{"id":253476,"date":"2007-07-30T14:45:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-30T14:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2007\/07\/30\/village-voice-on-robert-walser\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:38:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:38:58","slug":"village-voice-on-robert-walser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2007\/07\/30\/village-voice-on-robert-walser\/","title":{"rendered":"Village Voice on Robert Walser"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit that I&#8217;m hesitant to post anything about the <i>Village Voice<\/i> on Three Percent, since I&#8217;m still pissed about what they did to Ed Park and the books section, and I think that <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/news\/david-blum\/\">David Blum<\/a> set the <i>Voice<\/i> back a decade through his general, overwhelming incompetence. (I mean, really. Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nysun.com\/article\/54492\">this article<\/a> from this past May.)<\/p>\n<p>The <i>Voice<\/i> did recently review <i>The Assistant<\/i> by Robert Walser though, which is saying something. <\/p>\n<p>Sure, Giles Harvey does poke a bit of fun at the jacket copy (which includes the line, &#8220;if one read one 20th-century novel, there is a case to be made for it being  <i>The Assistant<\/i>,&#8221; but hell, overblown is what jacket copy <i>is<\/i>) and brings home the criticism with an overwritten statement of his own&#8212;&#8220;Indeed, from one perspective, Walser&#8217;s prose is a tepid slurry of solecism, platitude, and tautology force-fed to the reader in large, grim spoonfuls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Solecism. Nice. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Harvey ends up liking the book: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p> <i>The Assistant<\/i> is a marvelous book, and I would be surprised if 2007 sees the appearance of a stranger, more inexplicably compelling piece of fiction. If it isn&#8217;t already clear, Walser belongs not just to the history of literature, but to literature itself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So conflicted. . . . Silly review from someone who relies on the tried and true, and tired comparisons to Kafka and Beckett in talking about Walser&#8217;s aesthetic&#8212;but still, it is a review of Walser. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit that I&#8217;m hesitant to post anything about the Village Voice on Three Percent, since I&#8217;m still pissed about what they did to Ed Park and the books section, and I think that David Blum set the Voice back a decade through his general, overwhelming incompetence. (I mean, really. Check out this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[2456,1646,1176,1186,2446],"class_list":["post-253476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-david-blum","tag-review","tag-robert-walser","tag-the-assistant","tag-village-voice"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328846,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253476\/revisions\/328846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}