Man in the Holocene (Harvest Book) [Paperback]

Max Frisch (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book | Publication Date: May 1, 1994

Frisch charts the crumbling landscape of an old man’s consciousness as he slips away from himself toward death and reintegration with the age-old history of our planet. A “luminous parable...a masterpiece” (New York Times Book Review). Translated by Geoffrey Skelton. Illustrations. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Editorial Reviews

Review

Frisch is a great, and even an inspiring, writer, because he gives us the unique sense that the act of analysis is a passionate act, impelled by our fear of the world's dissolution and our knowledge of our own fragility. --Newsday

Haunting, sad, yet lovely . . . an important, disturbing and powerful novel that deserves attention. --Chicago Sun-Times

Poetry of the mind rather than the senses--sparse and austere, with every detail chosen for its resonances . . . a small book but a major achievement. --Washington Post Book World --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156569523
• ISBN-13: 978-0156569521
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, September 11, 2001

By 

"keyboardman" (Cumberland, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man in the Holocene (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

My life was greatly enriched by reading the superb English translation of Frisch's "Man in the Holocene". Frisch piles intimate, mundane details into a metaphor for the human condition and allows the reader to draw the larger inferences. An isolated alpine cottage becomes all the world we need. The need to understand our world is balanced by the depressing realization that we know less every day as we age. As Herr's options close in, we realize what Frisch has brought us to..Man in the Holocene. Fifteen years after reading this book, it is still the first I recommend to a new acquaintance. You'll think of it every time you mislay your car keys. Absolutely important and finely crafted. A must read.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Last Things, June 24, 2003

By 

Wiltrud Goldschmidt (Pennsylvania, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man in the Holocene (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Herr Geiser, a widowed pensioner living alone in the Ticino valley, is trapped in his house through days and nights of torrential rains and thunderstorms. Rumors of landslides blocking the only access to the valley have reached him, and he has observed cracks and cave-ins around his house. While fear and solitude are closing in on him, he tries hard to stay in control, to hold on to rationality. Preparing for a siege, he starts by taking stock of provisions, but ends by assessing his mental equipment: his memory fails him repeatedly, and he catches himself doing - or thinking of doing - irrational things.

He seeks reassurance by testing his cognitive functions; he still knows some basic geometry, some history, some geology - things an educated man should know. Eager to nail down the fragments of his mental armature, he copies entries from the encyclopedia and tacks the paper slips to the wall. When this proves too burdensome, he simply cuts out whole paragraphs and tapes them up in his "gallery". By analysis and classification, by naming and describing things and fitting them into systems, he tries to impose order on chaos. But disorder keeps intruding: cobwebs irritate him, and he nearly wrecks the staircase trying to get rid of them. The appearance of a spotted salamander in the bathroom upsets him, triggering visions of dinosaurs and retrogressive metamorphosis. Reading passages of the Bible provides no comfort: Geiser does not believe in the Flood. He is a skeptic, a child of the enlightened 20th century.

The anguish and frustration he feels is palpable, although the language is unemotional, almost impersonal. Geological processes serve as metaphors for crumbling and slipping mental functions: erosion, landslide, flooding, blockage, bypass, rockfalls, heaps of debris. There is a touch of gallows humor in Geiser's futile attempts to put his house in order and to conceal or rationalize his mishaps. His long-term memory is admirably intact; he remembers every detail of a mountain climb 50 years ago, of a sandstorm near Baghdad, of a visit to the primordial landscape of Iceland. Finally, he makes a gallant and desperate attempt to escape over a steep mountain pass to Italy. But when he is in sight of his goal, after a harrowing climb through fog and rain, he decides to return to his house in the valley. The knowledge that " he could have done it" gives him great satisfaction.

He suffers a stroke and is found by his daughter, who opens a window and lets in a gust of air, scattering the paper slips.(This image is eerily reminiscent of the famous scene in the Aeneid, where a draft enters the sibyl's cave, blowing all the leaves about and making nonsense of her prophecies and predictions). Seeing his precious "gallery" in a confused and useless heap on the floor, Geiser wonders if any of this stuff was worth knowing: "Nature needs no names". Naming things is not synonymous with understanding them or with having dominion over them. Geiser is content to let go. The village stands unharmed, "wooded as in the stone age", and man is a latecomer of fragile existence, who tends to do irrational things and needs constant reassurances.

Frisch tells this story in spare, unadorned prose. It is simple and profound, disturbing and oddly comforting.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A simple, elegant story of mental deterioration., July 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Man in the Holocene (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Max Frisch's simplistic and yet very intimate portrayal of an aged Swiss man, living alone, trying to occupy his thoughts, and facing the inevitable. The story is very psychological, reflecting the character Geiser's thoughts, which are sometimes strategic and at other times self-delusional. Frisch stands with Salinger, Garcia-Marquez, and Satre among this century's greatest writers.