Overview
"Life," Arthur Schnitzler famously said, "is what happens between love and death." This second collection of Schnitzler's prose fiction follows on Night Games, Margret Schaefer's earlier translation of the Viennese writer's tales, which won acclaim in the New Yorker and among critics generally. In Desire and Delusion, Ms. Schaefer has translated three of Schnitzler's greatest novellas—Dying, Flight into Darkness, and Fräulein Else. They reveal the depths of his psychological and moral understanding of life as well as the masterful storytelling techniques that immerse the reader into the very center of his characters' thoughts and emotions. Acknowledged masterpieces all, these novellas span Schnitzler's entire career from 1895 to 1931. They testify to his stature as depth psychologist, a doctor-writer fascinated by illness and very much at home in what Susan Sontag has called "the country of the sick." In all these novellas, Schnitzler uses point of view, interior monologue, and stream of consciousness in a radically modern way reminiscent of Joyce and Proust, only earlier.
Synopsis
Dying, Flight into Darkness, and Fraulein Else reveal the depths of Schnitzler's psychological and moral understanding of life as well as the masterful storytelling techniques that immerse the reader into the very center of his characters' thoughts and emotions. The tales of Arthur Schnitzler—especially as rendered in Margret Schaefer's clear, uncluttered translations—are many suggestive, allusive, and dreamlike things. But they are most certainly not the work of a period writer. —Chris Lehmann, Washington Post Book World
America
brilliant...penetrating...readable...relaxed.
Editorials
America
She is readable, relaxed and on the whole the best guide for English readers to the nondramatic works of the man whom Freud admired and held in awe as his literary doppelganger.— Peter Heinegg
CHOICE
Beautifully translated. Each novella offers rich examples of the darkly introspective and self-destructive stream of consciousness Schnitzler employed.— E. Wickersham
Choice
Beautifully translated. Each novella offers rich examples of the darkly introspective and self-destructive stream of consciousness Schnitzler employed.— E. Wickersham, Villanova University
New Haven Register
Translator Margret Schaefer [offers a] concise and informative introduction.... Schnitzler's characters—abrim with sensibility, but devoid of common sense—seem so contemporary.New York Times
One reads the stories with suspense, pleasure, amusement.... [Schnitzler] can be read with pleasure and ease.New York Times Book Review
One reads the stories with suspense, pleasure, amusement.... [Schnitzler] can be read with pleasure and ease.The New York Times
One reads the stories with suspense, pleasure, amusement.... [Schnitzler] can be read with pleasure and ease.Toronto Globe and Mail
Clear and accessible versions of these haunting, riveting stories.Washington Post Book World
The tales of Arthur Schnitzler—especially as rendered in Margret Schaefer's clear, uncluttered translations—are many suggestive, allusive, and dreamlike things. But they are most certainly not the work of a period writer.— Chris Lehmann