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Homo Faber
Walter Faber is an emotionally detached engineer forced by a string of coincidences to embark on a journey through his past.
214 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1957
About the author
Max Frisch
239 books736 followersMax Rudolph Frisch was born in 1911 in Zurich; the son of Franz Bruno Frisch (an architect) and Karolina Bettina Frisch (née Wildermuth). After studying at the Realgymnasium in Zurich, he enrolled at the University of Zurich in 1930 and began studying German literature, but had to abandon due to financial problems after the death of his father in 1932. Instead, he started working as a journalist and columnist for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), one of the major newspapers in Switzerland. With the NZZ he would entertain a lifelong ambivalent love-hate relationship, for his own views were in stark contrast to the conservative views promulgated by this newspaper. In 1933 he travelled through eastern and south-eastern Europe, and in 1935 he visited Germany for the first time.
Some of the major themes in his work are the search or loss of one's identity; guilt and innocence (the spiritual crisis of the modern world after Nietzsche proclaimed that "God is dead"); technological omnipotence (the human belief that everything was possible and technology allowed humans to control everything) versus fate (especially in Homo faber); and also Switzerland's idealized self-image as a tolerant democracy based on consensus — criticizing that as illusion and portraying people (and especially the Swiss) as being scared by their own liberty and being preoccupied mainly with controlling every part of their life.
Max Frisch was a political man, and many of his works make reference to (or, as in Jonas und sein Veteran, are centered around) political issues of the time.
information was taken from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frisch
Some of the major themes in his work are the search or loss of one's identity; guilt and innocence (the spiritual crisis of the modern world after Nietzsche proclaimed that "God is dead"); technological omnipotence (the human belief that everything was possible and technology allowed humans to control everything) versus fate (especially in Homo faber); and also Switzerland's idealized self-image as a tolerant democracy based on consensus — criticizing that as illusion and portraying people (and especially the Swiss) as being scared by their own liberty and being preoccupied mainly with controlling every part of their life.
Max Frisch was a political man, and many of his works make reference to (or, as in Jonas und sein Veteran, are centered around) political issues of the time.
information was taken from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frisch
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October 10, 2023
May the lack of imagination be considered as a kind of mental disorder?
Walter Faber is a pragmatist and he lives as if he is blown by the wind – he is a ship without an anchor and there is no haven for him in the sea of life and there is no place he can call his own. And in this endless roaming and his genuflection before the soulless technological progress he is slowly losing his human qualities and himself turns into a mechanical being.
And one day clockwork stops ticking…
There aren't any prehistoric monsters any more. Why should I imagine them? I'm sorry, but I don't see any stone angels either; nor demons; I see what I see – the usual shapes due to erosion and also my long shadow on the sand, but no ghosts.
Walter Faber is a pragmatist and he lives as if he is blown by the wind – he is a ship without an anchor and there is no haven for him in the sea of life and there is no place he can call his own. And in this endless roaming and his genuflection before the soulless technological progress he is slowly losing his human qualities and himself turns into a mechanical being.
And one day clockwork stops ticking…
July 9, 2024
VOYAGER
Faber
Il romanzo è del 1957. Io l’ho letto, e anche scoperto, solo nel 1991.
E fin qui nulla di speciale: non sarebbe la prima volta che arrivo con considerevole ritardo a conoscere uno scrittore, un libro.
Questa volta, però, è un po’ diverso perché ho prima visto il film, dal quale ho scoperto che in origine c’era un romanzo, questo: e solo dopo, sono approdato dalla pellicola alla pagina.
Barbara Sukova è Hannah.
Film che mi colpì parecchio nonostante il regista, Volker Schlöndorff, mi ha spesso deluso, è spesso risultato al di sotto delle mie aspettative.
E nonostante rischiasse di essere il solito papocchio del regista europeo, o straniero in genere, che va in America e crede di avere capito tutto. Sono più quelli che hanno fallito di quelli che ci sono riusciti, soprattutto fra gli europei. Non per niente il connazionale di Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders, l’unico regista al quale, insieme a Stanley Kubrick, mi sono proposto come paggio assistente (avevo elaborato un breve testo di lettera che faceva riferimento al rapporto discepolo-maestro nelle botteghe d’arte del Rinascimento), Wenders dicevo, il suo declino irrevocabile secondo me è cominciato quando è approdato in terra a stelle-e-strisce.
August Zirner è Joachim.
E invece papocchio non è stato. Vuoi per l’aspra magia che sempre si portava dietro Sam Shepard con quel suo incisivo spaccato, bello e inafferrabile, mai abbastanza rimpianto.
Vuoi perché Julie Delpy sa recitare in inglese, e mi aveva fulminato pochi anni prima con Mauvais sangue - Rosso sangue, di quell’altro regista, Leos Carax, partito in tromba, e troppo presto spentosi in un percorso artistico irrisolto e involuto.
Sabeth
Walter Faber è l’uomo tecnologico, il positivista per eccellenza, che crede fermamente nel progresso, è convinto che la scienza e l’evoluzione delle scoperte porteranno al migliore dei mondi possibili.
Frisch mette in gioco una batteria di eventi pazzeschi, da mal di testa, per far cambiare opinione al suo protagonista e spingerlo a credere che non tutto è coincidenza, non tutto si spiega con la legge della probabilità, esiste anche il fato: atterraggio di fortuna dell’aereo per un’avaria, aereo sul quale il fastidioso vicino di posto si rivela essere il fratello di un amico di gioventù (e dalla Svizzera siamo passati ai cieli americani, dagli USA diretti in Centro America) – amico di gioventù che Faber, interrompendo il suo viaggio, decide di andare a trovare nella foresta del Guatemala per trovarlo fresco cadavere (si è impiccato). Scopre così che l’amico di un tempo aveva sposato la sua fidanzata storica, Hannah, che Faber voleva sposare per salvarla (lei ebrea), ma non voleva diventare padre: per questo indirizzò Hannah dall’amico Joachim medico.
Hannah incinta preferì tenersi il bambino e non sposare Faber.
E così Joachim, sposando Hannah incinta, è diventato il padre della figlia di Faber.
Faber torna a New York, lascia la donna che vorrebbe sposarlo, e s’imbarca per l’Europa. Destinazione Parigi.
Siamo nel 1956. I flasback risalgono indietro di una ventina d’anni, anni Trenta.
Sul traghetto Faber fa la conoscenza di una giovane molto attraente, Elisabeth, o Sabeth, con la quale finisce con avere una bella storia. Da Parigi viaggiano insieme verso il sud della Francia e poi la Grecia (Faber si muove solo per lavoro, molto pragmatico: ma poi trova sempre un buon motivo per deviare dal suo percorso, prima Joachim, poi Sabeth).
Per scoprire che si tratta proprio di quella figlia mai voluta, la figlia di Hannah cresciuta da Joachim.
Frisch non gioca al gatto col topo: il lettore sa subito che si sta per consumare un incesto, non rimane sorpreso - forse sconvolto (ma la teoria di accadimenti è talmente estrema che anche l’incesto può farne parte senza esagerazione).
E così, l’incesto diventa ineludibile, ineluttabile. Diventa destino: Faber s’illude di poter controllare il mondo e la sua vita, invece…
Per non farci mancare nulla, in Grecia Sabeth viene morsa da un serpente. Faber riesce a portarla in ospedale in tempo per somministrale il siero: ma cadendo la giovane ha battuto la testa, e sarà quel colpo a causare la sua morte. Al capezzale di Sabeth in Grecia si presenta la madre, Hannah: lei e Faber si rincontrano dopo vent’anni, dopo una vita.
La catena di eventi si conclude con Faber che entra in sala operatoria perché ha scoperto di avere un cancro allo stomaco: e così avrà della vita il cammin tutto compiuto come scrive Sofocle nel suo Edipo re.
Faber racconta in prima persona, come se fosse un diario - o forse, un resoconto: frasi essenziali, quasi telegrafiche, scrittura spezzata.
Faber
Il romanzo è del 1957. Io l’ho letto, e anche scoperto, solo nel 1991.
E fin qui nulla di speciale: non sarebbe la prima volta che arrivo con considerevole ritardo a conoscere uno scrittore, un libro.
Questa volta, però, è un po’ diverso perché ho prima visto il film, dal quale ho scoperto che in origine c’era un romanzo, questo: e solo dopo, sono approdato dalla pellicola alla pagina.
Barbara Sukova è Hannah.
Film che mi colpì parecchio nonostante il regista, Volker Schlöndorff, mi ha spesso deluso, è spesso risultato al di sotto delle mie aspettative.
E nonostante rischiasse di essere il solito papocchio del regista europeo, o straniero in genere, che va in America e crede di avere capito tutto. Sono più quelli che hanno fallito di quelli che ci sono riusciti, soprattutto fra gli europei. Non per niente il connazionale di Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders, l’unico regista al quale, insieme a Stanley Kubrick, mi sono proposto come paggio assistente (avevo elaborato un breve testo di lettera che faceva riferimento al rapporto discepolo-maestro nelle botteghe d’arte del Rinascimento), Wenders dicevo, il suo declino irrevocabile secondo me è cominciato quando è approdato in terra a stelle-e-strisce.
August Zirner è Joachim.
E invece papocchio non è stato. Vuoi per l’aspra magia che sempre si portava dietro Sam Shepard con quel suo incisivo spaccato, bello e inafferrabile, mai abbastanza rimpianto.
Vuoi perché Julie Delpy sa recitare in inglese, e mi aveva fulminato pochi anni prima con Mauvais sangue - Rosso sangue, di quell’altro regista, Leos Carax, partito in tromba, e troppo presto spentosi in un percorso artistico irrisolto e involuto.
Sabeth
Walter Faber è l’uomo tecnologico, il positivista per eccellenza, che crede fermamente nel progresso, è convinto che la scienza e l’evoluzione delle scoperte porteranno al migliore dei mondi possibili.
Frisch mette in gioco una batteria di eventi pazzeschi, da mal di testa, per far cambiare opinione al suo protagonista e spingerlo a credere che non tutto è coincidenza, non tutto si spiega con la legge della probabilità, esiste anche il fato: atterraggio di fortuna dell’aereo per un’avaria, aereo sul quale il fastidioso vicino di posto si rivela essere il fratello di un amico di gioventù (e dalla Svizzera siamo passati ai cieli americani, dagli USA diretti in Centro America) – amico di gioventù che Faber, interrompendo il suo viaggio, decide di andare a trovare nella foresta del Guatemala per trovarlo fresco cadavere (si è impiccato). Scopre così che l’amico di un tempo aveva sposato la sua fidanzata storica, Hannah, che Faber voleva sposare per salvarla (lei ebrea), ma non voleva diventare padre: per questo indirizzò Hannah dall’amico Joachim medico.
Hannah incinta preferì tenersi il bambino e non sposare Faber.
E così Joachim, sposando Hannah incinta, è diventato il padre della figlia di Faber.
Faber torna a New York, lascia la donna che vorrebbe sposarlo, e s’imbarca per l’Europa. Destinazione Parigi.
Siamo nel 1956. I flasback risalgono indietro di una ventina d’anni, anni Trenta.
Sul traghetto Faber fa la conoscenza di una giovane molto attraente, Elisabeth, o Sabeth, con la quale finisce con avere una bella storia. Da Parigi viaggiano insieme verso il sud della Francia e poi la Grecia (Faber si muove solo per lavoro, molto pragmatico: ma poi trova sempre un buon motivo per deviare dal suo percorso, prima Joachim, poi Sabeth).
Per scoprire che si tratta proprio di quella figlia mai voluta, la figlia di Hannah cresciuta da Joachim.
Frisch non gioca al gatto col topo: il lettore sa subito che si sta per consumare un incesto, non rimane sorpreso - forse sconvolto (ma la teoria di accadimenti è talmente estrema che anche l’incesto può farne parte senza esagerazione).
E così, l’incesto diventa ineludibile, ineluttabile. Diventa destino: Faber s’illude di poter controllare il mondo e la sua vita, invece…
Per non farci mancare nulla, in Grecia Sabeth viene morsa da un serpente. Faber riesce a portarla in ospedale in tempo per somministrale il siero: ma cadendo la giovane ha battuto la testa, e sarà quel colpo a causare la sua morte. Al capezzale di Sabeth in Grecia si presenta la madre, Hannah: lei e Faber si rincontrano dopo vent’anni, dopo una vita.
La catena di eventi si conclude con Faber che entra in sala operatoria perché ha scoperto di avere un cancro allo stomaco: e così avrà della vita il cammin tutto compiuto come scrive Sofocle nel suo Edipo re.
Faber racconta in prima persona, come se fosse un diario - o forse, un resoconto: frasi essenziali, quasi telegrafiche, scrittura spezzata.
October 30, 2016
April 20, 2011:
I bought this book in 1979 and read it sometime in the early 80's.
It's only a couple of hundred pages, so when Praj asked me to review it, I thought, hey, why not re-read it (even though I very rarely re-read books).
April 22, 2011:
Re-reading this novel has been a total revelation.
Firstly, I had previously rated it four stars from memory. Now I have upgraded it to five stars.
It's not just good, it's great, one of the best books I've read.
Secondly, I haven't seen the Volker Schlondorff film "Voyager", which is based on the novel.
If it is anywhere near as good as the book, I will seek out the film with a passion.
About the Right Length
I have read numerous books that were anywhere in length between 300 and 1,000 pages long.
However, there is something in me that feels that 200 pages is just the right length.
In the early days of the internet (when grazing seemed to have superseded dining), I thought everybody would head in this direction, and that the days of the epic were over.
