Robert Walser

By Robert WalserTranslated by Christopher Middleton, Susan Bernofsky, and Tom Whalen "It is no wonder that Walser has been so influential to artists and writers whose work is similarly charged with social criticism, examinations of the individual in relation to the world, and the attempt to fathom artistic inspiration."—K. Thomas Kahn, The Quarterly Conversation A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser is a project initiated by the gallerist Donald Young, who saw in Walser an exemplary figure through whom connections between art and literature could be discussed anew. He invited a group of artists to respond to Walser’s writing. A Little Ramble is a result of that collaboration. The artists have chosen stories by Robert Walser (1878-1956) as well as excerpts from Walks with Robert Walser, conversations with the writer recorded by his guardian Carl Seelig. Much of this material appears in English for the first time. Accompanying these pieces are over fifty color artworks created specifically for this project, a preface by Donald Young, and an afterword by Lynne Cooke. Hardcover176 pages | 50 color illustrationsNew Directions/Christine Burgin, 2013 6.7 x 0.9 x 9.1 inchesISBN 9780811220996Literary Criticism

A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser

By Robert WalserTranslated by Susan BernofskyThe Robber, Robert Walser’s last novel, tells the story of a dreamer on a journey of self-discovery. It is a hybrid of love story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks teaspoons, flirts with important politicians, plays maidservant to young boys, and uses a passerby’s mouth as an ashtray. Walser’s novel spoofs the stiff-upper-lipped European petit bourgeois and its nervous reactions to whatever threatens the stability of its worldview.Paperback141 pagesUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2007Originally published in 19255 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780803298095Fiction, Satire

The Robber

By Robert WalserTranslated by Susan Bernofsky "The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser’s work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be? If Emily Dickinson made cathedrals of em dashes and capital letters and the angle of winter light, Walser accomplishes the feat with, well, ladies’ feet and trousers, and little emotive words like joy, uncapitalized."—Rivka Galchen, Harper’s"I think it was Herman Hesse who said that if you can stomach Robert Walser’s prose, you can’t help but fall in love with it, and I fell in love with it pretty quickly. He’s guileless but not stupid, an admiring observer of the inconsequential...He became a chronicler of the ordinary (interestingly, at around the same time Joyce, on the other side of Europe, was doing the same). And in this unbelievably delightful and timeless collection of short pieces, we can recover the delight of ordinary, uncondescending appreciation, places where the vacant-minded stroller can take ‘peculiar pleasure.’"—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian In 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl, already an important stage-set designer, and immediately threw himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city. Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and satirical observations on every aspect of the bustling German capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters’ galleries, and literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram. Originally appearing in literary magazines as well as the feuilleton sections of newspapers, the early stories are characterized by a joyous urgency and the generosity of an unconventional guide. Later pieces take the form of more personal reflections on the writing process, memories, and character studies. All are full of counter-intuitive images and vignettes of startling clarity, showcasing a unique talent for whom no detail was trivial, at grips with a city diving headlong into modernity. Paperback160 pagesNew York Review of Books, 20125 x 0.4 x 8 inchesISBN 9781590174548Short Stories

Berlin Stories

By Robert WalserTranslated by Christopher Middleton "The poems also give us Walser’s manner in concentrated miniature, and it could be that rhyme—joining the disparate, cultivating the arbitrary - is at the heart of what he is doing. They are odd, whimsical, insouciant things, exhilarating in their ability to be what they are."—The Times Literary Supplement"The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser’s work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be?"—Rivka Galchen, Harper’s MagazineIn a small, exquisite clothbound format resembling the early Swiss and German editions of Walser’s work, Thirty Poems collects famed translator Christopher Middleton’s favorite poems from the more than five hundred Walser wrote. The illustrations range from an early poem in perfect copperplate handwriting, to one from a 1927 Czech-German newspaper, to a microscript.Hardcover64 pagesNew Directions, 20125.3 x 0.4 x 7.3 inchesISBN 9780811220019Poetry

Shop at Neue Robert Walser

A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser

The Robber

Berlin Stories

Thirty Poems

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Robert Walser