Arno Schmidt: a centennial colloquy by M.A. Orthofer

Author:M.A. Orthofer [Orthofer, M.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: aesthetics of resistance / press
Published: 2014-11-02T21:00:00+00:00

It is one of the great boons of our age: to be able to find and read these works. Not always in as crisply reproduced editions, but accessible. Not that long ago I could have barely dreamed of being able to read a work such as the Dya-Na-Sore beyond the confines of a major reference library, and now it’s tucked on my e-reader, there for the taking anytime I please.

B: You don’t find yourself outgrowing the Schmidtian recommendations? With Borges, for example … yes, he leads us to sample Chesterton, to return and delve deeper into Robert Louis Stevenson, perhaps to sniff around the Eddas, but then, surely, we move on. Schmidt’s focus does not seem foundational – Goethe, Schiller, Mann, for example – and hence perhaps is less … necessary. And more arbitrary.

A: It serves as entryway to much of his own work, which is already something. And, yes, while the selection is idiosyncratic …

C: In the extreme!

A: … the qualities Schmidt finds and highlights are, I would suggest, worthy of note and attention. His literary dialogues are revealing – making us aware of certain authors and works, and aspects of these which we previously might have overlooked – and yet also whet the reading-appetite. These are books I want to know for myself. Not all of them – Schmidt is dismissive, too – often off-hand (why waste the words?), and occasionally in cruel detail – but more often than not his dialogues aren’t summarizing substitutes of authors and works but rather gateways.

B: So not like the reviews in The New York Review of Books?

A: Exactly.

B: Yet it seems hard to see these works as necessary.

A: Fair enough. And given how much material and how little time there is readers must choose carefully. I can only speak for myself in saying that few guides have been as valuable to me as Schmidt, that these dialogues have pointed me the right way…

B: Not down dark, dead-end alleys?

A: There are musty missteps along the way. But, on balance, there’s more to be gained than lost in these journeys.

To return to a more accessible English-writing example: I’ve read over ten thousand pages of Bulwer-Lytton and I am convinced it was time well-spent. Yet another significant building block in making me the reader, writer, and man I am.

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