Esperimento di scrittura riuscito a metà, soprattutto per quanto riguarda l'uso dei "ritagli" inseriti nel libro che inframezzano il già spezzato ritmo della narrazione. Frisch è a ogni modo molto bravo a costruire l'atmosfera da fine del mondo che anima il libro. ( )

„Minden tönkremegy; tegnap a hőmérő, ma a lépcsőkorlát: a régi csavarok nem mennek vissza a rozsdába, most a lépcsőn karfa nélkül meredeznek a pálcák.

Az ember laikus marad.”

Geiser úr, az idős özvegyember valahol Tessinben, a svájci Isten háta mögött tengeti napjait. (Igen, Svájban is van Isten háta mögött. Vagy a svájciaknak is van Istenük, és neki is van háta möge. Kinek hogy tetszik.) Az eső esik, az erózió pedig eszi meg a hegyoldalakat. Fenyeget a földcsuszamlás. Geiser úrban is dolgozik egyfajta erózió, bár ő erejét megfeszítve harcol ellene: könyveiből mindenféle információkat vagdos ki és tűz a cetlifalra, hogy ne feledje el őket. De mit ér akár ezer adat, ha az adatok száma végtelen? Mit ér tudni, hogy „a Maggia évente átlagosan 550 000 köbméter hordalékot sodort a deltába”, meg hogy az ember a holocénban jelenik meg (pláne, hogy nem, mint Turms felhívta rá a figyelmet), ha az elménk a felejtéssel vívott egyre reménytelenebb harcban egyre inkább pusztulásnak indul? Egyáltalán, mit ér Geiser úr, és mit ér az ember?

Nos, ilyen vidám könyv ez. ( )

schön ( )

Bit sick, don't seem to have the wherewithall to write about this, so I thought I'd let Frisch do that. A few extracts from a Paris Review interview, the entirety of which can be found here: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2367/the-art-of-fiction-no-113-max-fris...

INTERVIEWER

When did you first decide to create the flat, cold, “affectless” hero we have been discussing?

FRISCH

Hard to know. I think I made it not all at once, but slowly; gradually it felt more and more comfortable. Just now I think—I don’t know if it’s right or wrong—that if you describe emotions, or the hero describes his emotions, as in the work of Dostoyevsky, for instance, or Melville, or other great writers, the danger that you will fall into the conventional is very great. It was Goethe who told us how we feel if we are in love with a girl—there are forms for that. But suppose you try to establish a situation, a movement, to show gestures and faces, and not talk about it. This is closer to film than old literature was. We have learned a lot from movies about what can be expressed without words. I would be proud or happy if a reader could feel the essential situation of, say, the man in Man in the Holocene, to feel how it is to be wet in your pants, how it’s getting colder, the feeling of growing tired, of melancholy or despair. That you get without using all those words. That you feel sensually and see with your eyes. I want to give that, or I try, anyway.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have a kind of control that is not within your conscious grasp?

FRISCH

Yes, I have this control that tells me when to cut something, improve it, or give it up, often without knowing why. But just how much of this capacity you have is important in determining, I think, whether you’re a writer or not. If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line. Then, if you don’t have this capacity at all, that’s also a danger. Before I published Man in the Holocene, it was not a bad book, but I had an uncomfortable feeling about it. That’s criticism. Then after I wrote a second draft I had the feeling, “Now it works, now it’s okay.” And afterwards, again this shock that it didn’t work. If I hadn’t had that feeling it would have been published and I would never have reached the point I could reach. You’re awfully dependent on that critical sense. When I was young, around thirty, it took me much more time to get the feeling of a scene, to know whether it worked or not, and to be able to give up on it if it didn’t. I would work for half a year sometimes on something that didn’t work—I couldn’t give up.

INTERVIEWER

The opening sentence of Man in the Holocene reads, “It should be possible to build a pagoda of crispbread, to think of nothing, to hear no thunder, no rain . . . Perhaps no pagoda will emerge, but the night will pass.” One accepts it upon first reading. Then suddenly, it strikes one, “What is this man thinking of?” It’s a remarkable image, a weird image. How did you come upon it?

FRISCH

I think you’re right; reading it for the first time it’s a little unusual, a little crazy. A person with strange problems, obviously; we feel he’s doing nonsense, he’s bored, and we understand he has to wait because of the rain. Later when you know him it acquires a different meaning even if one doesn’t go back to read the book again, but simply remembers the sentence. A pagoda is a full, complete picture of the world. That’s what he tries to have because he’s afraid that the world will get lost. And what he’s doing with this crispbread, of course, is just the opposite. So it’s a dream that the world should be perfect, that we should be able to view it as a whole in its perfect, clear beauty. I started only the last version of the book with that sentence. Before then I had it later on, on the second page. It was important to have it for the beginning; otherwise you get the description of the painful weather, so what? Only this pagoda sentence brings it immediately onto another level. There must be something else. That’s, of course, what you call craft, isn’t it?
………….