I was clearly wrong, but I still feel that, if an author has a 600 page book in them, they should write three 200 page novels (or at most two 300 page novels).
Hit the ground running, say what you want to say, don't subject us to the risk of boredom, finish it and move onto the next novel.
It's ironic that I'm about to start "The Pale King".
But "Homo Faber" does just this.
Some Short, Sharp Examples
I have read a few novels that more or less live up to my prescription and are perfect as well.
Camus' "The Stranger" is one.
Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" is another.
Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".
Nabokov's "Lolita".
"Tourmaline" by Randolph Stow.
To these great novels, I would now add "Homo Faber".
Towards Crystalline Perfection
Given the relatively small canvas, what matters to me is the crystalline perfection of the prose.
Not a word wasted, not a word that I would change.
Circumnavigating the Plot
I don't think it is fair to you to summarise or hint at the plot.
It is not a detailed or hyperactive plot.
The narrator (Walter Faber) finds himself in a number of related predicaments that conspire to reach a resolution, almost despite Faber's reluctance or inability to seize the initiative and direct or change the course of his life.
In retrospect, each predicament is an existentialist challenge to the certainty of his worldview and the way he (and we) live our lives.
Walter's Tanned and Toned
Part of the novel's appeal is the tone that derives from the unlikely character of Walter.
He is no hero, but neither is he an anti-hero.
He is a thin, wiry, 1950's Swiss engineer, a technologist, a believer in the reign of rationality over sentiment.
The Age of Aquarius isn't even on the horizon.
The tale is by him as well as about him.
His tone is dry and clinical, like an engineer's report.
Initially, he is world-weary, detached, disengaged, sarcastic, resigned.
You laugh at his interaction with the world, but it's not in your face comic farce per se, it's a serious farce scaling its way up to an immodest tragedy.
He's hanging on in quiet desperation (not just the English way, but the Swiss way as well).
Then things start to happen to him, some good, some bad.
Bit by bit, he becomes more engaged, more interactive, more hopeful.
Only to experience the greatest sadness I can conceive of.
Walter's Women
It's not giving anything away to say that Walter's plight revolves around the women in his life.
Given the relative absence of women friends, he is typical of many men in that he can only relate to a woman in one of three ways: in their capacity as mother, lover/wife or daughter.
This not only shapes the relationships in his life, it shapes him and the women as well.
The Feel, the Craft, the Finish
The novel starts dry, but builds quietly and confidently towards its end.
Max Frisch is a master of his craft.
An architect himself, Frisch's novel is immaculately conceived, flawlessly constructed and consummately delivered.
On time, on budget.
Ultimately, it defines the existentialist plight with both a rational and an emotional sensibility.
I realise that I haven't given you much to go on but my enthusiasm, but if you can find a copy, I guarantee that you will be hooked from the first sentence and you won't be able to stop.
Many thanks to Praj for prompting me to revisit the book and re-discover a classic of the second half of the last century.
P.S. Volker Schlöndorff Discusses His Film "Voyager [Homo Faber]" in 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb52Ii...
I bought this book in 1979 and read it sometime in the early 80's.
It's only a couple of hundred pages, so when Praj asked me to review it, I thought, hey, why not re-read it (even though I very rarely re-read books).
April 22, 2011:
Re-reading this novel has been a total revelation.
Firstly, I had previously rated it four stars from memory. Now I have upgraded it to five stars.
It's not just good, it's great, one of the best books I've read.
Secondly, I haven't seen the Volker Schlondorff film "Voyager", which is based on the novel.
If it is anywhere near as good as the book, I will seek out the film with a passion.
About the Right Length
I have read numerous books that were anywhere in length between 300 and 1,000 pages long.
However, there is something in me that feels that 200 pages is just the right length.
In the early days of the internet (when grazing seemed to have superseded dining), I thought everybody would head in this direction, and that the days of the epic were over.
I was clearly wrong, but I still feel that, if an author has a 600 page book in them, they should write three 200 page novels (or at most two 300 page novels).
Hit the ground running, say what you want to say, don't subject us to the risk of boredom, finish it and move onto the next novel.
It's ironic that I'm about to start "The Pale King".
But "Homo Faber" does just this.
Some Short, Sharp Examples
I have read a few novels that more or less live up to my prescription and are perfect as well.
Camus' "The Stranger" is one.
Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" is another.
Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".
Nabokov's "Lolita".
"Tourmaline" by Randolph Stow.
To these great novels, I would now add "Homo Faber".
Towards Crystalline Perfection
Given the relatively small canvas, what matters to me is the crystalline perfection of the prose.
Not a word wasted, not a word that I would change.
Circumnavigating the Plot
I don't think it is fair to you to summarise or hint at the plot.
It is not a detailed or hyperactive plot.
The narrator (Walter Faber) finds himself in a number of related predicaments that conspire to reach a resolution, almost despite Faber's reluctance or inability to seize the initiative and direct or change the course of his life.
In retrospect, each predicament is an existentialist challenge to the certainty of his worldview and the way he (and we) live our lives.
Walter's Tanned and Toned
Part of the novel's appeal is the tone that derives from the unlikely character of Walter.
He is no hero, but neither is he an anti-hero.
He is a thin, wiry, 1950's Swiss engineer, a technologist, a believer in the reign of rationality over sentiment.
The Age of Aquarius isn't even on the horizon.
The tale is by him as well as about him.
His tone is dry and clinical, like an engineer's report.
Initially, he is world-weary, detached, disengaged, sarcastic, resigned.
You laugh at his interaction with the world, but it's not in your face comic farce per se, it's a serious farce scaling its way up to an immodest tragedy.
He's hanging on in quiet desperation (not just the English way, but the Swiss way as well).
Then things start to happen to him, some good, some bad.
Bit by bit, he becomes more engaged, more interactive, more hopeful.
Only to experience the greatest sadness I can conceive of.
Walter's Women
It's not giving anything away to say that Walter's plight revolves around the women in his life.
Given the relative absence of women friends, he is typical of many men in that he can only relate to a woman in one of three ways: in their capacity as mother, lover/wife or daughter.
This not only shapes the relationships in his life, it shapes him and the women as well.
The Feel, the Craft, the Finish
The novel starts dry, but builds quietly and confidently towards its end.
Max Frisch is a master of his craft.
An architect himself, Frisch's novel is immaculately conceived, flawlessly constructed and consummately delivered.
On time, on budget.
Ultimately, it defines the existentialist plight with both a rational and an emotional sensibility.
I realise that I haven't given you much to go on but my enthusiasm, but if you can find a copy, I guarantee that you will be hooked from the first sentence and you won't be able to stop.
Many thanks to Praj for prompting me to revisit the book and re-discover a classic of the second half of the last century.
P.S. Volker Schlöndorff Discusses His Film "Voyager [Homo Faber]" in 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb52Ii...
October 22, 2013
And now here at last is a real book for grown-ups. Intelligent and utterly unsentimental, Homo Faber would, I feel, have been wasted on me if I'd read it ten years ago; now it strikes me as extraordinary. (This is unlike most novels, which, if not actually aimed at people in their late teens and early twenties, seem to resonate most strongly with that intense and exciting age group.)
As it happens, Walter Faber, the central character of this novel, does not read novels at all. He can't see the point. A technician for UNESCO, Faber builds things, records them, and analyses them. He believes in logic, reason, facts, brute statistics. A machine impresses him in a way that a human does not, because ‘it feels no fear and no hope, which only disturb, it has no wishes with regard to the result, it operates according to the pure logic of probability.’ Faber has few close male friends; women he can't relate to at all. Too emotional. ‘I'm not cynical,’ he explains. ‘I'm merely realistic, which is something women can't stand.’
His one serious relationship ended in divorce years ago. She scorned his beloved technology as ‘the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.’ (And she, by contrast, was an archaeologist: ‘I stick the past together,’ she says in one of the novel's few moments of unsubtlety.)
I can imagine many readers finding Faber very unlikeable, even monstrous; and yet I feel desperately defensive towards him, perhaps because he reminds me of my father. Actually he reminds me of all fathers – there is an air of generalised daddishness about him, and this is not coincidental: the notion of paternity is crucial to the book.
‘I like functionalism,’ Faber says. He has a prose style to match. This is not to say that it is dry, or clunky, or unartful, because it is none of those things. The style is astonishingly telegraphic, elliptical, Faber narrating the facts that he considers important. The effect is staccato but wonderful; an extreme example here from a virtuoso section set in Havana:
Often you are forced to read between the lines to understand what is really going on, and sometimes this reaches such a pitch that one has the impression of having experienced a scene twice. All the time Faber is writing to understand what has happened, and to justify his behaviour to himself. He can hardly accept the novelistic coincidences that the story involves: this cannot have happened. How was I to know. What else could I have done. The probability was minuscule. These were the facts as I knew them.
I am not mentioning the plot because it shouldn't be spoiled. Which seems strange, because we are given all the main facts quite early on. But part of the point of the book is discovering that the facts are not always, after all, the most important thing.
It's not often I really, really love books in translation. This is not because of any hipsterish misconception that you're not getting the "real" book, it's just that one of the things I most enjoy analysing when I read is the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of sentence construction and vocabulary choice, and this is all very different when you are reading the words of a translator. (Not that translators are not adept at this too – they are – but their motives and concerns are to do with fidelity to someone else's idea rather than their own, and this difference is fundamental.) But here I was riveted by the technique on display.
There is a moment where Faber recalls being on a beach in Greece with a girl. The two of them have a competition of similes: describing what they can see in terms of what it looks like. This is new ground for scientific-minded Faber, but he gets into it, and the paragraph rolls on for pages:
It's hard to describe the effect this long passage has on you, coming as it does after 150 pages in which I don't think a single simile had been deployed. To me it felt like being hit by a truck. It's one of the most unusual and powerful devices I can remember, in terms of constructing a novel, and the reason is that the passage coincides exactly with a moment of exquisite emotion both for Faber the character, experiencing it, and for Faber the narrator, remembering it. There is something technically brilliant going on in here.
There are so many other aspects to this superb novel that I haven't even touched on: its comments on the war, its deliberate and wide-ranging internationalism, its precise descriptive scenes. The story is clear-eyed and matter-of-fact and this has a cumulative effect that is quite devastating – heart-breaking, really. And yet for all that, what I am left with is this unexpected, life-affirming feeling…a renewed appreciation of what existence entails:
As it happens, Walter Faber, the central character of this novel, does not read novels at all. He can't see the point. A technician for UNESCO, Faber builds things, records them, and analyses them. He believes in logic, reason, facts, brute statistics. A machine impresses him in a way that a human does not, because ‘it feels no fear and no hope, which only disturb, it has no wishes with regard to the result, it operates according to the pure logic of probability.’ Faber has few close male friends; women he can't relate to at all. Too emotional. ‘I'm not cynical,’ he explains. ‘I'm merely realistic, which is something women can't stand.’
I called her a sentimentalist and arty crafty. She called me Homo Faber.
His one serious relationship ended in divorce years ago. She scorned his beloved technology as ‘the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.’ (And she, by contrast, was an archaeologist: ‘I stick the past together,’ she says in one of the novel's few moments of unsubtlety.)
I can imagine many readers finding Faber very unlikeable, even monstrous; and yet I feel desperately defensive towards him, perhaps because he reminds me of my father. Actually he reminds me of all fathers – there is an air of generalised daddishness about him, and this is not coincidental: the notion of paternity is crucial to the book.
‘I like functionalism,’ Faber says. He has a prose style to match. This is not to say that it is dry, or clunky, or unartful, because it is none of those things. The style is astonishingly telegraphic, elliptical, Faber narrating the facts that he considers important. The effect is staccato but wonderful; an extreme example here from a virtuoso section set in Havana:
My lust for looking.
My desire.
Vacuum between the loins.
I exist now only for shoeshine boys!
The pimps.
The ice-cream vendors.
Their vehicle: a combination of old pram and mobile canteen added to half a bicycle, a baldachin with rusty curtains; a carbide lamp; all around, the green twilight dotted with their flared skirts.
The lilac moon.
Often you are forced to read between the lines to understand what is really going on, and sometimes this reaches such a pitch that one has the impression of having experienced a scene twice. All the time Faber is writing to understand what has happened, and to justify his behaviour to himself. He can hardly accept the novelistic coincidences that the story involves: this cannot have happened. How was I to know. What else could I have done. The probability was minuscule. These were the facts as I knew them.
I am not mentioning the plot because it shouldn't be spoiled. Which seems strange, because we are given all the main facts quite early on. But part of the point of the book is discovering that the facts are not always, after all, the most important thing.
It's not often I really, really love books in translation. This is not because of any hipsterish misconception that you're not getting the "real" book, it's just that one of the things I most enjoy analysing when I read is the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of sentence construction and vocabulary choice, and this is all very different when you are reading the words of a translator. (Not that translators are not adept at this too – they are – but their motives and concerns are to do with fidelity to someone else's idea rather than their own, and this difference is fundamental.) But here I was riveted by the technique on display.
There is a moment where Faber recalls being on a beach in Greece with a girl. The two of them have a competition of similes: describing what they can see in terms of what it looks like. This is new ground for scientific-minded Faber, but he gets into it, and the paragraph rolls on for pages:
Then we found we could make out the surf on the seashore. Like beer froth. Sabeth thought, like a ruche! I took back my beer froth and said, like fibreglass. But Sabeth didn't know what fibreglass was. Then came the first rays of the sun over the sea: like a sheaf, like spears, like cracks in a glass, like a monstrance, like photos of electron bombardment. But there was only one point for each round; it was no use producing half a dozen similes. Soon after this the sun rose, dazzling. Like metal spurting out of a furnace, I thought: Sabeth said nothing and lost a point….
