SOURCE: Birkerts, Sven. “Max Frisch.” In An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th-Century Literature, pp. 55-61. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1987.

In the following essay, Birkerts traces Frisch's literary development.

The precision-minded Swiss have never been famous for grand gesture or passionate utterance. It is as if exposure to the mighty contours of the land has over generations pruned back the national soul and turned its energies inward. Auden, connoisseur of craggy places and intricate inwardness, might have singled Switzerland out as one of his “comfy” places—but then, his idea of “comfy” also included boiled meat and cold potatoes. Freud's cigar certainly glowed more brightly when he considered how much Geld was tucked away in the penetralia of the Zurich banks. The Swiss reserve is at once federal and personal.

Out of this mountain fastness comes novelist, dramatist, and perennial Nobel candidate Max Frisch, whose career has...