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"Anton Reiser" doesn't read like a novel, a memoir, an autobiography, or a philosophical treatise. At times, it reads like all those things and then some.
This makes a kind of sense, given that the work came out in 1785, when the rules of prose fiction were still developing. As such, there are passages here that describe the actions and thoughts of Anton himself, passages that draw life lessons from the events that were just described, passages that detail philosophical concepts derived from those events, passages that look forward to Anton's future life, and on and on. Sometimes all those passages take place on the same page.
This style takes something away from the story, although that story does express itself moderately well regardless. “Anton Reiser” begins with Anton's birth – he is the son of a mother and father who are committed to a certain kind of Protestant religious life, in which one ideally ignores or discards any physical desires as a way of depending only and solely on God. Unfortunately, Mom and Dad don't like each other much, which combined with their religious beliefs takes their attention off Anton for most of his childhood. He does wind up in school – not an automatic step for young boys at that time – and although he's a good student, he undergoes a lot of teasing and contempt from his classmates, in part due to his ragged clothing, poverty, and reliance on charity for his education. As time goes on, he moves from ambition to preach, to ambition to write poetry and plays, to ambition to act on stage, all interspersed with episodes of low depression.
Apparently, all of this really happened to Karl Philipp Moritz, the author, in some fashion, The novel also carries the subtitle “A Psychological Novel” (despite the fact that Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, was born about 80 years after this novel's publication date). So this is a novel, an autobiography, an examination of life and education in 18th-century Germany, an early example of what came to be called a “bildungsroman” (or novel of education), a psychological narrative, a religious/philosophical treatise, a collection of poetry, a literary analysis, and any number of other things, all in 350 or so pages. It's a little overstuffed, to say the least. None of which makes it unpleasant to read.
What does make it unpleasant to read at times is the character of Anton Reiser himself. Granted, he goes through a good deal of trauma in his younger years from his parents, teachers, and classmates, for a wide variety of reasons. That being so, let's just say that if I met a young man in real life who had been through those experiences, and therefore acted like he was more gifted than anyone else he met (at those times that he wasn't acting like he had no positive characteristics at all), I'd probably have some compassion for him, but I wouldn't necessarily want to hang around with him much. The same is true of Anton Reiser; it's all too easy to lose patience with him.
So here's another book that has a place on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” and I'm not at all sure what earned it that place. Reviews and commentaries on the book, including the Introduction to the edition I read, tell us plainly that “Anton Reiser” is a major work and a giant step forward in German literature. I'm certainly not educated or smart enough to contradict that claim. I might even try to find a way to agree that this is an important piece, if it weren't for the fact that it ends mighty abruptly, like many other early prose works. Anton walks to another city several miles from the town he's studied in to try to join a certain theatrical troupe. He learns that said troupe left town some weeks before, and that's that. Yep, so abrupt that when I reached the end, I assumed that Moritz hadn't finished it. Well, that's unlikely; “Anton Reiser”, as I said, came out in 1785, and Moritz lived until 1793, writing up until the year of his death. Looks like what he have here is just what Moritz intended us to have, abrupt ending and all.
All things considered, a worthwhile piece, but as a regular reader rather than some kind of literary expert, I'd say you could spend your reading time on something else.
Benshlomo says, Some books are of interest as stories, and some are of interest as historical artifacts.
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