It's hard to describe the effect this long passage has on you, coming as it does after 150 pages in which I don't think a single simile had been deployed. To me it felt like being hit by a truck. It's one of the most unusual and powerful devices I can remember, in terms of constructing a novel, and the reason is that the passage coincides exactly with a moment of exquisite emotion both for Faber the character, experiencing it, and for Faber the narrator, remembering it. There is something technically brilliant going on in here.
There are so many other aspects to this superb novel that I haven't even touched on: its comments on the war, its deliberate and wide-ranging internationalism, its precise descriptive scenes. The story is clear-eyed and matter-of-fact and this has a cumulative effect that is quite devastating – heart-breaking, really. And yet for all that, what I am left with is this unexpected, life-affirming feeling…a renewed appreciation of what existence entails:
To be alive: to be in the light. Driving donkeys around somewhere (like that old man in Corinth) – that's all our job amounts to! The main thing is to stand up to the light, to joy (like our child) in the knowledge that I shall be extinguished in the light over gorse, asphalt and sea, to stand up to time, or rather to eternity in the instant. To be eternal means to have existed.
September 1, 2017
Is everything in life a coincidence, or are things predestined for us? How much do the decisions that we make in life influence the outcome?, even down to the smallest of details?. For globe-trotting Walter Faber this is a conflict that is never really resolved, through the misadventures of a strange semi mid-life crisis, Frisch writes a poignant and sometimes shocking novel as Faber struggles to maintain his previously unwavering belief in technology, whilst human connections both past and present start to send his perfectly controlled existence spiraling out of his control.
The narrator, Walter Faber, a Swiss bachelor heading towards fifty, is an analytical, headstrong but somewhat misanthropic individual, who's life is about to seriously land him on the ropes. A man of science, heading to South America on business to do with a project involving turbines. Unfortunately for him, his plane making an emergency landing in the Mexican desert was not part of the plan, and from here on in, bizarrely, Faber would face some uncanny happenings, after first of all finding his old friend Joachim dead in the jungle (the husband of Hanna, his childhood sweetheart). Later he would fall in love with a young lady, the dynamic Sabeth, whilst traveling across the Atlantic on board a ship destined for Europe (not knowing she is actually his daughter who he had with Hanna). After spending time in Italy together, an accident in Athens would bring Hanna back into Faber's life, leaving him torn between guilt and love amidst the ruins of his own fate.
This has the feeling of an existential work certainly, but this novel is of greater depth when dealing with the unusual predicaments Faber finds himself in. There is an air of precision and efficiency in Frisch's writing, the restrained, repetition and rhythm combined with shifts forward and back in time create a remarkable tension. The pragmatic Faber is spare, unromantic and sometimes damn right obnoxious, a character who engenders empathy, and as the forces that be conspire against him, you can't help feel for the poor man, as of all the people on the planet (this being the 50's so the population would have been smaller than today, but even still!) he falls for the one person he shouldn't have. But he slowly starts to reveal a humanistic side not seen before, he is obliged to admit that he has found himself caught in a flood of coincidences, and dwindling to hold to this as an excuse to absolve his part in the tragedy that ultimately unfolds. At least until that is no longer possible.
With respect to the women, (they basically hold the key to the stories progression) Frisch intentionally places very strong, independent women in his protagonist’s line of sight, and they are the women who hold the deepest attraction for him. my only problem (that wasn't really a problem, just something to get used to) was the long paragraphs of animated description, broken by single stark statement, set alone, which at first I found irritating but this didn't affect the flow of the narrative significantly. As for Faber, there is one line I will never forget, where he describes the towering skyscrapers of New York as 'Tombstones', this being decades before 9/11, in a sinister kind of way, it makes sense now.
The narrator, Walter Faber, a Swiss bachelor heading towards fifty, is an analytical, headstrong but somewhat misanthropic individual, who's life is about to seriously land him on the ropes. A man of science, heading to South America on business to do with a project involving turbines. Unfortunately for him, his plane making an emergency landing in the Mexican desert was not part of the plan, and from here on in, bizarrely, Faber would face some uncanny happenings, after first of all finding his old friend Joachim dead in the jungle (the husband of Hanna, his childhood sweetheart). Later he would fall in love with a young lady, the dynamic Sabeth, whilst traveling across the Atlantic on board a ship destined for Europe (not knowing she is actually his daughter who he had with Hanna). After spending time in Italy together, an accident in Athens would bring Hanna back into Faber's life, leaving him torn between guilt and love amidst the ruins of his own fate.
This has the feeling of an existential work certainly, but this novel is of greater depth when dealing with the unusual predicaments Faber finds himself in. There is an air of precision and efficiency in Frisch's writing, the restrained, repetition and rhythm combined with shifts forward and back in time create a remarkable tension. The pragmatic Faber is spare, unromantic and sometimes damn right obnoxious, a character who engenders empathy, and as the forces that be conspire against him, you can't help feel for the poor man, as of all the people on the planet (this being the 50's so the population would have been smaller than today, but even still!) he falls for the one person he shouldn't have. But he slowly starts to reveal a humanistic side not seen before, he is obliged to admit that he has found himself caught in a flood of coincidences, and dwindling to hold to this as an excuse to absolve his part in the tragedy that ultimately unfolds. At least until that is no longer possible.
With respect to the women, (they basically hold the key to the stories progression) Frisch intentionally places very strong, independent women in his protagonist’s line of sight, and they are the women who hold the deepest attraction for him. my only problem (that wasn't really a problem, just something to get used to) was the long paragraphs of animated description, broken by single stark statement, set alone, which at first I found irritating but this didn't affect the flow of the narrative significantly. As for Faber, there is one line I will never forget, where he describes the towering skyscrapers of New York as 'Tombstones', this being decades before 9/11, in a sinister kind of way, it makes sense now.
December 20, 2016
Warning: contains major spoilers for Sophie's World
Manfred, my inner German child, is looking even smugger and more annoying than usual.
"I'm not a child any more," he informs me. "I'm grown up. I read Max Frisch's Homo Faber."
"You are a child, Manfred," I sigh. "You're only three."
"Three and a half," says Manfred with a little less confidence.
"Three and a half if you like," I agree. "And you didn't understand that book. It was too difficult for you."
"Did so," says Manfred.
"Okay, Manfred," I say. "If you understood it, why don't you tell me what it was about? Which books did it remind you of, in your vast reading experience?"
"Well," says Manfred after pretending to think, "It reminded me of Sofies Welt."
"Incredible!" I reply and roll my eyes. "Sartre's Die schmutzigen Hände reminded you of Jostein Gaarder, and this also reminded you of Jostein Gaarder! Think of the odds!"
"You underestimate Jostein Gaarder," says Manfred sullenly. I can tell he'd like to storm out and slam the door, but it's not biologically possible. He really does resent sharing my body at times like this.
"Alright," I say "Why did it remind you of Jostein Gaarder?"
"The key to the book is Hanna's speech on page 140," says Manfred. "Here it is. Der Mann sieht sich als Herr der Welt, die Frau nur als seinen Spiegel. Der Herr ist nicht gezwungen, die Sprache der Unterdrückten zu lernen; die Frau ist gezwungen, doch nützt es ihr nichts, die Sprache ihres Herrn zu lernen, im Gegenteil, sie lernt nur eine Sprache, die ihr immer unrecht gibt."
"And that means?" I ask.
"Man sees himself as the master of the world, woman only as his mirror," says Manfred. "Man is not obliged to learn the language of the subjugated class; in contrast, and although it does not help her, woman is obliged to learn the language of her master, a language which always puts her in the wrong."
"Why is that the key to the book?" I want to know.
"Walter speaks the fragmented language of the ruling male class," says Manfred. "Half the time it isn't even proper sentences, but he doesn't care. He knows engineering and chess, and that's enough for him. He pays so little attention to the coherence of his life that he doesn't even notice when--"
"No spoilers, Manfred," I remind him.
"Yeah, well, he doesn't even notice something he really should notice," says Manfred in an irritated voice. "In the end, he does start to understand the coherence that's central to Hanna's way of looking at things. But only when it's too late."
"And what's the connection to Gaarder?" I ask.
"See," says Manfred, "I suddenly realized what the real point of Sofies Welt is. The first time you read the book, you think it's a good story and the philosophy is kind of interesting but it doesn't make any sense. Like, why is the heroine a teenage girl? What's the deal with how she discovers halfway through that she's not a real girl at all, just a character in a book? Why is it so important to her to study philosophy? How does that help her get out of the book? What has any of it got to do with anything?"
"Good questions," I agree.
"But you see," says Manfred, "It makes perfect sense! That's exactly what teenage girls most need to understand. They aren't real girls. They're just social constructs. Fictitious characters in a male narrative."
Where on earth is he getting all this jargon from? Has he been reading feminist theory? But that's clearly impossible.
"And the only way they'll ever escape from that narrative is by studying philosophy," concludes Manfred with satisfaction. "It all came to me when I was reading Homo Faber."
An even more impossible hypothesis crosses my mind: has he got a girlfriend?
"That's for me to know and you to find out," says Manfred smugly. "Interview concluded."
Manfred, my inner German child, is looking even smugger and more annoying than usual.
"I'm not a child any more," he informs me. "I'm grown up. I read Max Frisch's Homo Faber."
"You are a child, Manfred," I sigh. "You're only three."
"Three and a half," says Manfred with a little less confidence.
"Three and a half if you like," I agree. "And you didn't understand that book. It was too difficult for you."
"Did so," says Manfred.
"Okay, Manfred," I say. "If you understood it, why don't you tell me what it was about? Which books did it remind you of, in your vast reading experience?"
"Well," says Manfred after pretending to think, "It reminded me of Sofies Welt."
"Incredible!" I reply and roll my eyes. "Sartre's Die schmutzigen Hände reminded you of Jostein Gaarder, and this also reminded you of Jostein Gaarder! Think of the odds!"
"You underestimate Jostein Gaarder," says Manfred sullenly. I can tell he'd like to storm out and slam the door, but it's not biologically possible. He really does resent sharing my body at times like this.
"Alright," I say "Why did it remind you of Jostein Gaarder?"
"The key to the book is Hanna's speech on page 140," says Manfred. "Here it is. Der Mann sieht sich als Herr der Welt, die Frau nur als seinen Spiegel. Der Herr ist nicht gezwungen, die Sprache der Unterdrückten zu lernen; die Frau ist gezwungen, doch nützt es ihr nichts, die Sprache ihres Herrn zu lernen, im Gegenteil, sie lernt nur eine Sprache, die ihr immer unrecht gibt."
"And that means?" I ask.
"Man sees himself as the master of the world, woman only as his mirror," says Manfred. "Man is not obliged to learn the language of the subjugated class; in contrast, and although it does not help her, woman is obliged to learn the language of her master, a language which always puts her in the wrong."
"Why is that the key to the book?" I want to know.
"Walter speaks the fragmented language of the ruling male class," says Manfred. "Half the time it isn't even proper sentences, but he doesn't care. He knows engineering and chess, and that's enough for him. He pays so little attention to the coherence of his life that he doesn't even notice when--"
"No spoilers, Manfred," I remind him.
"Yeah, well, he doesn't even notice something he really should notice," says Manfred in an irritated voice. "In the end, he does start to understand the coherence that's central to Hanna's way of looking at things. But only when it's too late."
"And what's the connection to Gaarder?" I ask.
"See," says Manfred, "I suddenly realized what the real point of Sofies Welt is. The first time you read the book, you think it's a good story and the philosophy is kind of interesting but it doesn't make any sense. Like, why is the heroine a teenage girl? What's the deal with how she discovers halfway through that she's not a real girl at all, just a character in a book? Why is it so important to her to study philosophy? How does that help her get out of the book? What has any of it got to do with anything?"
"Good questions," I agree.
"But you see," says Manfred, "It makes perfect sense! That's exactly what teenage girls most need to understand. They aren't real girls. They're just social constructs. Fictitious characters in a male narrative."
Where on earth is he getting all this jargon from? Has he been reading feminist theory? But that's clearly impossible.
"And the only way they'll ever escape from that narrative is by studying philosophy," concludes Manfred with satisfaction. "It all came to me when I was reading Homo Faber."
An even more impossible hypothesis crosses my mind: has he got a girlfriend?
"That's for me to know and you to find out," says Manfred smugly. "Interview concluded."
Read
June 5, 2023Book-related serendipities happen to me often. Indeed, they happen so often that my own willing suspension of disbelief is sometimes put to the test—never mind that of the people who may read about such happenings in my reviews. If you have patience for another improbable-sounding serendipity, here goes:
In the early pages of Homo Faber, the narrator, a Swiss engineer called Walter Faber, talks about probability:
Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the one will come up approximately 1,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term probability includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.
I marked that passage without realizing just how significant it would turn out to be for the plot of this novel—and never dreaming that it would also apply to my experience of reading it.
It's a very fine novel, written in the 1950s, with echoes of the kind of journey into the unknown you get in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. There are also echoes of the fate-laden family dynamics you find in a Greek tragedy.
On a flight to Central America for work, the narrator, Walter Faber, finds himself sitting beside a man who turns out to be the brother of his old friend Joachim whom Faber hasn't heard of in decades. Because of an emergency landing due to engine failure (and the reader can't help thinking this is a metaphor for engineer Faber who seems to be experiencing some sort of life crisis himself), the two men bond sufficiently for Faber to decide to abandon his own work assignment and accompany this man into the dark heart of the Guatemalan rainforests in search of his brother. After days and days of difficult travel they eventually reach a remote place where they find out what has become of Joachim. That's the first part of the book and reads like a novella in itself.
