The Depersonalized World of Martin Walser

Abstract

Martin Walser is a curious example of a contemporary novelist who, despite more than a decade of prolific writing, has failed to gain appreciable recognition from Germany's literary critics. Although the Preis der Gruppe (1955) and the Hermann-Hesse-Preis (1957) helped make him known to a larger audience, he has not gained the esteem comparable to that of other Gruppe 47 prizewinners (Eich, Bill, Ilse Aichinger, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Giinter Grass). Typical of the criticisms of the author is the comment of Marcel Reich-Ranicki regarding Walser's chief work, Halbzeit (1960): . vielleicht hat noch nie ein so schlechtes Buch so groB3e Begabung bewiesen.' There are two aspects of Walser's work that appear to disturb critics most: his apparent lack of concern for plot and for integration of detail into a unified whole,2 and his failure to present anything like a constructive alternative to the hypercritical and devastating picture he paints of postwar German society.3 With regard to the latter, it is true that Walser has not arrived at a synthesis of satire and the vision of a positive moral philosophy which has contributed in large measure to Heinrich B6ll's success. But a criticism leveled at the lack of architecture in Walser's works which, from the point of view of traditional poetic theory, is their most vulnerable aspect, fails to do justice to the author, inasmuch as it overlooks the real literary merit of the work: the unity of style and subject.