Without Lifting A Finger

It is idiotic to write out in one's own hand (in the evenings by candlelight) things already in print. Why not use scissors to cut out items that are worth remembering and deserve a place on the wall? Geiser is surprised that he did not think of this before. There are scissors in the house; all he has to do is find them. Quite apart from the fact that print is easier to read than an old man's handwriting—though he has taken the trouble to use block letters—no one has that much time.  Geological formations, layers that are clearly distinguished from the stratifications beneath and above them by the petrified animals and plants (see Characteristic Fossils) within them and that represent a (stratigraphic) unit. Among these belong the igneous rocks, which evolved at the same time. Related G. F. evolving successively are bracketed together in formation groups. Formations and formation groups reflect periods of the earth's history and are in consequence used as descriptions of ti...

Perhaps Hanna expected too much, where men were concerned, though I think she loved men. If there were any reproaches, they were self-reproaches; if Hanna could or had to live again, she would love men quite differently. She found it natural that men (she said) were mentally restricted, and only regretted her own stupidity in thinking each of them (I don’t know how many there had been) an exception. Yet Hanna, to my mind, is anything but stupid. But she thought herself so. She thought it stupid of a woman to want to be understood by a man; the man (said Hanna) wants the woman to be a mystery, so that he can be inspired and excited by his own incomprehension. The man hears only himself, according to Hanna, therefore the life of a woman who wants to be understood by a man must inevitably be ruined. According to Hanna. The man sees himself as master of the world and the woman only as his mirror. The master is not compelled to learn the language of the oppressed; the woman is compelled, th...

 Sabeth listened when I told her about my experiences, but as one listens to an old man; without interrupting, politely, without believing, without getting excited.

I took the standpoint that the profession of technologist, a man who masters matter, is a masculine profession, if not the only masculine profession there is. I told them we were on a ship, that is to say a product of technology . . . “True,” he said, “very true.” And all the time he held her arm, pretending to be interested and attentive merely so as not to have to let go of the girl’s arm. “Go on,” he said, “go on.” The girl came to my aid. As I hadn’t seen the sculptures in the Louvre she brought the conversation around to my robots; but I didn’t feel like talking about them and merely said that sculptures and things like that are nothing more (to my way of thinking) than forebears of the robot. Primitive peoples tried to annul death by portraying the human body—we do it by finding substitutes for the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!

I only lost my temper when Marcel started to talk about my work, that is to say about UNESCO, saying the technologist was the final guise of the white missionary, industrialization the last gospel of a dying race and living standards a substitute for a purpose in living ... I asked him if he was a Communist. Marcel denied it.

Here we must go back a little. Stiller, as we know, took part in the Spanish Civil War, while still a very young man, as a volunteer in the International Brigade. It is not clear what impelled him to this militant gesture. Probably many factors were combined—a rather romantic Communism, such as was common among bourgeois intellectuals at that time, also an understandable desire to see the world, a desire to subordinate his personal interests to some higher historical force, a desire for action; perhaps too, at least in part, it was flight from himself.

'The village was called Paricutin. Now that is the name of the new volcano,' I finished my story, 'and if you ever go to Mexico, my dear Doktor, drive out to this Paricutin. The roads are terrible, but it's worth while, especially at night; glowing stones fly fifteen hundred feet into the air, and there is a rumbling like the rumbling of an avalanche, and just before it begins smoke always billows up from the crater like a giant cauliflower, but black and red, red underneath where it catches the light from the flames below. Not so long ago the eruptions succeeded one another at pretty short intervals—six minutes, ten minutes, three minutes, each eruption throwing up a cascade of glowing stones, most of which were extinguished before they struck the ground. It's a first-class firework, believe me. Especially the lava. From the middle of a dark heap of dead slag, on which the moon shines without detracting from its blackness, the lava shoots out bright crimson, in spu...

Finished with Frisch (for now). Moving on to another favorite: Buchner's Lenz . I took just a few "clips." I always love Montauk . * Lynn will not get to know what his vice is. There will not be time for that. It needs a marriage, a long one, to reveal it . . . I did not turn her into a maidservant (I occasionally washed the dishes, carried out the trash cans, did the shopping, etc.) and I have never struck the woman I love. Her complaint is a different one, and it is deserved. It took me a year to see it. At first I thought her verdict grotesque: it was that in ten years I had done nothing to help her develop her potentialities. I lavished every attention on her: the easiest way of treating a woman, and the worst. I can see that. Her reproach strikes home, but not in the way she meant it. Obviously, I have been acting from the very start as if I were God Almighty, or at least Adam, from whose rib Woman was made: COME, FOLLOW, AND I WILL LEAD! This woman is not un...

Lynn will not get to know what his vice is. There will not be time for that. It needs a marriage, a long one, to reveal it . . . I did not turn her into a maidservant (I occasionally washed the dishes, carried out the trash cans, did the shopping, etc.) and I have never struck the woman I love. Her complaint is a different one, and it is deserved. It took me a year to see it. At first I thought her verdict grotesque: it was that in ten years I had done nothing to help her develop her potentialities. I lavished every attention on her: the easiest way of treating a woman, and the worst. I can see that. Her reproach strikes home, but not in the way she meant it. Obviously, I have been acting from the very start as if I were God Almighty, or at least Adam, from whose rib Woman was made: COME, FOLLOW, AND I WILL LEAD! This woman is not ungrateful, but desperate. What I had imagined to be our years of happiness suddenly seem like lost years. My vice: MALE CHAUVINISM. What else but my att...

