The Assistant (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780811215909)

Robert Walser is an overwhelmingly original author with many ardent fans: J.M. Coetzee ("dazzling"), Guy Davenport ("a very special kind of whimsical-serious-deep writer"), and Hermann Hesse ("If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place"). Charged with compassion, and an utterly unique radiance of vision, Walser is as Susan Sontag exclaimed "a truly wonderful, heart-breaking writer."

The Assistant is his breathtaking 1908 novel, translated by award-winning translator Susan Bernofsky. Joseph, hired to become an inventor's new assistant, arrives one rainy Monday morning at Technical Engineer Karl Tobler's splendid hilltop villa: he is at once pleased and terribly worried, a state soon followed by even stickier psychological complexities. He enjoys the beautiful view over Lake Zurich, in the company of the proud wife, Frau Tobler, and the delicious savory meals. But does he deserve any of these pleasures? The Assistant chronicles Joseph's inner life of cascading emotions as he attempts, both frantically and light-heartedly, to help the Tobler household, even as it slides toward financial ruin. Tobler demands of Joseph, "Do you have your wits about you?!" And Joseph's wits are in fact all around him, trembling like leaves in the breeze--he is full of exuberance and despair, all the raptures and panics of a person "drowning in obedience."

Author: Robert Walser
ISBN-10: 0811215903
ISBN-13: 9780811215909
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 07/01/2007
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 6.92h x 5.18w x 0.76d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 06/01/2007 pg. 33
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2007 pg. 693
New York Times Book Review 08/19/2007 pg. 10
New York Times Book Review 03/08/2009 pg. 23
Library Journal 07/23/2007
New York Review of Books 02/11/2010 pg. 33