Without Lifting A Finger

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...