With the parable you think—you hope—you can get a complicated reality. Nowadays I doubt that too, because the parable always has the tendency to prove something, to teach something, and I found out that I don’t have to teach. I just want to show the thing—and so I have stopped using parables.

…………….

Literature should show possibilities and avoid the idea that what happened had to happen. I don’t believe this aphorism.

FRISCH
Yes, I do. I always try, but I never succeed. Between us, I would say my favorite book, at this time, is Man in the Holocene.


A few months after our interview, I called Mr. Frisch to see if he had any final corrections or comments to add. “Yes,” he said. “Tell them that for just a brief moment I flew. Only for a moment—to the kitchen and back—but that you saw me fly.”


( )

Bit sick, don't seem to have the wherewithall to write about this, so I thought I'd let Frisch do that. A few extracts from a Paris Review interview, the entirety of which can be found here: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2367/the-art-of-fiction-no-113-max-fris...

INTERVIEWER

When did you first decide to create the flat, cold, “affectless” hero we have been discussing?

FRISCH

Hard to know. I think I made it not all at once, but slowly; gradually it felt more and more comfortable. Just now I think—I don’t know if it’s right or wrong—that if you describe emotions, or the hero describes his emotions, as in the work of Dostoyevsky, for instance, or Melville, or other great writers, the danger that you will fall into the conventional is very great. It was Goethe who told us how we feel if we are in love with a girl—there are forms for that. But suppose you try to establish a situation, a movement, to show gestures and faces, and not talk about it. This is closer to film than old literature was. We have learned a lot from movies about what can be expressed without words. I would be proud or happy if a reader could feel the essential situation of, say, the man in Man in the Holocene, to feel how it is to be wet in your pants, how it’s getting colder, the feeling of growing tired, of melancholy or despair. That you get without using all those words. That you feel sensually and see with your eyes. I want to give that, or I try, anyway.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have a kind of control that is not within your conscious grasp?

FRISCH

Yes, I have this control that tells me when to cut something, improve it, or give it up, often without knowing why. But just how much of this capacity you have is important in determining, I think, whether you’re a writer or not. If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line. Then, if you don’t have this capacity at all, that’s also a danger. Before I published Man in the Holocene, it was not a bad book, but I had an uncomfortable feeling about it. That’s criticism. Then after I wrote a second draft I had the feeling, “Now it works, now it’s okay.” And afterwards, again this shock that it didn’t work. If I hadn’t had that feeling it would have been published and I would never have reached the point I could reach. You’re awfully dependent on that critical sense. When I was young, around thirty, it took me much more time to get the feeling of a scene, to know whether it worked or not, and to be able to give up on it if it didn’t. I would work for half a year sometimes on something that didn’t work—I couldn’t give up.

INTERVIEWER

The opening sentence of Man in the Holocene reads, “It should be possible to build a pagoda of crispbread, to think of nothing, to hear no thunder, no rain . . . Perhaps no pagoda will emerge, but the night will pass.” One accepts it upon first reading. Then suddenly, it strikes one, “What is this man thinking of?” It’s a remarkable image, a weird image. How did you come upon it?

FRISCH

I think you’re right; reading it for the first time it’s a little unusual, a little crazy. A person with strange problems, obviously; we feel he’s doing nonsense, he’s bored, and we understand he has to wait because of the rain. Later when you know him it acquires a different meaning even if one doesn’t go back to read the book again, but simply remembers the sentence. A pagoda is a full, complete picture of the world. That’s what he tries to have because he’s afraid that the world will get lost. And what he’s doing with this crispbread, of course, is just the opposite. So it’s a dream that the world should be perfect, that we should be able to view it as a whole in its perfect, clear beauty. I started only the last version of the book with that sentence. Before then I had it later on, on the second page. It was important to have it for the beginning; otherwise you get the description of the painful weather, so what? Only this pagoda sentence brings it immediately onto another level. There must be something else. That’s, of course, what you call craft, isn’t it?
………….

With the parable you think—you hope—you can get a complicated reality. Nowadays I doubt that too, because the parable always has the tendency to prove something, to teach something, and I found out that I don’t have to teach. I just want to show the thing—and so I have stopped using parables.

…………….

Literature should show possibilities and avoid the idea that what happened had to happen. I don’t believe this aphorism.

FRISCH
Yes, I do. I always try, but I never succeed. Between us, I would say my favorite book, at this time, is Man in the Holocene.


A few months after our interview, I called Mr. Frisch to see if he had any final corrections or comments to add. “Yes,” he said. “Tell them that for just a brief moment I flew. Only for a moment—to the kitchen and back—but that you saw me fly.”


( )