The second part is about Faber's return journey to Europe, by ship this time. He finds himself assigned to the same dinner table on the ship as a young woman who reminds him of someone in his past. In spite of him having a very cool scientific mind , and her having a much more artistic and passionate temperament, by the end of the voyage, they've struck up enough rapport to decide to travel on together by car to her destination in Athens, stopping to visit famous places along the way.
The third part of the book concerns their arrival in Greece. It is there that Faber realises just how closely this woman whom he met so accidentally on the ship, is connected to himself—and to his old friend Joachim whom, again accidentally, he'd been searching for in the rainforests of Guatemala. What were the chances!
But before they get to Greece, Faber and his companion spend a short time in Rome. While they are there, they drive out to Tivoli to visit the Emperor Hadrian's famous villa and gardens. On the way back to the city centre they find themselves on Via San Giovanni in Laterano. Now comes my serendipitous moment: I had been spending a few days in Rome when I read that section, and had just been to visit Tivoli, because it is the setting of Marguerite Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien, which is a favourite book of mine. But the thing is, while I was in Rome, I stayed in two different locations, the second of which was an apartment on the Via San Giovanni in Laterano. What are the chances that a long book I've been reading mentions the place where I'm temporally staying just when I happen to be reading that short section?
As I said at the beginning, such serendipities happen to me a lot so I'm inclined to think they are not so much improbabilities as happy alignments due to voracious and varied reading. It's a bit akin to the eclipse of the moon that Faber witnesses during the narrative. Because of the earth's and the moon's orbits, the two will inevitably find themselves in a straight line with the sun from time to time.
Good books like this are my sun. And if their locations are sometimes aligned with my own, whether by accident or by design, the combined experience is a pleasure that eclipses many many others!
In the early pages of Homo Faber, the narrator, a Swiss engineer called Walter Faber, talks about probability:
Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the one will come up approximately 1,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term probability includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.
I marked that passage without realizing just how significant it would turn out to be for the plot of this novel—and never dreaming that it would also apply to my experience of reading it.
It's a very fine novel, written in the 1950s, with echoes of the kind of journey into the unknown you get in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. There are also echoes of the fate-laden family dynamics you find in a Greek tragedy.
On a flight to Central America for work, the narrator, Walter Faber, finds himself sitting beside a man who turns out to be the brother of his old friend Joachim whom Faber hasn't heard of in decades. Because of an emergency landing due to engine failure (and the reader can't help thinking this is a metaphor for engineer Faber who seems to be experiencing some sort of life crisis himself), the two men bond sufficiently for Faber to decide to abandon his own work assignment and accompany this man into the dark heart of the Guatemalan rainforests in search of his brother. After days and days of difficult travel they eventually reach a remote place where they find out what has become of Joachim. That's the first part of the book and reads like a novella in itself.
The second part is about Faber's return journey to Europe, by ship this time. He finds himself assigned to the same dinner table on the ship as a young woman who reminds him of someone in his past. In spite of him having a very cool scientific mind , and her having a much more artistic and passionate temperament, by the end of the voyage, they've struck up enough rapport to decide to travel on together by car to her destination in Athens, stopping to visit famous places along the way.
The third part of the book concerns their arrival in Greece. It is there that Faber realises just how closely this woman whom he met so accidentally on the ship, is connected to himself—and to his old friend Joachim whom, again accidentally, he'd been searching for in the rainforests of Guatemala. What were the chances!
But before they get to Greece, Faber and his companion spend a short time in Rome. While they are there, they drive out to Tivoli to visit the Emperor Hadrian's famous villa and gardens. On the way back to the city centre they find themselves on Via San Giovanni in Laterano. Now comes my serendipitous moment: I had been spending a few days in Rome when I read that section, and had just been to visit Tivoli, because it is the setting of Marguerite Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien, which is a favourite book of mine. But the thing is, while I was in Rome, I stayed in two different locations, the second of which was an apartment on the Via San Giovanni in Laterano. What are the chances that a long book I've been reading mentions the place where I'm temporally staying just when I happen to be reading that short section?
As I said at the beginning, such serendipities happen to me a lot so I'm inclined to think they are not so much improbabilities as happy alignments due to voracious and varied reading. It's a bit akin to the eclipse of the moon that Faber witnesses during the narrative. Because of the earth's and the moon's orbits, the two will inevitably find themselves in a straight line with the sun from time to time.
Good books like this are my sun. And if their locations are sometimes aligned with my own, whether by accident or by design, the combined experience is a pleasure that eclipses many many others!
February 11, 2022
Good God, my German teacher forced us to read this in 8th-grade and up to this day I don't understand why you would force 14-year-olds to read about incest and call it a day???
November 27, 2011
oh my god I am so glad to be done with this tortuous book. I appreciate the other reviewers who point out the reasons for this story's existence. It is very well-written and I suppose it serves to remind us not to live like robots, to have feelings. Fortunately I don't live like a robot and I already have many feelings, thank you very much, so for me reading this was like spending hours and hours with a depressed and depressing very sad old man who is telling me all his regrets without even really having learned anything from them. Very painful, dreary.
December 12, 2018
A Swiss Heart of Darkness
An engineer with an engineering outlook on life, the eponymous Homo (Walter) Faber believes in the randomness of existence. But he fails to recognise that such randomness is equivalent to a kind of cosmic spontaneity. And that such spontaneity implies some sort of spirit. He insists on the absolute disjunction between spirit and matter. The former is emotional, sentimental and soft. The latter is masculine and what constitutes reality, what can be measured, assembled and disassembled, and kicked with one’s foot. “Technology instead of mysticism,” is how he puts it.
That there should be any sort of continuity between physical matter and emotional spirit is not a consideration for Walter. Art bores him; ancient ruins are merely old. Consequently, neither does he comprehend the possibility of love. If strictly random materiality is all that exists, casual affection can be a fact, but certainly not self-less love. A silent declaration sums him up:
Homo Faber, true to his name, is above all practical, a maker, a fixer, at least in those aspects of life he regards as real. He can repair things like automobiles, turbines, and electric shavers. He knows the theories of cybernetics, plumbing, and electricity. He knows his way around the engine room of a ship.
But Walter is aesthetically and emotionally dead to most of the world around him. While a companion quietly appreciates a tropical sunset, Walter’s only thought is sarcastic: “Herbert stood there, still experiencing.” And he can neither commit to, nor abandon his married girlfriend. He can’t decide what relationship he wants with a young girl who is, unknown to them both, his daughter. He even dithers repeatedly about where he intends to go and why.
Walter records everything from Mayan ruins to the harbour of New York with the latest high-tech cameras, but he doesn’t know why, and he has no use for the results. He has had exactly one one friend in his life, whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years. And the daughter he knew nothing about had been raised by this one friend, who had married her mother. The friend is found, by a series of improbable coincidences, dead by suicide in a remote Central American jungle. Equally improbably, Walter encounters the daughter on his voyage home to Europe.
Faber‘s monadic existence he finds not in the least unpleasant. He has freedom - to travel, to think, to meet others - that any sort of close relationship would impede. But the encounter with his daughter disturbs his equilibrium. Although only fifty, he feels suddenly old, tired, irrelevant in her presence. But the discovery that she is quite possibly his daughter is understandably even more de-stabilising. The order of his existence is torn apart, its logic made nonsensical.
The possibility that Walter has had sex with his daughter is the ultimate dislocation. The mother’s question is precisely the reader’s: “How far did you go with the child?” Randomness must be accompanied by something of the spirit and not a small degree of love for his life to retain any coherence whatsoever.
Frisch has more than a touch of Patricia Highsmith: of Studebaker and Nash automobiles, transatlantic sea voyages, post-war Mediterranean exoticism, as well as of her sexual ambiguity, incipient incest and public homosexuality. He has produced a period piece to rival even hers.
An engineer with an engineering outlook on life, the eponymous Homo (Walter) Faber believes in the randomness of existence. But he fails to recognise that such randomness is equivalent to a kind of cosmic spontaneity. And that such spontaneity implies some sort of spirit. He insists on the absolute disjunction between spirit and matter. The former is emotional, sentimental and soft. The latter is masculine and what constitutes reality, what can be measured, assembled and disassembled, and kicked with one’s foot. “Technology instead of mysticism,” is how he puts it.
That there should be any sort of continuity between physical matter and emotional spirit is not a consideration for Walter. Art bores him; ancient ruins are merely old. Consequently, neither does he comprehend the possibility of love. If strictly random materiality is all that exists, casual affection can be a fact, but certainly not self-less love. A silent declaration sums him up:
“Caresses in the evening, yes, but I can’t stand caresses in the morning, and frankly more than three or four days with one woman has always been for me the beginning of dissimulation, no man can stand feelings in the morning. I’d rather wash dishes!”
Homo Faber, true to his name, is above all practical, a maker, a fixer, at least in those aspects of life he regards as real. He can repair things like automobiles, turbines, and electric shavers. He knows the theories of cybernetics, plumbing, and electricity. He knows his way around the engine room of a ship.
But Walter is aesthetically and emotionally dead to most of the world around him. While a companion quietly appreciates a tropical sunset, Walter’s only thought is sarcastic: “Herbert stood there, still experiencing.” And he can neither commit to, nor abandon his married girlfriend. He can’t decide what relationship he wants with a young girl who is, unknown to them both, his daughter. He even dithers repeatedly about where he intends to go and why.
Walter records everything from Mayan ruins to the harbour of New York with the latest high-tech cameras, but he doesn’t know why, and he has no use for the results. He has had exactly one one friend in his life, whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years. And the daughter he knew nothing about had been raised by this one friend, who had married her mother. The friend is found, by a series of improbable coincidences, dead by suicide in a remote Central American jungle. Equally improbably, Walter encounters the daughter on his voyage home to Europe.
Faber‘s monadic existence he finds not in the least unpleasant. He has freedom - to travel, to think, to meet others - that any sort of close relationship would impede. But the encounter with his daughter disturbs his equilibrium. Although only fifty, he feels suddenly old, tired, irrelevant in her presence. But the discovery that she is quite possibly his daughter is understandably even more de-stabilising. The order of his existence is torn apart, its logic made nonsensical.
The possibility that Walter has had sex with his daughter is the ultimate dislocation. The mother’s question is precisely the reader’s: “How far did you go with the child?” Randomness must be accompanied by something of the spirit and not a small degree of love for his life to retain any coherence whatsoever.
Frisch has more than a touch of Patricia Highsmith: of Studebaker and Nash automobiles, transatlantic sea voyages, post-war Mediterranean exoticism, as well as of her sexual ambiguity, incipient incest and public homosexuality. He has produced a period piece to rival even hers.
April 10, 2017
I had never heard of this book, or of its author, but boy am I glad I decided to buy it on a whim. It is a work that deserves to stand with Camus and Sartre in its penetration of the modern condition; an understanding of which is in each case elucidated through the perspective of a misanthrope.
The protagonist, Faber, is an engineer, who is characterised by certain stereotypically male traits: he lacks empathy, and is logical and analytical to the point of inhumanity. He treats significant events - even those of life and death - more or less with apathy, and purely as the culmination of probabilistic forces. His world is at the precipice of technological rebirth. There is a hint of wonders to come: the arrival of computers, and the ease of travel and communication. On an allegorical level, Faber himself embodies this human potential.
The title, Homo Faber, is a play on words that could be seen to bear multiple meanings. The phrase itself is Latin, and means "Man the Maker", signifying man's potential for shaping the future. The second meaning is simply the direct identification of the protagonist: Homo Faber; or, Faber, the man, who is prototypically male, yet whose experience and condition is no greater than that of any ordinary man. I see a third meaning, which is that of a taxonomic designation - Homo Faber, as contrasted with Homo Sapiens. If Homo Sapiens is the wise man, then Homo Faber is the species which has substituted its wisdom for deed, and acts without concern for the repercussions.
These themes stand quite aside from the central story of the novel, and yet are woven subtly throughout. There is much here for the reader to grapple with. Unfortunately to say any more would be to spoil the story - the gradual revelation of its enormity, and the questions around the complicity of the characters represent the greatest pleasure this book has to offer.
"Homo faber suae quisque fortunae"? To what extent does this hold true for the three central characters? I notice now that there may be a fourth implication of the title, which is one of mocking irony.
The protagonist, Faber, is an engineer, who is characterised by certain stereotypically male traits: he lacks empathy, and is logical and analytical to the point of inhumanity. He treats significant events - even those of life and death - more or less with apathy, and purely as the culmination of probabilistic forces. His world is at the precipice of technological rebirth. There is a hint of wonders to come: the arrival of computers, and the ease of travel and communication. On an allegorical level, Faber himself embodies this human potential.
The title, Homo Faber, is a play on words that could be seen to bear multiple meanings. The phrase itself is Latin, and means "Man the Maker", signifying man's potential for shaping the future. The second meaning is simply the direct identification of the protagonist: Homo Faber; or, Faber, the man, who is prototypically male, yet whose experience and condition is no greater than that of any ordinary man. I see a third meaning, which is that of a taxonomic designation - Homo Faber, as contrasted with Homo Sapiens. If Homo Sapiens is the wise man, then Homo Faber is the species which has substituted its wisdom for deed, and acts without concern for the repercussions.
These themes stand quite aside from the central story of the novel, and yet are woven subtly throughout. There is much here for the reader to grapple with. Unfortunately to say any more would be to spoil the story - the gradual revelation of its enormity, and the questions around the complicity of the characters represent the greatest pleasure this book has to offer.
