Jun 03 2021
LOCAL>> Susan Bernofsky – Clairvoyant of the Small

LOCAL>> Susan Bernofsky – Clairvoyant of the Small

Presented by Point Reyes Books at Streaming Arts

The Center for the Art of Translation presents renowned translator Susan Bernofsky in this celebration of her long-awaited biography of the modernist writer Robert Walser, Clairvoyant of the Small (Yale UP).

“Robert Walser is the perfect pathetic poet: pithy, awkward, drinks too much, sibling rivalrous, ambitious, broke, and mentally ill. Was he proto queer or trans, this red headed writer who next to Gertrude Stein might be the most influential writer of our moment? Riveting and heart-breaking, this biography kept me drunk for days.”—Eileen Myles

This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.

 

About Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
The great Swiss-German modernist author Robert Walser lived eccentrically on the fringes of society, shocking his Berlin friends by enrolling in butler school and later developing an urban-nomad lifestyle in the Swiss capital, Bern, before checking himself into a psychiatric clinic.

A connoisseur of power differentials, his pronounced interest in everything inconspicuous and modest—social outcasts and artists as well as the impoverished, marginalized, and forgotten—prompted W. G. Sebald to dub him “a clairvoyant of the small.” His revolutionary use of short prose forms had an enormous influence on Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, and many others.

He was long believed an outsider by conviction, but Susan Bernofsky presents a more nuanced view in this immaculately researched and beautifully written biography. Setting Walser in the context of early twentieth century European history, she provides illuminating analysis of his extraordinary life and work, bearing witness to his “extreme artistic delight.”

 

Susan Bernofsky is associate professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts and director of the literary translation program at Columbia’s MFA Writing Program. She has translated over twenty books.

Admission Info

Crowdcast, Sliding scale ($0-$100)

Phone: 415.663.1542

Email: ptreyesbooks@gmail.com

Additional time info:

6:30 pm

Dates & Times

2021/06/03 - 2021/06/03

Location Info

Streaming Arts