Customer Reviews

Homo Faber: A Report

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

--because to truly appreciate this beautiful novel you really need to have lived through at least four decades or so.

It strikes me that so much great literature goes unread by those to whom it is ultimately directed. The `classics' are generally written by writers in their 40s and 50s and end up primarily being read by teenagers. Sure, you can get something out of these texts then, but theres no way a 20-year-old can really understand *Homo Faber*--a novel about a middle-aged man confronting his own mortality, decay, & disillusionment. Death is still largely an abstraction to a man of twenty, it hasnt yet entered his bones, love is still possible, youth is still a contemporary, a 20-year-old doesnt yet know what he's going to lose, what he's never going to get back, how badly he's going to miss it.

*Homo Faber* is a classic text of midlife crisis. It's a shame that so many of us have stopped reading altogether when we reach the age it can do us the most good...that we stop reading the classics, anyway, or feel they are irrelevant to our lives, or merely `stuff we already read back when we were in school.' A novel like *Homo Faber* is, to my mind, a religious text in the best sense of that term--in this case, a kind of updated Ecclesiastes.

I can only wonder what the original German text is like because this translation is absolutely stunning, rising to the level of sheer poetry. Almost every line is an ice-dagger into the heart. Such a beautiful, sad, and true book...and everything that needed saying said in 212 pages. Did Max Frisch ever win a Nobel Prize for Literature when the Nobel Prize still meant something? Cause on the basis of this book alone, he should have won two!!

I read this book in the German and enjoyed it immensely. Walter Faber, a globe-trotting engineer, uses technology and his scientific worldview as a shield against other people and against his own humanity. When his shield fails him, he learns to open his heart and live fully. Regardless of whether you share Frisch's opinions about science, the book is beautifully written. Walter Faber is both horrifying and touchingly sympathetic. Despite the tragic plot, the strength of the novel is its small comic moments, of which there are many. If you just watch the movie (even the German-language adaptation, which is much more faithful to the book than the American film), you will miss almost everything that is worthwhile about Homo Faber. Read the book! (In German, if possible.)

Like the previous reviewer, I read this book for an undergraduate German literature class and I found Frisch's writing wonderfully comic, but not without its disturbing points. One thing that is lacking in the English translation is Frisch's wonderful critiques of the "American Way of Life." So, I definately recomend trying the German version if at all possible. I also agree with the previous writer that the movie is a great disappointment. It changes the story into a pure love story and dismisses the importance of Walter Faber's transformation into someone, who for the first time in his life allows himself to truly live and love.

This book is one of the most important novels (although Frisch calls it "report") in German language, and I like it immensely ALTHOUGH it is being treated in German lessons, and I was shocked when I read the review in which the reviewer writes that the translator left out the criticism of the "American Way of Life" (one of the most important parts in the development, I think: Walter Faber, the main person, is sitting in Cuba, enjoying tropical thunderstorms and swears about America because it "destroyed the white race". This was also the attitude of an archaeologist he had met six months before and he didn't understand it at all).

I won't tell you all the story because it's like in a criminal novel: you shouldn't know the end because if you knew it, you would read it with less attention. The main thing is that Walter Faber, an engineer who is absolutely hostile towards feelings, women etc., is overwhelmed by some happenings he would never have considered to be possible. He changes his views radically and becomes a real tragic person.

Frisch's use of foreshadowings makes the reader feel the tragedy even more closely, but in his language, there are some weak points (the detailed technical pieces of information which Faber, the 1st-person-narrator, uses), which have been transformed into a wonderful parody (called "Frener") by Robert Neumann.

This is my all-time favorite book! I read it as an undergraduate German major - in German, of course! The story has so many messages - how what we don't face will come back to us; how much of life we miss when we're to afraid to live it; how things become more intense and beautiful when love is in our hearts. The characters are developed in such a loving manner that I found myself liking and sympathizing with all, despite their faults. I think that this book makes a great summer read. Contrary to the prior review, I would not recommend the movie based on this book. I was very excited when I heard that Sam Shepard was tackling this project, but I was ultimately disappointed. There is no replacing the real thing!

Homo Faber was the first book I've read by Max Frisch. I really thought that it was a telling and hopeful look at the plight of modern man.

It's the story of Walter Faber, a technologist, living in total despair. Fate has some movement to make in his life, though. Events contrive to send Walter on a journey through life that parallels a Greek tragedy.

The novel is fascinating. It is intriguing, reading somewhat like a mystery novel. That "detective story" feeling is telling as Walter eventually does find something: redemption. This is a truly insightful novel about the despair of modern man and his chance for some taste of happiness.

If you like this book, you should definitely read Walker Percy (who is an even better writer with much the same answer as Frisch).

This report is a difficult lovestory. The dry life of a technologist faints more and more during a love-relationship with his own daughter. The world of probability and dull nature changes into the world of "family" and love, death and warm rain. Max Frisch did already a wonderful job in the original, german version, but even translated it will enchant you. I give this book 5 stars, because it is "eyeglue" and won't let you go. It made it happen that I can see the nature in a different way and it is still influencing my life. The end was completely shocking, but it was the right one. This book is recommended for people who want to read an experience and not just a pulp pamphlet.

Max Frisch provides the readers with relevant perspective to the problem modern man faces, through a technocratic report and a love story the notions of morals, creation and engineering are blended into an interesting mix.
It takes a while to to get into it and figure out the implicit narratives the author so skillfully created.

The novel opens with the author, a somewhat callous, but forthright, proud and fatherly man, taking off from New York City in a snowstorm. His plane crash lands in the Mexican desert, where he is stranded for nearly a week, playing chess in the shadow of the tailfin. This is just the beginning of his Heart of Darkness journey, for soon he has interrupted his business trip to join a comrade into the depths of languor in the jungle, where they eventually find an old friend, who has just hung himself. The author then sets out on his homeward journey to Europe via steamer from New York and meets a young woman who completely shatters his cold engineering world. The book is at first curious, and later full of suspense and agony. Gripping and thoroughly depressing conclusion

Homo faber: a report

I was recommended to read this book by an Austrian; she had been required to read it at high school. I was therefore fascinated at the prospect of some radical literature on a challenging subject; the (originally non-) incestuous love between a 50 year old father and his 20 year-old daughter. In essence, the book annoyed me. The structure was at times confusing, part 1, over 170 pages, was a continuous text and the writing was not particularly lucid. Perhaps it was the problem of translation from the original German. As I moved towards the last 50 pages (I read it in one day on yet another car journey - see my review of 'Hero'), I wondered where the literary radicalism might appear. Then it came; a twist and then another twist. Then it moved to its end.

Was the story treated sympathetically? Yes, delicately even. Could the book be regarded as radical, in the sense of the ground-breaking publication of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' (see my review)? In my opinion, no. Did love exist? Certainly. It permeates the story in various ways and that is probably the fundamental point; how love can distort as well as enrich.

Ian Hunter.
Author of `e-Love'.