****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Irresistible book. This has to be the most charming fictional novel written in the 20th century. Or ever in human history. Am I being overblown? See for yourself!Teachers at the Benjamenta Institute never come around: they're either very late, or sleeping, or "possibly fossilized", or never existed in the first place. Yet, in the classroom one isn't even allowed to blow ones personal nose. (I'm paraphrasing.)What is the book about? The narrator talks about his time at a school for servants. He rambles about the world, criticizes and praises his peers, takes digs at society, talks about his family, goes into soliloquies about the very few, but very strange, adults at the school. Most of it's pretty fun and breezy. Then there's a few pages that will break your heart, if you have a heart to be broken.It's also easy to pick-up and put-down because the whole thing is broken up into short episodic sub-chapter sections. It's anecdotal, off-the-cuff. It also shines with uniqueness and warmth. It is never, ever, ever, a slog.If you like Harry Potter (I don't), you could like it. There's a peculiar and enchanting castle-like institute, a peculiar ensemble of students. If you like Catcher in the Rye, you'll probably like it. The young narrator gives disaffected but endearing commentary on people and places, his brother, his friends, and so forth. If you like Franz Kafka, you'll like it. Robert Walser's style was the springboard off which Franz Kafka plunged into himself. Do you hate Harry Potter, or Catcher in the Rye, or Franz Kafka? Great! This book is nothing like them. I wouldn't be name-dropping these other books and authors if Walser wasn't so obscure. I feel I have to build some bridges here. So folks? Take the bridges.HERE'S an excerpt from near the beginning:"How stupidly I behaved when I arrived here! Mainly I was shocked at the shabbiness of the front steps. Well, all right, they were just the stairs to an ordinary big-city backstreet building. Then I rang the bell and a monkey-like being opened the door. It was Kraus. But at that time I simply thought of him as a monkey, whereas today I have a high opinion of him, because of the very personal quality which adorns him. I asked if I could speak to Her Benjamenta. Kraus said: "Yes, sir!" and bowed to me, deeply and stupidly. This bow infused me with strange terror, for I told myself at once that there must be something wrong the place. And from that moment, I regarded the Benjamenta school as a swindle. I went to the Principal's office. How I laugh when I think back on the scene that followed." [Hilarity ensues.]And from later on:"Heinrich and Schilinsky have left. Shaken hands and said adieu. And gone. Probably forever. How short these leave-takings are! One means to say something, but has forgotten precisely the right thing to say, and so one says nothing, or something silly. To say goodbye, and to have it said to me, is terrible. At such moments something gives human life a a shake, and one feels vividly how nothing one is. Quick goodbyes are loveless, and long ones are unbearable. What can one do? Well, one just says something goofish.--Fraulein Benjamenta said something very peculiar to me recently... [...]"Can you believe that?
