The way a Dickens is first and foremost a Dickens, a Dostoyevsky a Dostoyevsky, or a P.G. Wodehouse a P.G. Wodehouse, any book by Markus Werner is always first and foremost a book by Markus Werner. But that said, there are small differences even among Werners, and the English reader should know that this, the author’s third novel, ›Die kalte Schulter‹ of 1989, is the favorite of many German and Swiss readers and critics, and that Werner’s great qualities are in it exemplified to perfection. They are – oddly, or perhaps not, someone or something is always thinking – suggested by the three names above: the caricatural invention of a Dickens, the constricting web of circumstance of a Dostoyevsky, and the verbal wit of a P.G. Wodehouse.
In little over a hundred pages – the space normally accorded half a novel, if that – we are given the character (the abundant and difficult character), the life and contacts of one Moritz Wank, student of beauty, Quixotic soul and resting painter (»now why am I not a painter« he exclaims sarcastically to himself at one stage), Biblically smitten with a boil in his oxter, a stalled career, a lull in production, and in imminent expectation of some menacing birthday or other; devoted if demanding lover of the dental hygienist Judith Neretsa (and possibly others); colleague of the venal, white patent-leather Rötzel and the pure-hearted, prematurely deceased Friedmann; neighbor in an increasingly ill-favored tenement on the edge of the city (»In Time’s Spite«) to the variously irritating Schnorfs and Müllers and Lüdis and Egloffs and Stössels; grieving son to a father whose last wish was that he put on a collar and tie for his funeral, and a mother who trusts to her red cabbage (with bacon and chestnuts) but expects no answers to her letters; exploited temporary laborer in the plutocratic mills of one Santiago Krebs (costume sale and hire); compassionate counselor to Silvia and Kurt, another couple going through their ructions; friend to Sammy, an engaging, volatile kid with Downs Syndrome; hedging some reservations about Judith’s canary Max (the sparrow to Catullus’s Lesbia). We get a week at the end of a heat-wave, a mental and psychological clearing of the decks, a shattering encounter with (as the Victorians would say) Life, a long-postponed (from the first sentence) negotiation with Wank’s toenails. Werner is what he is, does what he does (and there is no one like him): clever, irascible, sensitive, savagely neat, fearless, minutely attentive, surprising. And one other thing: The Cold Shoulder is perhaps the most shocking book I know.

I think the greater part of translating is probably choosing your book and your author, both in terms of their excellence (and not everything demands or deserves to be translated) and their congeniality or suitability to your own likings and spectrum. Werner writes with a closeness to the moment and an electric rococo responsiveness that unfailingly delight me. His book is free of drudgery, explanations, inert parts or labored parts. (No one else could have come up with that ending, so mystical, so ordinary, for all its abruptness so chokingly sweet.) Whether Wank is out buying sandals, making love to his Judith, or throwing away a perished banana, he lives. He is alone, or speculatively or masterfully with one other (»He could have sworn that Maya had gone clickety, and so he was a little bewildered by her refusal of his clack«), or subtly malfunctioning in groups. Everything comes at you with his human spin: on the cusp, in the moment, generally speaking pre-aghast but hopeful of happiness. Werner’s is for me the ideal hand at my elbow, guiding me to where I would like to go, seeing things in just the way I would wish to have seen them (»Pigeons wobbled up and down the sandstone ledge, stopped, quivered, wobbled on, and made stupid cooings«), thinking – perhaps like the mysterious Esperantist in the cemetery vis a vis Wank – thoughts for me to complete. He is truly a worthy heir to the great Swiss miniaturist Robert Walser. And the result is a book (after Zündel’s Exit, a second book) copies of which I would happily – proudly – stand on street-corners and give away to strangers.