SOURCE: Zimmermann, Ulf. Review of Brandung, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 60, no. 3 (summer 1986): 465.

In the following review, Zimmermann summarizes the plot of Brandung, observing the “bleakness” of its protagonist and the stylistic “excess” of its American-English syntax.

The story of Helmut Halm, as Walser reveals it through Halm himself, [in Brandung], is one of aging, decline, failure, and finally of resignation to the routine continuation of the same. What brings this home to Halm, ironically, is the unexpected and exciting opportunity to get away from the almost intolerable tedium of his life as a teacher in a Stuttgart gymnasium and spend a semester at a college in California.

Here in this clichéd Shangri-la of youth, sun, and sensuality, Halm becomes sharply aware of the physical and mental failings of his years. The first of these failings is demonstrated to him most palpably by the novel's forceful...