"Homo faber suae quisque fortunae"? To what extent does this hold true for the three central characters? I notice now that there may be a fourth implication of the title, which is one of mocking irony.
Read
December 15, 2017What a difference a reread makes. Now I want to seize everybody in turn by the lapels and say 'read this book and then read it again!'.
Unusually I know when I had the book for the first time, the Easter of 1995, there's an inscription in my Mother's handwriting on a flyleaf with that date. Now I've read it again, but also read it for the first time. You can't read the same book twice since you never can be the same reader.
The narrator doesn't see things that way. He is told: "technology..the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it...technology as the knack of eliminating the world as resistance, for example, of diluting it by speed, so that we don't have to experience it...the technologist's worldlessness...technologists try to live without death". However the narrator's dissertation on Maxwell's demon was uncompleted. Life intervenes. The world intervenes. Repeatedly. The willfully blind man is forced to see.
Max Frisch was Swiss. This novel written in 1957. As with Dürrenmatt's The Judge and His Hangman the war is in the background souring the lives of men who go profoundly off the rails years later.
I like the opening to this book very much. I get a good sense of the main character, the time and his way of life. Brief images are very powerful. From the first we see how the narrator has lost sense of himself. He's on the verge of a breakdown but can't see it. He hangs back from revelations the reader perceives. He transfers his own sudden, inexplicable, oddness to his around him. His past opens up and swallows him whole.
Homo Faber is the title. What does man fabricate if not his own tragedy.
Rereading there is a sudden sharpness in the descriptions of places. I smell an ocean I've never seen, see the oozing red mud of a continent I've never stepped foot on and my stomach feels as though I've smoked too many cigars. The disrupted, interrupted narrative works to give the effect of being in his mind, increasingly discontinuous and illustrates his ignorance of himself. The man who made himself does not know himself. The narrator talks about cybernetics but is deaf and blind to the feedback. Nowadays we can give tragedy a technologist's name and call it systems collapse.
Unusually I know when I had the book for the first time, the Easter of 1995, there's an inscription in my Mother's handwriting on a flyleaf with that date. Now I've read it again, but also read it for the first time. You can't read the same book twice since you never can be the same reader.
The narrator doesn't see things that way. He is told: "technology..the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it...technology as the knack of eliminating the world as resistance, for example, of diluting it by speed, so that we don't have to experience it...the technologist's worldlessness...technologists try to live without death". However the narrator's dissertation on Maxwell's demon was uncompleted. Life intervenes. The world intervenes. Repeatedly. The willfully blind man is forced to see.
Max Frisch was Swiss. This novel written in 1957. As with Dürrenmatt's The Judge and His Hangman the war is in the background souring the lives of men who go profoundly off the rails years later.
I like the opening to this book very much. I get a good sense of the main character, the time and his way of life. Brief images are very powerful. From the first we see how the narrator has lost sense of himself. He's on the verge of a breakdown but can't see it. He hangs back from revelations the reader perceives. He transfers his own sudden, inexplicable, oddness to his around him. His past opens up and swallows him whole.
Homo Faber is the title. What does man fabricate if not his own tragedy.
Rereading there is a sudden sharpness in the descriptions of places. I smell an ocean I've never seen, see the oozing red mud of a continent I've never stepped foot on and my stomach feels as though I've smoked too many cigars. The disrupted, interrupted narrative works to give the effect of being in his mind, increasingly discontinuous and illustrates his ignorance of himself. The man who made himself does not know himself. The narrator talks about cybernetics but is deaf and blind to the feedback. Nowadays we can give tragedy a technologist's name and call it systems collapse.
March 7, 2024
DNF @ can't even be bothered to open the book again to check
Story about a guy who hates everything except for his daughter. In fact, he likes her so much he wants to bang her.
Thanks, no thanks.
Story about a guy who hates everything except for his daughter. In fact, he likes her so much he wants to bang her.
Thanks, no thanks.
July 2, 2020
Παγκόσμια λογοτεχνία στο αποκορύφωμα της.
Ο άνθρωπος τεχνίτης, ήταν ένας πλανόδιος πωλητής ηλιοβασιλεμάτων, ένας μηχανικός λάτρης
της παρεμβατικής - στη φύση - εξελισσόμενης επιστήμης και κυνικός τζογαδόρος της ζωής
βάσει πιθανοτήτων.
Ο Walter Faber, μηχανικός, είναι ένας άνθρωπος
για τον οποίο υπάρχει μόνο το απτό,
το εμπεριστατωμένο, το υπολογίσιμο και επαληθεύσιμο. Είναι αφοσιωμένος στην υπηρεσία ενός καθαρά τεχνολογικού κόσμου. Θεωρεί ακλόνητο σύστημα επαλήθευσης των ιδεών και της αυταπάτης του τον ηλεκτρονικό διαχειριστή των προγραμματιστών ή απλώς βρίσκει διέξοδο απο το συναίσθημα στη λογική μαθηματική επαλήθευση.
Η πατρίδα του θεωρείται
απο τον Faber ένα πλαίσιο εγκλωβισμού, παράλληλα με την θρησκευτική και πολιτική εξουσία που τις αντιλαμβάνεται ως μορφές μαζικής αυταπάτης.
Οι συνεργάτες του τον ονόμασαν Homo Faber!...
Κατά τη διάρκεια μιας πτήσης προς τη Νότια Αμερική,
ο Faber ασφυκτιά και παραδίνεται σε αυτό που αποκαλεί «φαινόμενα κόπωσης», χάνοντας την επαφή με την πραγματικότητα. Η μοίρα και η τραγική ειρωνία τον χλευάζουν και το πολύπλοκο σύστημα ορθολογιστικής σκέψης μπερδεύει τα ακλόνητα δεδομένα του.
Περνώντας πολλά στάδια εσωτερικής διεργασίας και συλλογισμών με τα παιχνίδια
του χωροχρόνου να επιβάλλουν την αφήγηση και την πλοκή, προσπαθεί μέσα απο έναν ζωηρά περίπλοκο κόσμο να αναζητήσει την ταυτότητα του, τον πραγματικό του υπαρξιακό προσανατολισμό, όχι επειδή θέλει ευτυχία και καταξίωση
μα επειδή απλά λιτά και απέριττα θα ήθελε να πεθάνει με έναν πολύ δικό του, πολύ προσωπικό θάνατο.
Σύντομα βρέθηκε να διασχίζει τον κόσμο, από τη
Νέα Υόρκη στη Γαλλία έως την Ιταλία και την Ελλάδα. Βρίσκεται επίσης μαγεμένος απο τη συντροφιά μιας γυναίκας που τη γέννησαν αρχαίοι Ελληνικοί μύθοι. Είναι ένας άνδρας του οποίου η ζωή βυθίζεται από τους ανέμους της σύμπτωσης και καθοδηγείται από τις επιλογές του νεαρού γυναικείου χαρακτήρα που - για λόγους που δεν μπορεί να εξηγήσει ή να καταλάβει - τον προσελκύει έντονα.
Η αγάπη τον παραμόρφωσε του φέρθηκε σκληρά και ανελέητα. Ίσως και να τον τιμώρησε, ίσως η τυχαιότητα που πιθανολογούσε, αναγκαστικά βρέθηκε αντιμέτωπη με τους περιορισμούς της προοπτικής του.
Ίσως έπρεπε ή μπορεί και να έτυχε, ένας τεχνοκράτης που μάλλον δεν μπόρεσε να ελέγξει τη ζωή και τον κόσμο τριγύρω του.
Παρά το αίσθημα ματαιότητας που αποπνέει απο τις σκέψεις του και την αίσθηση της σκοτεινής πλευράς
των ανθρώπων όταν θεριεύει απο την
πολυπολιτισμική βρομιά και την πουλημένη πολιτιστική κληρονομιά της εγκατάλειψης, της εκμετάλλευσης και των εκπληκτικών μνημείων ως αποδείξεις της έμβιας εξέλιξης, που επιβιώνει σε μια αναπτυξιακά εκφυλισμένη Ευρώπη, σε μια οικουμένη, δεν είναι μια μίζερη ιστορία δυστυχίας, κακομοιριάς και μοιραίας υπαινικτικής διάστασης.
Ορκισμένος θιασώτης μέχρι τέλους στους νόμους των πιθανοτήτων και στην ιερότητα της στατιστικής θεάς των ποσοστώσεων.
Ένας άνδρας που διαχειριζόταν εύκολα την έλλειψη συναισθηματικής νοημοσύνης, ένας κοσμικά ψυχρός, αδέσμευτος ταξιδευτής που ήξερε να μην αφιερώνεται στο παρόν αφού το μέλλον δεν θα τελειώσει, δεν θα περάσει ποτέ.
Ο Μαξ Φρις γράφει στεγνά και στυγνά σαν ψυχρός δολοφόνος με νηφάλια αντιμετώπιση των προγραμματισμένων ύβρεων, με άσπλαχνη, απόλυτα ορθολογιστική διάθεση για τη ζωή και το θάνατο, τις μυσταγωγικές, μεταφυσικές και προληπτικές σκευωρίες που εναλλάσσουν την τύχη με μοίρα και το πιθανό με το πεπρωμένο σε κάθε διάσταση αρχαίας ή σύγχρονης τραγωδίας.
Ο αντεστραμμένος Οιδίποδας γράφτηκε στη δεκαετία του 1950 αλλά με μια εκπληκτικά σύγχρονη αίσθηση.
Ο συγγραφέας είναι Ελβετός και ένας από τους κορυφαίους μεταπολεμικούς συγγραφείς της γερμανικής λογοτεχνίας.
Ένα αριστοτεχνικά πολυεπίπεδο και αποτελεσματικό βιβλίο ριζοσπαστικής λογοτεχνίας.
(Προαιρετική συμβουλή :
Να διαβαστεί μετά τον
“Στίλερ", Max Frisch)
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.
Ο άνθρωπος τεχνίτης, ήταν ένας πλανόδιος πωλητής ηλιοβασιλεμάτων, ένας μηχανικός λάτρης
της παρεμβατικής - στη φύση - εξελισσόμενης επιστήμης και κυνικός τζογαδόρος της ζωής
βάσει πιθανοτήτων.
Ο Walter Faber, μηχανικός, είναι ένας άνθρωπος
για τον οποίο υπάρχει μόνο το απτό,
το εμπεριστατωμένο, το υπολογίσιμο και επαληθεύσιμο. Είναι αφοσιωμένος στην υπηρεσία ενός καθαρά τεχνολογικού κόσμου. Θεωρεί ακλόνητο σύστημα επαλήθευσης των ιδεών και της αυταπάτης του τον ηλεκτρονικό διαχειριστή των προγραμματιστών ή απλώς βρίσκει διέξοδο απο το συναίσθημα στη λογική μαθηματική επαλήθευση.
Η πατρίδα του θεωρείται
απο τον Faber ένα πλαίσιο εγκλωβισμού, παράλληλα με την θρησκευτική και πολιτική εξουσία που τις αντιλαμβάνεται ως μορφές μαζικής αυταπάτης.
Οι συνεργάτες του τον ονόμασαν Homo Faber!...
Κατά τη διάρκεια μιας πτήσης προς τη Νότια Αμερική,
ο Faber ασφυκτιά και παραδίνεται σε αυτό που αποκαλεί «φαινόμενα κόπωσης», χάνοντας την επαφή με την πραγματικότητα. Η μοίρα και η τραγική ειρωνία τον χλευάζουν και το πολύπλοκο σύστημα ορθολογιστικής σκέψης μπερδεύει τα ακλόνητα δεδομένα του.
Περνώντας πολλά στάδια εσωτερικής διεργασίας και συλλογισμών με τα παιχνίδια
του χωροχρόνου να επιβάλλουν την αφήγηση και την πλοκή, προσπαθεί μέσα απο έναν ζωηρά περίπλοκο κόσμο να αναζητήσει την ταυτότητα του, τον πραγματικό του υπαρξιακό προσανατολισμό, όχι επειδή θέλει ευτυχία και καταξίωση
μα επειδή απλά λιτά και απέριττα θα ήθελε να πεθάνει με έναν πολύ δικό του, πολύ προσωπικό θάνατο.
Σύντομα βρέθηκε να διασχίζει τον κόσμο, από τη
Νέα Υόρκη στη Γαλλία έως την Ιταλία και την Ελλάδα. Βρίσκεται επίσης μαγεμένος απο τη συντροφιά μιας γυναίκας που τη γέννησαν αρχαίοι Ελληνικοί μύθοι. Είναι ένας άνδρας του οποίου η ζωή βυθίζεται από τους ανέμους της σύμπτωσης και καθοδηγείται από τις επιλογές του νεαρού γυναικείου χαρακτήρα που - για λόγους που δεν μπορεί να εξηγήσει ή να καταλάβει - τον προσελκύει έντονα.
Η αγάπη τον παραμόρφωσε του φέρθηκε σκληρά και ανελέητα. Ίσως και να τον τιμώρησε, ίσως η τυχαιότητα που πιθανολογούσε, αναγκαστικά βρέθηκε αντιμέτωπη με τους περιορισμούς της προοπτικής του.
Ίσως έπρεπε ή μπορεί και να έτυχε, ένας τεχνοκράτης που μάλλον δεν μπόρεσε να ελέγξει τη ζωή και τον κόσμο τριγύρω του.
