Lacan's "scopophilia" in the very conscious way Simon casts his gaze about—and exults in—his surroundings. The novel's key device seems to be longish first-person monologues. Be advised, however, there's not much of a plot, which will be an obstacle for some readers.

The novel was written by Walser when he was in his twenties yet there can be no question of its maturity. Walser was greatly admired by Franz Kafka and his work at times seems a crisper, less cluttered version of the more famous writer's; though it should be stressed that Walser's is a unique voice in fiction. The best thing one can say about a writer is that there's is no one quite like him or her, and this very much applies to Walser. In the late 1920s Walser began to hear voices and in 1929 was consigned to Waldau, an asylum near Bern. He was discharged in 1933 but never again took up the pen with alacrity. The many years of eight-to-ten hour writing days were over. The book includes a major essay by W.G. Sebald that I have not come across elsewhere. It's mostly about Walser's The Robber but it addresses his work in general terms as well. Recommended with great brio. ( )

I don't want to go running down some career path—supposedly such a grand enterprise. What's so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank you!

Robert Walser was an odd fish and I like him a lot. Even though he once said, as W. G. Sebald reports in the introduction to this book, that he was essentially always writing the same novel, one which he said could be described as "a much-chopped up or dismembered Book of Myself," I will continue reading his same-as-before novels because they captivate me. I like to think of him up in his stuffy attic room, frantically writing on borrowed paper with stolen pens, gripped in the passion of that writing, of hurling his herky-jerky version of the world down onto the page.

The Tanners is the disjointed story of the Tanner siblings: Simon, Klaus, Kaspar, and Hedwig (oh, and the mysterious Emil, who later randomly shows up in another character's anecdote). Primarily, the "plot" (such as it is) follows the adventures of Simon as he bounces around from job to job while basically pursuing the sublime. From the start, Simon reminded me of Jakob from Walser's anti-Bildungsroman Jakob von Gunten, with his similar tendency toward mockery traced with veins of sincerity. Or maybe it was just straight mockery, maybe I imagined the traces of sincerity—it's really so hard for me to say for sure. When Simon refers to his own cheekiness, I couldn't stop thinking about that Saturday Night Live sketch where Mike Myers plays Simon, the kid in the bath making drawings who calls people "cheeky monkeys." It's always unsettling for me when pop culture and literature suddenly collide in my head. And yet, the two Simons do share similarities, if only superficial ones. But I digress. Simon is a self-described ne'er-do-well prone to walking all night through the mountains to visit his artist brother Kaspar, his closest sibling. Simon's gleeful flippancy is infectious and makes him a likely candidate for the reader's sympathy. Hedwig is the only sister in the bunch, a small town schoolteacher who Simon also stays with for an extended visit. They bond, but she suspects him of being a freeloader, which he sort of is. Hedwig is an interesting character, and Walser allots her some good speeches. Finally, Klaus is the older brother, a stodgy straight-arrow type who thinks he knows what's best for all of his siblings. He is annoyingly overbearing, though probably well-meaning.

In the introduction, Sebald draws some parallels between Gogol and Walser that I found to be relevant, having just finished a book of Gogol's short fiction. Like Gogol, Walser has a tendency to introduce characters who at the time seem like they may come to play important roles in his narrative, only to either suddenly kill them off or fade them into the background. Sometimes they also reappear later, just out of the blue, and fill us in on what they've been up to for the past year or however long they've been gone from the narrative. The aimless plot wanders down side streets, dead-ends, turns around, leaves the city, climbs a mountain, walks off a cliff, gets a concussion, and turns up back in the city again a few chapters later with a new lease on life. Or something like that. I was anthropomorphizing the plot just then. I would imagine that the general unreliability of Walser's prose could easily become maddening for some readers. The key is to float along with Walser wherever he chooses to take you. One must surrender completely in order to enjoy reading; there is no fighting it because Walser will always win. Always. We are on an adventure with him, as he discovers his own truths in his writing. In this way he is also very much like Gogol, who eschewed the narrative traditions of the time and instead went off happily exploring in his prose.

Throughout the book, Walser spins a gauzy web of natural beauty around his characters who, when not walking around outside enjoying the weather or laying stretched out in the forest, very much tend to spout off lengthy monologues in the general direction of each other, not seeming to expect responses and, in fact, rarely getting them. Walser's prose is so sensual, his descriptions of both urban and rural settings sparkle with crisp detail clearly borne of a sharply observant mind. Half the novel one falls into a reverie, while the other half one stares at the closest wall, noting the intricate cracks in the plaster with genuine interest.

Despite the lack of plot, there are certain themes to pick out. With Simon and Hedwig, we find themes of youth discovering themselves, the search for meaning and happiness in one's life, and the ever-painful plight of the daydreamers among us. With Kaspar, there are the ideals of art and the difficulties inherent in one's pursuit of those ideals. In Klaus, we see a rather sharp critique of mainstream society and the trappings of materialism and the pursuit of wealth. Readers who have siblings, particularly multiple siblings, will also likely enjoy the novel on another level less accessible to those who don't, for Walser does an admirable job of portraying the complicated and contradictory dynamics that often characterize sibling relationships.

As Simon opines late in the book, "How tedious it was always to be doing exactly the same thing." Some books always do exactly the same thing, what we expect them to do, over and over. Not with Walser. Even if he did claim to be writing the same novel over and over, it's still worth reading over and over, because it's granular, it's made up of life's strikingly mundane and spectacular moments, as pointed out by the likes of Simon, who, after all, claims to be "an outlandish figure in my own homeland." I may never travel again.
( )