ROBERT WALSER: MICROSCRIPTS - Rare Pristine Copy of The First American Edition/First Printing

Walser, Robert (Translated by Susan Bernofsky) & Benjamin, Walter (Contribution)

ISBN 10: 0811218805 / ISBN 13: 9780811218801

Published by New York City, NY: New Directions/Christine Burgin Gallery, 2010, 2010

About this Item

1st Printing. 160 pages. Published in 2010. Facsimile of the author's handwritten works, presented as an Artist Book. One of the greatest books of our time. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. It marks the very first collaboration between New Directions and Christine Burgin Gallery New York to publish Walser's art-related works, which now include several, beautifully produced books. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Robert Walser's "Microscripts" in a felicitous English translation. Known and celebrated as such because he wrote down every single page in his extremely minute handwriting. "Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. Narrow strips of paper covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high came to light only after the author's death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of German script: A whole story could fit on the back of a business card. Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions of the original microscripts, these 25 short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated publication. Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: The detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them length-wise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small-town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh, and marriage proposals are some of Walser's subjects" (Publisher's blurb). "The incredible shrinking writer is a major 20th-century prose artist who, for all that the modern world seems to have passed him by, fulfills the modern criterion: He sounds like nobody else" (The New Yorker Magazine). "One of the profoundest products of modern literature" (Walter Benjamin). An absolute "must-have" title for Robert Walser collectors. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws while the few copies in fine condition command as much as $900. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ROBERT WALSER TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0811218805. Seller Inventory # 18205

Bibliographic Details

Title: ROBERT WALSER: MICROSCRIPTS - Rare Pristine ...

Publisher: New York City, NY: New Directions/Christine Burgin Gallery, 2010

Publication Date: 2010

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: As New

Signed: no

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

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

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

Review:

"Walser vaulted new heights of expression with miniscule means." "

The use of throwaway scraps and pencil also seems part of a deliberate espousal of the small and modest, an attention to the unnoticed, and the microscripts are, as this edition lets us see, objects of beauty, the pencillings precisely filling their allotted space, the different texts neatly fitted together on the same piece of paper like some kind of intricate insect construction whose purpose is absolutely necessary.... Walser has in recent years regained some of the status he enjoyed in the 1920s. Instead of Kafka and Benjamin, we have Sebald and Lydia Davis championing him. But we still don't know where we stand with him. Are we dealing with pure literature, the vagaries of the everyday, jokes, or empty fancies? The writing is radical and elegant enough to encompass all these possibilities and many more. Is it the stuff of life? Perhaps.

Walser vaulted new heights of expression with minuscule means.