WWB/RTW Book Club: The Assistant by Robert Walser

The newly redesigned Words Without Borders/Reading the World book clubs are now underway, and this month the book under discussion is Robert Walser’s The Assistant, which came out last year from New Directions and is translated by Susan Bernofsky.

In contrast to the old version of the book clubs—which was basically a forum for people to post comments—the new version is a huge improvement, providing readers with an extensive list of online resources, discussion questions, and interesting, in addition to an online discussion forum.

For example, the page for The Assistant has Susan Bernofsky’s afterword to the book, along with Sam Jones’s introduction to Walser, along with a list of a dozen or so articles/reviews/bios/etc. that are all available online. Coming soon are a few interesting pieces, including “The Assistant and Swiss Literature” by Peter Utz and “Composition for Robert Walser” by Tom Whalen. There are also two roundtables planned: a translators’ discussion and one on Walser and the Visual Arts.

Overall this is a great template for how to create online reading guides, using many of the advantages available to the internet to provide readers with a context to approach the book. It’ll be interesting to see if this helps spawn more discussion in the forum section . . .