[Montauk] takes its title and its authority from the town on Long Island where Frisch spends a weekend in the company of a woman who works for his American publisher and whom he refers to simply as Lynn. Montauk is no literary invention, and Lynn's identity is no secret to the New York publishing world. We enter the book in medias res and in the present tense, as Lynn and the author find themselves on foot, lost in the thickets of the Long Island coast. It is the palpable disorder of immediate sensation.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, precisely because of our faith that art transcends the bagatelles of specific time and place. Frisch acknowledges that "Literature cancels the moment—that is what it is for," yet he eschews literature. His avowed purpose in Montauk is to meet the moment on its own terms. Describing...