Carlos Icaza Estrada 2008-06-16
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This book appears to be the "Catcher in the Rye" of the German-speaking world - it is difficult to find any young native German speakers in Europe who haven't read it - and liked it. It appeals not only to those without much interest in literature, but also to the cultured.
But I just couldn't get through the first pages of this book, because the author's style is just plain bad - it has that typical feature of the pretentious novelist - short sentences:
"I was dead tired.
Ivy had talked away at me for three hours while we waited for the overdue plane, although she knew I was dead set against marrying.
I was glad to be alone.
At last we started."
Short, single line sentences like these three are traditionally associated with dialogue - but here the dashes are missing from their beginnings, because, instead of dialogue, they describe action or though. What is Frisch trying to do with these bullet like sentences, that look like they were taken from a Powerpoint presentation? An impressionist take on literary narrative, à la Seurat? Nein! If that were so, then that last sentence would have been " The engines' roar grew louder. The cabin began to shake lightly. The buildings outside moved. Then they slid past. At last we started." So what is it? Conciseness? At 228 pages this can't be classified as a novella. An attempt at appearing avant-garde? Certainly, for his tendency toward one-line short sentence reminds one of a certain existentialist writer whose name begins with C. But Frisch wants to make a splash on the literary world, and lacking a new take on the standard existentialist theme, he focuses on the form - the style. So he packages an old tale, with minor modifications of setting and characters, with a style that is only new in that it drives C.'s style to its ultimate conclusion: from short sentences, to one line paragraphs. But a mere change in formatting is too obvious, so he cuts back on the adjectives and adverbs that made C.'s sentences lyrical, and so churns out blank, gray prose, almost completely lacking in feeling. One could argue that it is the existential narrative that he's taking to its ultimate conclusion, but despair, ennui and disgust with humanity can be rich, complex feelings, that in their reaction to changing circumstance, involve passion.
Style doesn't always have to spoil a book - Nabokov put Chekhov together with Pushkin for his contribution to Russian literature, yet he pointed out that Chekhov's style is rather plain: "the juicy verb, the greenhouse adjective, the crème de menthe epitaph served on a silver platter, was alien to Chekhov." Yet few writers, living or dead, Russian or not, are able to match his mastery of character, his ability to bring them to life, and to make us laugh and cry at the same time at their faults and tragedies - a trademark of Chekhov. Frisch wastes the reader's (and printer's) time with awkward stylistic tricks that only result in an awkward, stilted narrative flow, so whatever message he may want to express will appear as obvious as a hammer blow to the head.
