#markus werner

The hero of Markus Werner’s 1985 novel The Frog in the Throat is Franz Thalmann, a disgraced, divorced, defrocked clergyman, who lives ashamed and diminished, yet nevertheless resilient in a philosophical recalculation of his life. There’s a major complication to Franz’s reevaluation though: the memory (or ghost?) of his stern father Klement turns up as a literal (or is it just metaphorical?)…

Existential crisis. I've come to you, says a stammering customer, because I feel so strangely sad the whole time, because everything seems so meaningless to me.—(Correction: This was said not by one customer, but by very many; I select one at random, will call him Zemp, and here furnish an incomplete account.)

Growth: pycnic. Form: fleshy. Limbs: curt. Walk more a shuffle. Good blue eyes. Polyester easycare pants, hand-knitted cardigan. Our man Zemp is a primary-school master in his mid-forties, married with children, a major in the reserves.

Does your wife know about your condition?

No no.

You said no twice. Why?

I don't want to tell her, it would only burden her.

Can't she tell anyway?

I try and keep a lid on it.

So you have the feeling it would burden your wife if you told her how you really feel?

Yes, I do. I... I'm not so weak in other ways. I'm trying to fight it, and you, as an expert, I thought you would find the silver bullet.

What silver bullet?

The silver bullet against these moods of mine.

Are you not happy in your gloomy condition, then?

Not at all.

And the feeling that it's all meaningless, that seems inappropriate to you?

It's a virus. Just like a virus. An attack.

I will cut to the chase. Of course, the first part of my "treatment" is to show Zemp that even as husband and major and father he is allowed to show a little weakness; second, that problems of his kind cannot be treated by any "silver bullet"; and thirdly that his symptom is no more hostile than a lighthouse pointing out hidden reefs.—In the next phase, which I will call in the widest sense "political," it's a question of assessing whether feelings of gloom and futility cannot be understood as perfectly appropriate reactions (indicative of a yearning for intactness) to a reality, large stretches of which are so constituted that anyone not dispirited at its aspect ought rather to wonder at his failure so to react.

"Large stretches": Are there, I ask Zemp in a last phase, are there in your life any things or situations that you find unquestionably good and beautiful?—Zemp has a long think, and finally in a half-strangled voice he says: Tulips.

Anything else?

Zemp is silent for what feels like several minutes, and then he says: A proper French kiss.

And a little later, softly: A hot bath and the finale of Haydn's Creation and filet de porc aux fines herbes. Also the smell of violets.

And does all that have meaning for you?

Yes, but I don't ask myself that. (pp. 28-30)

***

Over time, I've made the following discovery: Those books that Helen rejects are the ones I find especially interesting. They are subversive, making clear that their authors, in writing them, did so to avoid doing something far worse. These are the books that crackle subtly, the semi-house-trained powder kegs of books, the incautious, unconsidered, and if you like erroneous ones, and Helen doesn't care for them. They make her come over all maiden-auntish and offended. She is looking to be confirmed, not menaced. Which is where we differ. Being petted just puts me to sleep.(pp. 79-80)

***

I'll be fifty soon and I wonder what being grown-up will feel like. Was I grown-up when I turned twenty-two? For a bet, then, I ate a coffee cup. No problem. My stomach was equal to the challenge. Today, I poke at my sauerkraut. An ungrown-up way of behaving, only confirming one's suspicion that being grown-up, like everything else, is a passing condition. Admittedly, there are sixty-year-olds who cope with everything, and seventy-year-olds who make their way up to the high board and—everyone looking away—dive. But all in all, being grown-up seems to fade, the ability to cope with cold and wet weakens, and our old early sense of threat returns. To the post-adult, many things are intolerable, and more that seem impenetrable to him turn up all the time, exacerbating his sense of alienation: What am I doing in a world that daily grows by a million more things I don't understand, and that complicates itself by facts and arguments that remain mysterious to me? What do I know about microelectronics beyond the flicker? Who can still adjust and define himself in a slew of riddles? Who can resist a sense of impotence, and what with? Who can stave off imbecility and why?

Thus the post-adult, almost desperately, while the grownups frown and exchange glances. (pp. 82-83)

***

People remain a mystery, you can read a hundred books and you'll be no closer to understanding them, that's my view, and when I was younger, I always used to think: When I'm older, I'll work it out. You see, when you're young, you see old fellows with white hair, and you think: They may be old and knackered, but they have experience of life, they're not floundering like us, and maybe they have wisdom. And suddenly you're old and gray yourself, and you realize that's all you are, old and gray and just as clueless as you ever were, and so I say: No one's got the secret. (p. 97)

***

In the morning I'm miserable, at night I'm scared, and during the day I am at pains not to attract attention, putting one foot in front of the other, forming sentences, combing my hair, leaving tips for the waitstaff and buying five tomatoes and answering the telephone in my best and brightest voice, reading this and that in the newspaper, not killing myself, showering regularly. And I give advice to people and listen to them and feel moved by their confidence in me. I sit around, I drink, I brood, I pat myself down for flaws and find many and each evening I say: Starting tomorrow I'm going to get a grip on myself. (p. 101)

***

The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner is forthcoming in translation by Michael Hofmann. Publisher NYRB’s blurb: In a small town in Switzerland, Franz—ex-clergyman, ex-husband, current counselor of locals at loose ends— is being haunted by his recently deceased father, Klement. In life, Franz was caught cheating on his wife and defrocked, after which Klement never spoke to him again. In death,…

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FOTO | Ungefährdet zum Titel: Markus Werner ©Erhard Goller   Markus Werner ließ am Samstagabend in Bad Salzdetfurth nichts anbrennen und gewann nach 2015 zum zweiten Mal den Titel in der Masters-Kategorie 1. Bei den älteren Herren der Masters-Kategorie 2 und 3 landete Max Friedrich einen, auch für ihn überraschenden Sieg.   Markus Werner machte sich gleich auf und davon. „Attacke, das war von…

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