Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Published by New Directions, noted for its publication of experimental fiction and literature from Europe, The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt begins as an existential investigation by a self-conscious 46-year-old man into who he is and why he behaves as he does. The man is seeking "inner authorization" for a life that has little meaning for him, and by the end of his philosophical and psychological journey, he has come to new understandings. Though the premise is weighty, the book is fun to read.
The unnamed speaker has been working for seven years as a "shoe tester," a man who walks around Frankfurt testing shoes and submitting reviews of them to the manufacturer. The speaker enjoys this job, as it gives him unlimited opportunity to muse about his life, observe people from the past with whom he has had relationships, and contemplate "the collective peculiarity of all life" while he walks. He thinks about his childhood, his failed relationship with former girlfriend Lisa, and his lack of professional motivation, and the reader observes him as he has an afternoon interlude with his hairdresser, begins a new relationship, talks with a friend who is a failed photographer, gets a drastic cut in salary, and begins work as a vendor in a flea market.
The speaker's serious philosophical statements and overwrought self-examination might become tedious if it were not for the fact that the book contains a great deal of quiet humor. The author's sense of irony and his witty appreciation of absurdity become more obvious in the second half of the book when the speaker attends a life-changing cocktail party and (ironically) achieves a new appreciation of life as a result. The tongue-in-cheek humor puts the speaker's new understandings into a realistic context and changes the mood from melancholy to peaceful acceptance, if not joy.
Filled with the hypersensitive and self-indulgent observations of a man who claims that he "hardly thinks at all anymore--I only look round and about," the novel shows the transformation of this character from someone who willfully closes his eyes to the world to one who looks around and begins to recognize his connections with the rest of the humanity. Slow to start, the novel becomes a delightful exploration of one man's experiences and his halting steps toward a new life. Winner in 2004 of Germany's highest literary prize, the Georg-Buchner-Preis, this novel is the first by Genazino to become available in English translation. n Mary Whipple
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (New Directions Paperbook)
This brief and poignant novel from Germany explores existential questions as its 46-year-old narrator reflects on broken relationships and other failures, and struggles to come to terms with life.The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt by Wilhelm Genazino, 2004 recipient of the Georg-Büchner-Preis, Germany's highest literary honor, is finally available to English-speaking readers in a pitch-perfect translation by Philip Boehm.Employed by a high-end shoe manufacturer to test new products, the narrator spends his days wandering through his native city, encountering faces from his past (primarily female) and experiencing anew the many manifestations of the mystery of life. In the grand tradition of literary flâneurs, he takes note of his surroundings, from the significant to the mundane, and assembles them into a sort of mental collage that is at once self-portrait and cityscape.Most remarkable in Genazino's work is the humor with which he invests this melancholic character. Though at times he fears that he teeters on the brink of insanity, he good-naturedly pursues the strange twists of fate that land him variously behind a table at the flea market, in a newspaper office, by the banks of a flooded river, or in a friend's bed. As Peter von Matt wrote in Der Spiegel, "Indeed, there is hardly a subtler humorist among today's writers than Genazino."
Buy cheap The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (New Directions Paperbook) now.
No comments:
Post a Comment