Microscripts

Walser, Robert; Bernofsky, Susan (Trans. & Intro.); Benjamin, Walter (Afterword)

ISBN 10: 0811218805 / ISBN 13: 9780811218801

Editore: New Directions/Christine Burgin, New York, 2010

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Hardcover. 9" X 6 1/2". 159pp. This beautiful near fine copy presents nicely with unclipped dust jacket wrapped in protective archival sleeve. Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of jacket. Bound in green cloth over boards with spine lettered in black. Very gentle bumps to head and tail of spine. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is sound. ABOUT THIS BOOK: Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper (many of them written during his hospitalization in the Waldau sanatorium) covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high, came to light only after the author s death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of a German script: a whole story could fit on the back of a business card. Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions from the original microscripts, these 25 short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated co-publication with the Christine Burgin Gallery. Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: the detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Sometimes Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them lengthwise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh and marriage proposals are some of Walser s subjects. These texts take strength from Walser s motto: "To be small and to stay small." 65 full-color illustrations(Publisher). Codice articolo 16585

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Microscripts

Casa editrice: New Directions/Christine Burgin, New York

Data di pubblicazione: 2010

Legatura: Hardcover

Condizione: Near Fine

Condizione sovraccoperta: Near Fine

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper (many of them written during his hospitalization in the Waldau sanatorium) covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high, came to light only after the author’s death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of a German script: a whole story could fit on the back of a business card.

Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions from the original microscripts, these 25 short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated co-publication with the Christine Burgin Gallery.  Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: the detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Sometimes Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them lengthwise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh and marriage proposals are some of Walser’s subjects.  These texts take strength from Walser’s motto: “To be small and to stay small.”

L'autore:

Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), one of the major European writers of the early twentieth century, worked as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant before writing as many as seven novels and more than a thousand stories. Forcibly hospitalized in 1933 with a now much disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia, he spent the final twenty-three years of his life in an institution.