Product Description

Dressed in his cheap, battered suit, Joseph Marti arrives at the impressive villa of Karl Tobler, an enthusiastic but ill-starred inventor, to begin employment as his clerk. Tobler is determined to finance his family’s lavish lifestyle with the proceeds from his latest idea – a clock adorned with advertisements. But Tobler’s grand plans are destined for failure and the household, including Marti, refuse to acknowledge their approaching ruin. Robert Walser claimed to have written The Assistant, a semi-autobiographical work, in just six weeks as an entry for a literary competition. The second of his few surviving novels, it is now regarded as major work of modernist literature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58372 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Robert Walser was born in Switzerland in 1878 and worked as a bank clerk before becoming a writer. In 1929 he was diagnosed as ‘schizophrenic’ and lived the last twenty years of his life in hospital. His novels include Jakob von Gunten and The Assistant. Robert Walser died in 1956. 'A truly wonderful, heart-breaking writer' -- Susan Sontag Susan Bernofsky is the translator of books by Robert Walser, Gregor von Rezzori, Yoko Tawada, and others. Her translations have appeared in numerous literary journals. She is the author of Foreign Words: Translator-Authors in the Age of Goethe, and is the recipient of a PEN Translation grant and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She is also the recipient of the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for Outstanding Translation for her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck's The Old Child & Other Stories. She lives with her husband in Boiceville, New York.

Customer Reviews

Humorous, but also with depth, a rewarding read
Robert Walser wrote The Assistant in 1908,soon after attending a course in becoming a servant, and while occasionally working as a secretary in Berlin. The book is about a young man, Joseph Marti, who secures a position as live-in personal assistant to an inventor and entrepeneur, Carl Tobler, who lives with his wife and four children in an elegant lake-side house beautiful mountainous country. Tobler has invested all his money in buying the house and supporting himself while trying to obtain financial backing for his inventions, including the ill-fated Advertising Clock.

Young Joseph has had a difficult time in finding work, and can hardly believe his good fortune in finding employment in such a luxurious setting (his room, a tower room, a "noble, romantic location), while also being invited to take-part in every part of family life, from sharing morning coffee with Tobler's wife in the summer-house, to watering the garden in the evening. The food is excellent, the wine and fine cheroots abundant. He has to deal with the capricious moods of his master, but he sees this as the inevitable lot of the clerk, and something which can only spur him on to greater achievements in his career.

Tobler makes great efforts to raise investment for his projects, but he has been living on his inheritance, and slowly the debts being to build up and increasinly more of the assistant's time is spent fending off creditors than writing advertisements and letters of introduction. He becomes adept at running the business side of the enterprise and Tobler becomes increasingly reliant on his services.

Tobler travels the country, finding that travel and business lunches are his natural occupation. Joseph spends more time with Tobler's wife, whose aloofness with the assistant gradually thaws until she is sharing her worries and problems with the young man.

Walser writes in a humorous and readable style, and draws the reader on through the increasingly dire financial situation that develops.

A fine book, rightly published by Penguin under the Modern Classics range.