RaveThe American Scholar... erudite, painstakingly thorough, and sensitively written. Readers of Walser finally have a volume that connects the development of the writer’s work and its publishing history to the various episodes of his peripatetic adult life in the cities of Biel, Bern, Zurich, and Berlin and finally in the sanatoriums in Waldau and later Herisau ... One of the book’s greatest treats comes when Bernofsky delves into Walser’s late style ... Occasionally, Bernofsky seems to be offering Walser career advice...These are reasonable enough considerations, and one feels a touch of anguish on Bernofsky’s part at Walser’s incorrigible self-sabotage. But this is also the kind of advice the writer scorned throughout his professional life.
