| Monday, May 5, 2008 11:22PM | | | | A Charming Utterly Spherical Zero | Posted By: Gini Alhadeff
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The Swiss writer Robert Walser wanted nothing so much as to be a “zero” and failed miserably: he was given a fabulous tribute Saturday afternoon at the Morgan Library by Jeffrey Eugenides, who read a hilarious piece about trousers, Deborah Eisenberg, who in reading from Jakob von Gunten practically embodied the young narrator at the Benjamenta Institute, and by Michael Kruger, who said Walser thought of himself as a “producer of small pieces, by his newest English translator Susan Bernofsky, who thinks that if Walser were alive today he’d be a blogger, and by Wayne Kostenbaum—all celebrating his great undying zeroness.
According to Roberto Calasso, Walser’s great friend Carl Seelig who continued to visit Walser in the various psychiatric clinics where he spent the last 28 years of his life… said that one day he told Walser that his work would last as long as that of Gottfried Keller: “Walser stopped… and told me that if I wanted to remain his friend I should never again proffer such compliments. He, Robert Walser, was a zero, and wished to be forgotten..”
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