"The Uncontemporary: Reading Markus Werner" by Alex Andrisse

A couple weeks ago, following up on the Three Percent podcast interview with Jen Calleja about her book Fair: The Life-Art of Translation (go listen! Jen is an incredibly interesting writer and thinker and podcast guest), I posted her Review of Contemporary Fiction piece about the Swiss writer Markus Werner.

In that essay, Calleja writes mostly about a Werner book that has yet to be translated (Festland), so I thought I’d tie off the Werner thread (for now) by posting this overview by Alex Andrisse (who was very instrumental in terms of Dalkey generally, CONTEXT, Best European Fiction, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction during John O’Brien’s later years) for Context that discusses Werner a bit more broadly, and with the two Dalkey titles—Zündel’s Exit and Cold Shoulder—at its center.

[Unfortunately, both of the Dalkey books are out of stock, but hopefully the Deep Vellum team can rectify this in the near-ish future. In the meantime there are libraries—for now—and used copies, and the NYRB Werner book, The Frog in the Throat, which came out earlier this year and is available.]

Enjoy this, and I’ll be back next week—hopefully with some more original content about the next series of Dalkey Essentials, Jean Echenoz, and a couple key Dalkey Archive translators.

“The Uncontemporary: Reading Markus Werner” by Alex Andrisse

Contemporary literature is, whether we like it or not, firmly yoked to its market value. A new novel comes to us packaged, promoted, and prone to be read in the light of its jacket copy, its reviews, even its author photo. There’s nothing inherently sinister about this state of affairs, although it does sometimes lead us to dismiss or embrace unfamiliar writing for reasons that have little to do with the writing itself. Even those who should know better sometimes treat new novels unconscionably, if unconsciously, as commodities—as the author’s merchandise. Today, the majority of book reviewers have altogether dropped the genteel pretense of literature as a realm apart. Instead, they proudly speak of writers “producing” novels, and readers “consuming” them.

The writer at odds with this brave new book-world is almost guaranteed to be ignored by it. He is hard to advertise, indifferent to review, unfriendly to the reader out to consume. Until he fell silent a decade ago, the Swiss writer Markus Werner was one such writer, out of joint—though not out of