Have lost track of how many times I've read Frisch's Man in the Holocene , but as with all my faves I find something new every time. Liked it so much I've continued on with another Frisch: Montauk . What's below are two "clips" I couldn't resist from Holocene. I have been to Frisch's Berzona, so I could feel it all the more. * Later in the day there is more thunder; and shortly afterward, hail. The white stones, some of them the size of hazelnuts, dance on the granite table; in a few minutes the lawn is a white sheet, all Geiser can do is stand at the window and watch the vine being torn to shreds, the roses, too— There is nothing to do but read. (Novels are no use at all on days like these, they deal with people and their relationships, with themselves and others, fathers and mothers and daughters or sons, lovers, etc., with individual souls, usually unhappy ones, with society, etc., as if the place for these things were assured, the earth for ...

Just a short but potent tidbit (I'm super-busy today): You need a marriage, a long one, to become a monster.

Rereading some books is like reading them for the first time. Anyway, I've abandoned Bishop's letters and Zbigniew Herbert's poetry (I'll be back) for a quick reread of the master. Montauk is not an easy book to find (I got it once from the library in Long Beach, and I have a good chunk of it in a Frisch reader), but an e-version was released on March 31. A short read. Already at about 40%. *** Montauk is a story by Swiss writer Max Frisch . It first appeared in 1975 and takes an exceptional position in Frisch's work. While fictional stories previously served Frisch for exploring the possible behavior of his protagonists, in Montauk , he tells an authentic experience: a weekend which he spent with a young woman at the American East Coast. The short-run love affair is used by Frisch as a retrospective on his own biography. In line with Philip Roth he tells his "life as a man," relates to the women with whom he was associated, and the failure of their...

I posted a portion of the only Frisch questionnaire I had "at hand" some while ago: Questionnaire 1987, which appears at the very end of The German Library's volume devoted to Frisch. I was looking for some more on line (and found one text), but ran into this Paris Review interview with Frisch by Jodi Daynard (1989). I didn't read the whole thing, but Google +'ed it and snipped the ending which I found amusing (see below). I'll keep looking for more questionnaires (I think some are in his Sketchbooks, so I will dig them up). * From the Paris Review (Winter II, 1989): 

Ferme vaudoise , a photo by Diegojack on Flickr. Almost finished with Stiller . I know: slow-going, but it's because of LIFE. Kept reading about "ferme vaudoise" (I got the Vaud part, but wasn't sure about the "ferme," which equals "farm"). Of course Frisch has to throw in Montreux and Lake Geneva and (just to fill me with Wanderlust). So "ferme vaudoise" = a farm in the Vaud (Switzerland).

I love autumn, I love September. But when will the heat let up? * To Stiller : a labour of Sisyphus In face of the fact of life and death there is nothing whatever to be said A shivering child, who is coughing very ominously, as though anxious to join the dead, is allowed to sample the sweetmeats already, although the food still belongs to the dead We then discussed the well known line: Him I love who craves the impossible At times I have the feeling that one emerges from what has been written as a snake emerges from its skin We possess language in order to become mute difficult to carry a knowledge that can never be proved nor even uttered I worked for a month in Detroit; I fell in love with the daughter of a Conservative senator, who had a Cadillac, and we swam in Lake Michigan either we smash ourselves to pieces on one another, or we love one another

Juggling (not juggling) two books at once: Frisch's Stiller and Emily Carr's Journals ( Hundreds and Thousands ). Not juggling because things are going slowly--because of school? because of ____?--but that's life. * Anyway, I've gotten through about half of Stiller , and I have a few "bullets" for you ( I would say "Little Book," but that's Emily Carr): Went to Davos yesterday. It's just as Thomas Mann describes it My greatest fear: repetition Ascona Every word is false and true, that is the nature of words Is there anyone who doesn't wish at times that he could become a monk? We live in an age of reproduction the rest of us swim in a cocktail containing pretty well everything and mixed in the most elegant manner by Eliot a fellow who had the chest and shoulders of a Michelangelo slave

'Man is a beast of prey,' I said in a general sort of way. 'That's the truth, Knobel, and all the rest is humbug.' *** You can put anything into words, except your life. *** God is a deposit! He is the sum of real life, or at least that's how it sometimes seems to me.   

Am I the only one who thinks this way: In re-reading Frisch's Stiller I am amazed how much I'd forgotten, and consider it as a positive that it feels like I'm reading the novel for the first time. Having re-read Homo Faber again recently I am surprised (intrigued, delighted) by the Mexican motif in Stiller . In Faber the protagonist's plane crashes in a Mexican desert; in Stiller Stiller (Not Stiller, White) has just come into Switzerland from Mexico. The only lines I've underscored in my Kindle thus far (have I subconsciously decided to curtail my underscoring?) has to do with a little poke Frisch is giving the fatherland = Switzerland: We have both come to the conclusion that physical hygiene in Switzerland is in remarkable contrast to the rest of their obsession with cleanliness. He told me that where he lived in the town he was only allowed by contract to take a hot shower at week-ends, as in the prison. Then we march off to our cells one by one with...

Rom, Palazzo Altemps, schlafende Erinye (sleeping Erinye) , a photo by HEN-Magonza on Flickr. Apparently, this is the Head of a Sleeping Erinys (so-called Medusa Ludovisi) alluded to in Frisch's Homo Faber .

Hermes Baby, c 1943 , a photo by mpclemens on Flickr.