NotebookNovember 2012 The Widmer uncertainty principle by Tess Lewis On Urs Widmer and a trio of his novels. To recognize what is absurd and to accept it need not dim the eye for the tragic side of existence, quite on the contrary, in the end it may perhaps help in gaining a more tolerant view of the world. The prolific Swiss writer Urs Widmer is a prominent figure in German literature, yet he is all but unknown to English readers. He has written more than two dozen works of fiction, almost thirty radio plays, a dozen theater plays, and a half dozen collections of essays, including those he delivered in the prestigious Frankfurt Poetics Lectures series in 2006. His writing, though serious and finely crafted, is full of tomfoolery, wry deadpan humor, and implausible plot twists. One of his novels, for example, is narrated by a two-inch plastic dwarf. Still, a powerful current of pathos flows beneath Widmer’s antic su ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 31 November 2012, on page 81 Copyright © 2013 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Widmer-uncertainty-principle-7491
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by Tess Lewis A review of Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography, by Renee Winegarten (Yale University Press). Deciphering a cigarette with Joseph Frank A look at the legacy of literary scholar and Dostoevsky biographer Joseph Frank (1918–2013).
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