Παρά το αίσθημα ματαιότητας που αποπνέει απο τις σκέψεις του και την αίσθηση της σκοτεινής πλευράς
των ανθρώπων όταν θεριεύει απο την
πολυπολιτισμική βρομιά και την πουλημένη πολιτιστική κληρονομιά της εγκατάλειψης, της εκμετάλλευσης και των εκπληκτικών μνημείων ως αποδείξεις της έμβιας εξέλιξης, που επιβιώνει σε μια αναπτυξιακά εκφυλισμένη Ευρώπη, σε μια οικουμένη, δεν είναι μια μίζερη ιστορία δυστυχίας, κακομοιριάς και μοιραίας υπαινικτικής διάστασης.
Ορκισμένος θιασώτης μέχρι τέλους στους νόμους των πιθανοτήτων και στην ιερότητα της στατιστικής θεάς των ποσοστώσεων.
Ένας άνδρας που διαχειριζόταν εύκολα την έλλειψη συναισθηματικής νοημοσύνης, ένας κοσμικά ψυχρός, αδέσμευτος ταξιδευτής που ήξερε να μην αφιερώνεται στο παρόν αφού το μέλλον δεν θα τελειώσει, δεν θα περάσει ποτέ.
Ο Μαξ Φρις γράφει στεγνά και στυγνά σαν ψυχρός δολοφόνος με νηφάλια αντιμετώπιση των προγραμματισμένων ύβρεων, με άσπλαχνη, απόλυτα ορθολογιστική διάθεση για τη ζωή και το θάνατο, τις μυσταγωγικές, μεταφυσικές και προληπτικές σκευωρίες που εναλλάσσουν την τύχη με μοίρα και το πιθανό με το πεπρωμένο σε κάθε διάσταση αρχαίας ή σύγχρονης τραγωδίας.
Ο αντεστραμμένος Οιδίποδας γράφτηκε στη δεκαετία του 1950 αλλά με μια εκπληκτικά σύγχρονη αίσθηση.
Ο συγγραφέας είναι Ελβετός και ένας από τους κορυφαίους μεταπολεμικούς συγγραφείς της γερμανικής λογοτεχνίας.
Ένα αριστοτεχνικά πολυεπίπεδο και αποτελεσματικό βιβλίο ριζοσπαστικής λογοτεχνίας.
(Προαιρετική συμβουλή :
Να διαβαστεί μετά τον
“Στίλερ", Max Frisch)
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.
August 5, 2020
Ich hatte das Buch nach der Erstlektüre vor über 25 Jahren in guter Erinnerung. Beim nochmaligen Lesen fiel mir aber nun erst auf, wie genial Max Frisch diesen Roman konzipiert und sprachlich gestaltet hat, so dass ich auf 5 Sterne erhöhe.
Es ist bestimmt eine der unwahrscheinlichsten Geschichten (außerhalb des Fantasy-Bereichs), die dem Ingenieur Walter Faber da im Jahr 1957 passierte. Er überlebt einen Flugzeugabsturz mit einem Sitznachbar, der zufällig der Bruder seines besten Freundes vor 20 Jahren war. Dann fliegt er mit diesem Bruder kurzentschlossen nach Guatemala zum ehemaligen Freund, der wiederum seine Ex-Geliebte Hanna geheiratet hatte, die wiederum ein Kind von ... Tja, mehr soll nicht verraten werden, aber das Wiedersehen mit Hanna ausgerechnet in Griechenland, wo ja auch mal ein gewisser Ödipus in familiäre Fettnäpfchen mit seinen Handlungen trat, kommt nicht von ungefähr. Wir erleben einen mit Technik durchdrungenen Protagonisten, der eigentlich nichts dem Zufall überlassen will. Wunder gibt es für nicht. Selbst die beeindruckendsten Naturphänomene findet er „nicht fantastisch, sondern erklärlich“. Der Homo Faber ist ein Rationalist, der Gefühlen keinen Raum gibt und stets vernünftig handelt.
Was macht nun das Leben mit so einem Menschen, wenn es völlig aus den Rudern gerät und nicht das Erklärliche, sondern das Unwahrscheinlichste passiert? Wie verändert sich der Vernunftsmensch, wenn Schicksal und Fügung nicht mehr verneint werden können. Interpretationsansätze finden sich da en masse, so dass es mich nicht wundert, dass das Buch gerne in der Oberstufe gelesen wird. Leider kam ich erst nach meiner Schulzeit auf Max Frisch und war beim erstmaligen Lesen wohl zu sehr auf die Handlung fixiert. Beim Wiederlesen merkte ich erst, welch raffinierte sprachliche Mittel der Autor einsetzt, um den Berichtscharakter eines Technikers zu verdeutlichen. Denn ungewöhnlicherweise ist der Untertitel des Buchs nicht etwa Roman, sondern „Ein Bericht“. Berichte schreiben Techniker, stets sachlich und chronologisch die Abläufe beschreibend. Bereits auf der erste Seite ist der Berichtscharakter deutlich, wenn genau das Flugzeug, die Warte- und die Flugzeit sowie das Wetter beschrieben werden. Doch im Verlauf verliert der Bericht immer mehr seinen Charakter und Frisch läßt den Ich-Erzähler Faber nicht mehr chronologisch berichten. Faber beginnt immer mehr über sein Leben und die Sinnhaftigkeit dahinter zu hinterfragen. Und so wird sein Bericht immer mehr zur Rechtfertigung seines mehr und mehr durch Gefühle geleiteten Lebens. Meine Bertelsmann-Ausgabe lief unter der Reihe „Liebesgeschichten der Weltliteratur“. Die sich in der zweiten Hälfte des Buchs immer mehr zu entfaltende, tragische Liebesgeschichte bringt Faber an den Rand des Todes. Oder darüber hinaus? So genau läßt sich das meiner Ansicht nach nicht sagen.
Das Buch ist erstaunlich locker und leicht zu lesen. Die Sätze sind meist kurz und eingängig, oft ist die gewohnte Syntax völlig aufgehoben. Es werden dann nur noch Begriffe durch Faber hingeworfen, wie sie in einem Gedankenstrom aufblitzen. Das hat nach meinem Empfinden schon etwas soghaftes. Aber so leicht sich das Buch lesen läßt, so komplex ist es vom Aufbau. Es hat mich zum Nachdenken gebracht darüber, wie viel Faber in mir steckt. Nehme ich das Leben für selbstverständlich oder betrachte ich jeden Tag als ein Wunder und Geschenk? Walter Faber kann einem letztlich nur leid tun, denn zu spät löst er sich aus seinen Gedankenschemata heraus. Wirklich Weltliteratur.
Es ist bestimmt eine der unwahrscheinlichsten Geschichten (außerhalb des Fantasy-Bereichs), die dem Ingenieur Walter Faber da im Jahr 1957 passierte. Er überlebt einen Flugzeugabsturz mit einem Sitznachbar, der zufällig der Bruder seines besten Freundes vor 20 Jahren war. Dann fliegt er mit diesem Bruder kurzentschlossen nach Guatemala zum ehemaligen Freund, der wiederum seine Ex-Geliebte Hanna geheiratet hatte, die wiederum ein Kind von ... Tja, mehr soll nicht verraten werden, aber das Wiedersehen mit Hanna ausgerechnet in Griechenland, wo ja auch mal ein gewisser Ödipus in familiäre Fettnäpfchen mit seinen Handlungen trat, kommt nicht von ungefähr. Wir erleben einen mit Technik durchdrungenen Protagonisten, der eigentlich nichts dem Zufall überlassen will. Wunder gibt es für nicht. Selbst die beeindruckendsten Naturphänomene findet er „nicht fantastisch, sondern erklärlich“. Der Homo Faber ist ein Rationalist, der Gefühlen keinen Raum gibt und stets vernünftig handelt.
Was macht nun das Leben mit so einem Menschen, wenn es völlig aus den Rudern gerät und nicht das Erklärliche, sondern das Unwahrscheinlichste passiert? Wie verändert sich der Vernunftsmensch, wenn Schicksal und Fügung nicht mehr verneint werden können. Interpretationsansätze finden sich da en masse, so dass es mich nicht wundert, dass das Buch gerne in der Oberstufe gelesen wird. Leider kam ich erst nach meiner Schulzeit auf Max Frisch und war beim erstmaligen Lesen wohl zu sehr auf die Handlung fixiert. Beim Wiederlesen merkte ich erst, welch raffinierte sprachliche Mittel der Autor einsetzt, um den Berichtscharakter eines Technikers zu verdeutlichen. Denn ungewöhnlicherweise ist der Untertitel des Buchs nicht etwa Roman, sondern „Ein Bericht“. Berichte schreiben Techniker, stets sachlich und chronologisch die Abläufe beschreibend. Bereits auf der erste Seite ist der Berichtscharakter deutlich, wenn genau das Flugzeug, die Warte- und die Flugzeit sowie das Wetter beschrieben werden. Doch im Verlauf verliert der Bericht immer mehr seinen Charakter und Frisch läßt den Ich-Erzähler Faber nicht mehr chronologisch berichten. Faber beginnt immer mehr über sein Leben und die Sinnhaftigkeit dahinter zu hinterfragen. Und so wird sein Bericht immer mehr zur Rechtfertigung seines mehr und mehr durch Gefühle geleiteten Lebens. Meine Bertelsmann-Ausgabe lief unter der Reihe „Liebesgeschichten der Weltliteratur“. Die sich in der zweiten Hälfte des Buchs immer mehr zu entfaltende, tragische Liebesgeschichte bringt Faber an den Rand des Todes. Oder darüber hinaus? So genau läßt sich das meiner Ansicht nach nicht sagen.
Das Buch ist erstaunlich locker und leicht zu lesen. Die Sätze sind meist kurz und eingängig, oft ist die gewohnte Syntax völlig aufgehoben. Es werden dann nur noch Begriffe durch Faber hingeworfen, wie sie in einem Gedankenstrom aufblitzen. Das hat nach meinem Empfinden schon etwas soghaftes. Aber so leicht sich das Buch lesen läßt, so komplex ist es vom Aufbau. Es hat mich zum Nachdenken gebracht darüber, wie viel Faber in mir steckt. Nehme ich das Leben für selbstverständlich oder betrachte ich jeden Tag als ein Wunder und Geschenk? Walter Faber kann einem letztlich nur leid tun, denn zu spät löst er sich aus seinen Gedankenschemata heraus. Wirklich Weltliteratur.
April 18, 2023
Очень медленное и экспрессионистское повествование о рабочих поездках инженера по Латинской Америке. Ему, Фаберу, явно все не нравится. Вода всегда вонючая, описания животных - в основном, какие-то насекомые и гады. Тон раздраженный, уставший. Все рассуждения с чувством превосходства – над индейцами, над древней ацтекской культурой. Он очень рациональный человек. Про себя ��н говорит: «Я руковожу машинами, стоящими миллионы», «инженер, стоящий двумя ногами на земле». Чувствам, искусству, вообще всему, что не может быть выражено языком цифр – не место в его жизни. Homo Фабер, как его назвала Ганна, означает «человек производящий». Этой ее шуткой показывается его ограниченность.
Главный герой живет работой, как «настоящий мужчина», как очень многие сейчас и тогда. Он привык жить один, и не может быть с женщиной больше нескольких дней, считая, что не соглашаться с этим – это лицемерие. Быть одному – единственная приемлемая форма жизни для него. Его убеждения относительно женщин и делают его одиноким. Он считает материнство оружием женщины в экономической борьбе. Мне не очень нравятся его мысли о женщинах, о разнице между предохранением и абортом. Забеременев женщина, хочет оставить ребенка. И это власть над мужчиной.
Ганна думает: Мужчина считает себя властелином мира. Женщина вынуждена знать язык своего господина – мужчины.
Превращение Homo Faber в Человека чувствующего происходит через смерть, через горевание по безвременной кончине биологической дочери Сабет, которая не была его дочерью, ибо Ганна родила ее «для себя» и не требовала от него ничего. Но и его, и читателя поразит открытие, что Сабет - его дочь, таким образом, имеет место воспроизведение известного древнегреческого мифа об Эдипе в современной интерпретации.
Интересны мысли о робототехнике, написанные, когда роботы были больше фантастикой, о том, что робот познает мир больше, чем люди. Потому что он высчитывает все. Мы уже входим в мир робототехники. Увидим, был ли прав Макс Фриш.
Главный герой живет работой, как «настоящий мужчина», как очень многие сейчас и тогда. Он привык жить один, и не может быть с женщиной больше нескольких дней, считая, что не соглашаться с этим – это лицемерие. Быть одному – единственная приемлемая форма жизни для него. Его убеждения относительно женщин и делают его одиноким. Он считает материнство оружием женщины в экономической борьбе. Мне не очень нравятся его мысли о женщинах, о разнице между предохранением и абортом. Забеременев женщина, хочет оставить ребенка. И это власть над мужчиной.
Ганна думает: Мужчина считает себя властелином мира. Женщина вынуждена знать язык своего господина – мужчины.
Превращение Homo Faber в Человека чувствующего происходит через смерть, через горевание по безвременной кончине биологической дочери Сабет, которая не была его дочерью, ибо Ганна родила ее «для себя» и не требовала от него ничего. Но и его, и читателя поразит открытие, что Сабет - его дочь, таким образом, имеет место воспроизведение известного древнегреческого мифа об Эдипе в современной интерпретации.
Интересны мысли о робототехнике, написанные, когда роботы были больше фантастикой, о том, что робот познает мир больше, чем люди. Потому что он высчитывает все. Мы уже входим в мир робототехники. Увидим, был ли прав Макс Фриш.
