Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories

Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories brings together eighty-one brief texts spanningRobert Walser's career, from pieces conceived amid his early triumphs tolater works written at a psychiatric clinic in Bern. Many were published in thefeuilleton sections of newspapers during Walser's life; others were jotted down onslips of paper and all but forgotten. They are strung together like consciousness,idiosyncratic and vulnerable, genuine in their irony, wistful in their humor. Somedwell on childish or transient topics-carousels, the latest hairstyles, an ekphrasisof the illustrations in a picture book-others on the grand themes of nature, art,and love. But they remain conversational, almost lighter than air. Every emotionventured takes on the weight of a sincerity that is imperiled as soon as itcomes into contact with the outside world, which retains all of the novelty it hadin childhood-and all of the danger.