October 4, 2020
Modern insan ve onun katarsisini, istatistiksel bir sapmaya maruz kalan modern Oidipus özelinde anlatan bir kitap. 1957’de ikinci dünya savaşı sonrasında yükselen bilim ve mühendislik çağında, doğa, sömürge, kadınlık, kürtaj ve daha pek çok konuyu matematiksel olarak açıklamanın peşinde, şansa değil olasılığa inanan bir mühendis anlatıcımız. Ve bütün hayatı matematiksel olarak açıklamaya inanan “homo faber”in bütün hesaplarının modern bir tragedya ile çöküşü ise romanın kısa özeti. Kitabı yalnızca olay örgüsü olarak takip ettiğinizde iflah olmaz rastlantılar örgüsü tadınızı kaçırabilir. Ancak özünde modern -Avrupalı- beyaz insanın teknoloji ve doğayla çatışmasının ve doğa üzerindeki kontrolsüzlüğünün etkileyici bir anlatımı. Çok sevdim.
“Bizim karşı çıktığımız şey, doğanın putlaştırılmasıdır. Eğer bunu yapıyorsa daha mantıklı yapması gerekirdi, o zaman penisiline de, antene de, DDT'ye de, radara da vb. hayır demesi gerekirdi. Biz teknik çağda yaşıyoruz, insan doğaya egemendir, insan mühendistir, bunun tersini savunan, doğanın yaratmadığı bir köprüyü kullanmaya kalkmasın. O zaman daha mantıklı ve dürüst olup her apandisitte ölünmesi gerekir. Alın yazısı olduğu için! O zaman elektrik lambası, motor, atom enerjisi, hesap makinesi, narkoz da olmasın - o zaman defolsunlar vahşi ormanlara!”
“Bizim karşı çıktığımız şey, doğanın putlaştırılmasıdır. Eğer bunu yapıyorsa daha mantıklı yapması gerekirdi, o zaman penisiline de, antene de, DDT'ye de, radara da vb. hayır demesi gerekirdi. Biz teknik çağda yaşıyoruz, insan doğaya egemendir, insan mühendistir, bunun tersini savunan, doğanın yaratmadığı bir köprüyü kullanmaya kalkmasın. O zaman daha mantıklı ve dürüst olup her apandisitte ölünmesi gerekir. Alın yazısı olduğu için! O zaman elektrik lambası, motor, atom enerjisi, hesap makinesi, narkoz da olmasın - o zaman defolsunlar vahşi ormanlara!”
December 25, 2019
Max Frisch'ten Sessizliğin Yanıtı'nı okuyup epey sevmiştim. O nedenle yıl bitmeden bir kitabını daha okumak istedim. Homo Faber konu itibariyle beni çok heyecanlandırmamasına rağmen anlatımı yönünden oldukça kuvvetliydi. Başkarakterimiz Bay Faber gibi teknik, analitik bir adamın inanmadığı "kader" kavramıyla cebelleşmesine şahit olmak güzeldi.
Şimdi sırada Stiller var.
Tavsiye ederim.
Şimdi sırada Stiller var.
Tavsiye ederim.
May 4, 2011
“Nothing is harder than to accept oneself." - Max Frisch.
Walter Faber is a paradigm of collective identity v/s self-identity, rationality v/s irrationality and providence v/s concurrence; counter positioning free will. You cannot find yourself anywhere except in yourself. Frisch portrays the contradictory worlds of methodical reasonableness and the quandary of being a mortal. Walter believes in what he nurtures. As a technologist working for UNESCO, he lives in the present and connects with the world through scientific implications of his free will. Walter truly believes that it is mere a sequence of coincidences that fashions a man’s life, not fate. He defies the very nature of human sentiments sheltering his vulnerabilities through an itinerant lifestyle and transitory associations. Nevertheless, when circumstantial occurrences go beyond coherent justifications revealing the blatancy of Walter’s concealed emotions; the dichotomy of fate and coincidences are collided. Walter’s encounter with Herbert, his travel to the tobacco plantation, facing his uneasy past through Hannah and the sexual relation with Sabeth banishes Walter’s logic of concurrent consequences and imposes the idea of destiny. His obstinate belief that a man should not be held responsible for the actions he did not choose is shattered when guilt overrides his conscious after knowing Sabeth’s true identity. He appreciates the value of forgiveness, a concept which he had alienated himself from.
A man is a not a machine but an incongruous creature. Frisch talks about the influence of industrial age and its significance in etching human mentality. The evolution of scientific technologies has assured human beings the capabilities of capturing the materialistic wonders controlling every aspect of human survival.
Above all, however, the machine has no feelings; it feels no fear and no hope ... it operates according to the pure logic of probability. For this reason I assert that the robot perceives more accurately than man.
Walter’s fixation with the technology constantly asserts the conflict between the modern world and the so called primitive thought processes. To a spiritual mind, death is the ultimate liberation of a soul. Whereas in a scientific setting death is seen as a failure of the aortic pump. Frisch toys with the post-modernism attitude towards technology suggesting that even though technology can make life easier it cannot define the workings of human connections. Walter’s practicality in every decision shielded him from the absurdity of emotions and fear making him helpless and nauseated in his own personality, is analogous to the resolution of Antoine Roquentin in Sartre’s Nausea:-
I was thinking of belonging, I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that the green was a part of the quality of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, 1 foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered, in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature. And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things; this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, was only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness. I kept myself from making the slightest movement, but I didn't need to move in order to see, behind the trees, the blue columns and the lamp posts of the bandstand and the Velleda, in the midst of a mountain of laurel. All these objects . . . how can I explain?.......... I realized that there was no half-way house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance. If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenity were concerned. (Jean Paul Sartre; Nausea)
The underplayed incestuous approach and the irony in Walter’s analysis on abortion as a logical outcome in a civilization, shows that even though ‘man plans’ the absurdity of fate makes technology a pitiable surrogate of human identity. Ultimately, Walter’s trepidation of death and emancipation from his social identity as an engineer, proves that “Man the Maker” relates to how an individual classifies oneself from a hollow world where one cannot suffer nothing.
Walter Faber is a paradigm of collective identity v/s self-identity, rationality v/s irrationality and providence v/s concurrence; counter positioning free will. You cannot find yourself anywhere except in yourself. Frisch portrays the contradictory worlds of methodical reasonableness and the quandary of being a mortal. Walter believes in what he nurtures. As a technologist working for UNESCO, he lives in the present and connects with the world through scientific implications of his free will. Walter truly believes that it is mere a sequence of coincidences that fashions a man’s life, not fate. He defies the very nature of human sentiments sheltering his vulnerabilities through an itinerant lifestyle and transitory associations. Nevertheless, when circumstantial occurrences go beyond coherent justifications revealing the blatancy of Walter’s concealed emotions; the dichotomy of fate and coincidences are collided. Walter’s encounter with Herbert, his travel to the tobacco plantation, facing his uneasy past through Hannah and the sexual relation with Sabeth banishes Walter’s logic of concurrent consequences and imposes the idea of destiny. His obstinate belief that a man should not be held responsible for the actions he did not choose is shattered when guilt overrides his conscious after knowing Sabeth’s true identity. He appreciates the value of forgiveness, a concept which he had alienated himself from.
A man is a not a machine but an incongruous creature. Frisch talks about the influence of industrial age and its significance in etching human mentality. The evolution of scientific technologies has assured human beings the capabilities of capturing the materialistic wonders controlling every aspect of human survival.
Above all, however, the machine has no feelings; it feels no fear and no hope ... it operates according to the pure logic of probability. For this reason I assert that the robot perceives more accurately than man.
Walter’s fixation with the technology constantly asserts the conflict between the modern world and the so called primitive thought processes. To a spiritual mind, death is the ultimate liberation of a soul. Whereas in a scientific setting death is seen as a failure of the aortic pump. Frisch toys with the post-modernism attitude towards technology suggesting that even though technology can make life easier it cannot define the workings of human connections. Walter’s practicality in every decision shielded him from the absurdity of emotions and fear making him helpless and nauseated in his own personality, is analogous to the resolution of Antoine Roquentin in Sartre’s Nausea:-
I was thinking of belonging, I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that the green was a part of the quality of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, 1 foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered, in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form which was added to external things without changing anything in their nature. And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things; this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, was only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness. I kept myself from making the slightest movement, but I didn't need to move in order to see, behind the trees, the blue columns and the lamp posts of the bandstand and the Velleda, in the midst of a mountain of laurel. All these objects . . . how can I explain?.......... I realized that there was no half-way house between non-existence and this flaunting abundance. If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenity were concerned. (Jean Paul Sartre; Nausea)
The underplayed incestuous approach and the irony in Walter’s analysis on abortion as a logical outcome in a civilization, shows that even though ‘man plans’ the absurdity of fate makes technology a pitiable surrogate of human identity. Ultimately, Walter’s trepidation of death and emancipation from his social identity as an engineer, proves that “Man the Maker” relates to how an individual classifies oneself from a hollow world where one cannot suffer nothing.
October 5, 2020
"Benim için yalnız olmak tek çıkar yol, çünkü bir kadını mutsuz etmek istemem, zaten bütün kadınlar mutsuz olmaya yatkındır. Şunu belirteyim ki, yalnız olmak her zaman hoş değil, insan hep formunda olmuyor."
İlk Frisch okumamdı, çok sevdim.
Merixien çok güzel bir yorum yazmış, fazla söze gerek yok.
🌟
İlk Frisch okumamdı, çok sevdim.
Merixien çok güzel bir yorum yazmış, fazla söze gerek yok.
🌟
June 17, 2018
Lisede Almancadan okuduğum bir kitaptı. Doksanların hemen başında Ankara'da tutucu sayılabilecek bir okul ortamında bu kitabı nasıl okuduğumuza hala inanamıyorum, ama Alman hocalarımız sağ olsunlar Almancadan bihaber diğer hocaları atlatıp bize Zweig'ı, Siegried Lenz'i, Dürrenmatt'ı okuttular (Alman Lisesi'nde de okutulmuş zamanında, demek ki gizli bir ittifak varmış aralarında :) ). Vakti zamanında "Çarpık Sevda" diye yanıltıcı bir başlıkla yayınlanmıştı ve Almancası yeterli olmayanlar bu versiyon sayesinde sınavı geçebilmişlerdi. Şimdi 60'lı yıllardan kalma bir çeviri ile Sezer Duru'nun yetkin çevirisiyle ve kırk yaş olgunluğuyla tekrar okudum. Gelelim kitaba, kadere inanmayan-yaşadığı her şeyi matematiksel bir rastlantıya bağlayan Walter Fber (ki eski, belki de hayatının ilk ve son aşkı Hanna tarafından "Homo Faber", yani teknik insan olarak adlandırılıyor) için inanmadığı kader ağlarını örüyor. 21 sene evvel bağlantısını kaybettiği (bence kaybetmek istediği) arkadaşı Joachim'in kardeşi ile uçakta yan yana geliyor ve sonrasında Joachim'in naaşını bizzat buluyor. Sonrasında ise tüm planlarını aniden değiştirip Amerika'dan Fransa'ya uçak yerine gemi ile gitmeye karar veriyor ve Sabeth ile karşılaşıyor. Daha fazla detay vermeyeyim, okumak isteyenlerin tadını kaçırmayayım. Kitabın "Voyager" bir film uyarlaması da var, Sam Sheppard Faber rolünde. Onu da en kısa zamanda izleyeceğim. kitap hakkındaki bir söyleşi de şu adreste https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wybM0....
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 13, 2023
Even after a second reading, I uphold my rather negative opinion: this is really a setback, because of the contrast with the phenomenal I'm Not Stiller. The theme that Frisch presents is fascinating enough: Walter Faber, a hyper-rationalistic technician-engineer collides with quirky real life, is shaken by some dramatic twists, which forces him to look at the world completely differently. Interesting, for sure, but the way this story is presented by Frisch is so improbable and artificial that it doesn't captivate: a 50-year-old man falls in love with 23-year-old redhead girl, who later turns out to be his daughter, and then dies shortly after from a viper bite. Moreover, the style is very rudimentary, in short, petulant, emotionless sentences (deliberately perhaps, as a representation of the boring main character), giving the prose a tedious undertone. In between Frisch also offers essay-like pieces with, among other things, a very violent outcry against the Americanization of the world, which for him amounts to a blind and superficial materialism. To me this novel seemed reminiscent of Graham Greene, because of the moral dilemma and the somewhat artificial plot. I guess Greene and Frisch were very relevant in the 1950’s, but their themes have become rather outdated now (although I must concede some of Greene's novels stood the test of time).
December 11, 2016
This book is required reading in many schools in Germany. Crazy idea. What are the “children” supposed to get out of it? And so are the ratings and reviews (here and elsewhere) by the young ones. Unfavorable. I have, I believe, seen the film one time. But have forgotten all about it.
Homo Faber is Walter Faber. Engineer. Lives by the motto “für einen Ingenör ist nichts zu schwör”. Constructs his world around technology. Writes letters in the desert after an emergency landing on a typewriter (mechanical). Feels at home in the confined square of a chessboard. Travels a lot. To deploy technology to people who are already quite happy without it. Romance? Wrong! A single relationship (Hanna); breaks up. Hanna goes to Walter’s friend (doctor) to not get their (Walter: her) child. One not sees the other again. Not for twenty years. Faber meets a young woman on a voyage, calls her Sabeth because Elizabeth he does not like. He does not recognize Hanna in Sabeth, and not himself. He can’t, the old crock.
Recommended for its prose in telegram style (quite sophisticated but not for every day) and its anti-protagonist. Glad I read it now that I’m older than Faber (just barely). For students, as said, quite unsuitable.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
November 25, 2008
I can't believe this book is under the category "unpopular books"!!! this is one of books that have influenced me the most. The story of this man destined to become a robot, ignoring his emotions, trying to avoid suffering and depending always on logic and system, is a story of people in the 20th century. What we know now about emotional intelligence is what Max Faber lacks. If someone is interested in the depths and miseries of the human soul, he should read this book. Morover the language is so clear and direct, he doesn't need a very baroque language to express the horror mr faber is feeling.
May 30, 2021
Ο Βάλτερ Φάμπερ - ο άνθρωπος τεχνίτης - θα βιώσει μέσα από μια σειρά γεγονότων την κατάρρευση της επιστημονικής σκέψης και του ορθολογισμού και θα έρθει αντιμέτωπος με "σημαντικές" ασημαντότητες οι οποίες θα αλλάξουν την κοσμοθεωρία του.
Ο ήρωας του Φρις είναι ένας πολίτης του κόσμου που θα υπερεκτιμήσει τις ικανότητες του, θα διαπράξει ύβρη και εν τέλει θα βιώσει τη νέμεση με ένα τρόπο που ούτε καν φανταζόταν.
Εξαιρετικό βιβλίο από ένα ιδιαίτερο συγγραφέα, ο οποίος μας δίνει μια πιο μοντέρνα εκδοχή ενός κατά βάση αρχαίου δράματος.
Ο ήρωας του Φρις είναι ένας πολίτης του κόσμου που θα υπερεκτιμήσει τις ικανότητες του, θα διαπράξει ύβρη και εν τέλει θα βιώσει τη νέμεση με ένα τρόπο που ούτε καν φανταζόταν.
Εξαιρετικό βιβλίο από ένα ιδιαίτερο συγγραφέα, ο οποίος μας δίνει μια πιο μοντέρνα εκδοχή ενός κατά βάση αρχαίου δράματος.
June 22, 2024
‘Homo Faber’ is the concept of humans being able to control their fate and the environment through tools.
Idealistic but it becomes the fodder for Mr. Frisch’s last published book.
It took a few pages to catch this writer’s rhythm but, soon thereafter, it was an easy lope to the end.
This grateful reader was awed by the sublime dexterity the author employed to integrate so many themes concomitantly. Not in the patronymic way of the old Russians where we are always trying to remember the eighteen different names by which each character may be referred.
But in a complex labyrinth that allows different perceptions to flourish. A difficult feat, indeed. And while he is toying around with us, he makes us laugh. Consistently and throughout.
(Many times, it reminded me of Henderson the Rain King)
Walter Faber is a regular guy who works as a technologist for an American corporation. He is the protagonist, and we can witness through his eyes, what this European, specifically a Swiss, squeezes out of his life on this earth, directly after World War Two.
Death plays a big part in living, as Frisch is aware, and he uses it as a mechanism for human interaction and man-made peccadillos, and how we futilely plan or attempt to manipulate the present and/or the denouement.
I am not trying to be opaque but there is so much to enjoy here, and I do not want to reveal it all. (Oh, and I am lazy)
It is a strong piece of work, to be enjoyed by both girls and boys alike.
Idealistic but it becomes the fodder for Mr. Frisch’s last published book.
It took a few pages to catch this writer’s rhythm but, soon thereafter, it was an easy lope to the end.
This grateful reader was awed by the sublime dexterity the author employed to integrate so many themes concomitantly. Not in the patronymic way of the old Russians where we are always trying to remember the eighteen different names by which each character may be referred.
But in a complex labyrinth that allows different perceptions to flourish. A difficult feat, indeed. And while he is toying around with us, he makes us laugh. Consistently and throughout.
(Many times, it reminded me of Henderson the Rain King)
Walter Faber is a regular guy who works as a technologist for an American corporation. He is the protagonist, and we can witness through his eyes, what this European, specifically a Swiss, squeezes out of his life on this earth, directly after World War Two.
Death plays a big part in living, as Frisch is aware, and he uses it as a mechanism for human interaction and man-made peccadillos, and how we futilely plan or attempt to manipulate the present and/or the denouement.
I am not trying to be opaque but there is so much to enjoy here, and I do not want to reveal it all. (Oh, and I am lazy)
It is a strong piece of work, to be enjoyed by both girls and boys alike.
April 20, 2012
i truly hate this book! i had to read it in class once and create a frikking presentation. my mood drops several degrees when only thinking about this crappy book!
HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED
HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED
June 18, 2012
On the surface a straightforward story, simple and resembling a parable; but like a parable capable of many interpretations and readable on more than one level.
Walter faber is a rational man who believes in technology, a creature of habit. A series of events disrupt his settled life. A plane crash, a chance meeting with the brother of an old friend, a visit to the friend in central america, whose body they discover at his home. Then there ia a boat journey across the Atlantic. Faber, a middle aged man, meets a 20 year old woman and they hit it off and continue to travel together and an affair develops. It transpires that the girl is his daughter, he didn't know he had (he thought the mother had an abortion). This isn't like the incest Laurie Lee describes in rural England; only a problem when the roads were bad, but is purely coincidental and enough to test any pure rationalist.
Then tragedy strikes in the form of a snake; a serpent strikes at the heart of the tale. This is man vs machine; but as the narrator, Mr Faber gives the plot away as you go along, it's a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion!
One thing I did notice; Faber just never stayed still, always on the move. Faber realises he cannot control his environment as life continues to conspire against him. He is dislocated with no family or home. he does become close to someone who might be family but ... Faber has avoided responsibility and fate makes him pay.
A striking novel with an unsympathetic protagonist (perhaps a debateable point) but a gripping and thought provoking story
Walter faber is a rational man who believes in technology, a creature of habit. A series of events disrupt his settled life. A plane crash, a chance meeting with the brother of an old friend, a visit to the friend in central america, whose body they discover at his home. Then there ia a boat journey across the Atlantic. Faber, a middle aged man, meets a 20 year old woman and they hit it off and continue to travel together and an affair develops. It transpires that the girl is his daughter, he didn't know he had (he thought the mother had an abortion). This isn't like the incest Laurie Lee describes in rural England; only a problem when the roads were bad, but is purely coincidental and enough to test any pure rationalist.
Then tragedy strikes in the form of a snake; a serpent strikes at the heart of the tale. This is man vs machine; but as the narrator, Mr Faber gives the plot away as you go along, it's a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion!
One thing I did notice; Faber just never stayed still, always on the move. Faber realises he cannot control his environment as life continues to conspire against him. He is dislocated with no family or home. he does become close to someone who might be family but ... Faber has avoided responsibility and fate makes him pay.
A striking novel with an unsympathetic protagonist (perhaps a debateable point) but a gripping and thought provoking story
August 13, 2019
Mühendis Walter Faber aklın ve mantığın belirlediği sınırlarda yaşamayı seven, modern, gerçekçi ve bilimin gücüne inanan bir bireydir. 1950’lerde yaşayan, dönemin modern bireyini yansıtan uç örneklerden biridir. Rastlantıya ve kadere teslim olmayacak kadar akılcı bir hayat tarzı vardır. İşi gereği sık sık seyahat etmektedir. Bir gün bu seyahatleri sırasında hayatını ve yaşama bakış açısını değiştirecek ve derinden sarsacak bir rastlantısal olayın kurbanına dönüşür.
Max Frisch baş karakter Walter Faber’i kurgunun merkezine alarak, onun üzerinden modern insan eleştirisi yapıyor. Bunu yaparken de bir çok dünya meselesine büyük büyük parantezler açıyor. Kadın- erkek eleştirisi, sömürülen toplumlar, sanat, Amerikan kültürü eleştirisi ve hatta Hitler bile bu parantezlerin içinde.
Olay kurgusu ile insanı şaşırtmadan, sürprizsiz ama çarpıcı bir şekilde ilerliyor kitap. Faber’i, o güçlü modern insanı ve bakış açısını çok açık ve net bir şekilde, tıpkı karakterin düşüncelerinde ve davranışlarında sergilediği gibi algılıyor ve o kafa yapısında, zihninde canlandırdığı gibi bir dünyada onu kabulleniyoruz.
Roman sonlara yaklaştıkça karakterler ve dünyaları sarsıcı bir şekilde değişiyor. Bu sayede aklın ve bilimin insan hayatında çok önemli olduğunu ama yine de bireyin kendi tercih ve çıkmazlarının hayatının üzerinde daha büyük bir etkisi olduğunu anlıyoruz.
Kitapla ilgili Ayfer Tunç ve Murat Gülsoy’un diyaloglarını izlemenizi tavsiye ederim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wybM0...
Max Frisch baş karakter Walter Faber’i kurgunun merkezine alarak, onun üzerinden modern insan eleştirisi yapıyor. Bunu yaparken de bir çok dünya meselesine büyük büyük parantezler açıyor. Kadın- erkek eleştirisi, sömürülen toplumlar, sanat, Amerikan kültürü eleştirisi ve hatta Hitler bile bu parantezlerin içinde.
Olay kurgusu ile insanı şaşırtmadan, sürprizsiz ama çarpıcı bir şekilde ilerliyor kitap. Faber’i, o güçlü modern insanı ve bakış açısını çok açık ve net bir şekilde, tıpkı karakterin düşüncelerinde ve davranışlarında sergilediği gibi algılıyor ve o kafa yapısında, zihninde canlandırdığı gibi bir dünyada onu kabulleniyoruz.
Roman sonlara yaklaştıkça karakterler ve dünyaları sarsıcı bir şekilde değişiyor. Bu sayede aklın ve bilimin insan hayatında çok önemli olduğunu ama yine de bireyin kendi tercih ve çıkmazlarının hayatının üzerinde daha büyük bir etkisi olduğunu anlıyoruz.
Kitapla ilgili Ayfer Tunç ve Murat Gülsoy’un diyaloglarını izlemenizi tavsiye ederim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wybM0...
January 7, 2022
მახსოვს, ჯერ კიდევ სკოლაში ვსწავლობდი, ბაბუაჩემის ბიბლიოთეკაში რომ გადავაწყდი ამ რომანის ძველ გამოცემას, სათაურმა დამაინტერესა და მაგის გამო წავიკითხე პირველად. იმ დროინდელი შთაბეჭდილებებიდან მხოლოდ გაოგნება შემომრჩა, რომელიც სიუჟეტის განვითარებამ დამიტოვა.
რა ძალა აქვს ხელახლა გადაკითხვას: ახლა სულ სხვა დეტალები დავიჭირე და ცხოვრების ამ ეტაპზე განსხვავებული აქცენტები მომეჩვენა მნიშვნელოვანი. მაგალითად, ისინი მომაგონდნენ ცხადად, ვინც თითქოს ერთი მხრივ რელიგია დაგმეს, როგორც "არაინტელექტუალური მიდრეკილება", სანაცვლოდ კი მეცნიერება გაიხადეს ახალ კერპად: ყველაფერს ითვლიან, ზომავენ, სტატისტიკურად ანგარიშობენ, "რაციონალურად" განსჯიან, კვლევებით ამყარებენ. ხშირად ამ "ცივი გონებით" ძალიან სერიოზული, სინამდვილეში კი საშინლად გულგრილი სიტყვებით შეიძლება გაამართლონ კიდეც სექსიზმი, რასიზმი და სხვა ბოროტება გემოვნებისამებრ: "ევოლუციამ ასე განსაზღვრა..." ისიც მომისმენია ეგეთი ხალხისგან, მხატვრული ლიტერატურის კითხვა არაფრისმომცემიაო. ნეტავ, ეს რომანი რომ წაეკითხათ, საკუთარ თავებს თუ ამოიცნობდნენ?
"აივიმ მითხრა, იუმორის გრძნობა გაკლიაო". იმავეს ვეტყოდი ყველა იმ ძალიან სერიოზულ ხალხს. სანამ ცხოვრება ("ბედისწერა") დაგცინებს ისე, როგორც ეს ვალტერ ფაბერს მოუვიდა, სჯობს დაასწრო და შენვე დასცინო ხოლმე საკუთარ თავს. ხანდახან მაინც.
რა ძალა აქვს ხელახლა გადაკითხვას: ახლა სულ სხვა დეტალები დავიჭირე და ცხოვრების ამ ეტაპზე განსხვავებული აქცენტები მომეჩვენა მნიშვნელოვანი. მაგალითად, ისინი მომაგონდნენ ცხადად, ვინც თითქოს ერთი მხრივ რელიგია დაგმეს, როგორც "არაინტელექტუალური მიდრეკილება", სანაცვლოდ კი მეცნიერება გაიხადეს ახალ კერპად: ყველაფერს ითვლიან, ზომავენ, სტატისტიკურად ანგარიშობენ, "რაციონალურად" განსჯიან, კვლევებით ამყარებენ. ხშირად ამ "ცივი გონებით" ძალიან სერიოზული, სინამდვილეში კი საშინლად გულგრილი სიტყვებით შეიძლება გაამართლონ კიდეც სექსიზმი, რასიზმი და სხვა ბოროტება გემოვნებისამებრ: "ევოლუციამ ასე განსაზღვრა..." ისიც მომისმენია ეგეთი ხალხისგან, მხატვრული ლიტერატურის კითხვა არაფრისმომცემიაო. ნეტავ, ეს რომანი რომ წაეკითხათ, საკუთარ თავებს თუ ამოიცნობდნენ?
"აივიმ მითხრა, იუმორის გრძნობა გაკლიაო". იმავეს ვეტყოდი ყველა იმ ძალიან სერიოზულ ხალხს. სანამ ცხოვრება ("ბედისწერა") დაგცინებს ისე, როგორც ეს ვალტერ ფაბერს მოუვიდა, სჯობს დაასწრო და შენვე დასცინო ხოლმე საკუთარ თავს. ხანდახან მაინც.
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