SOURCE: "Robert Walser," in An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th Century Literature, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1987, pp. 41-5.

In the following essay, American critic Birkerts asserts that Walser's work should not be intertwined with that of Franz Kafka, describing Walser's tone as "buoyant, sportive, and manic" and labelling Walser as "one of the most remarkable and fully realized stylists in modern literature. "

The Swiss writer Robert Walser meets all of our requirements for ranking as one of literature's darling unfortunates. He was solitary, impoverished, he scribbled in miserable rooms, and he spent the last third of his life in an insane asylum. That his quick, febrile prose was admired by Musil, Benjamin, and Kafka and at the same time escaped wide notice is an added cachet. But even so, with all his credentials in order, the canonization might not take place. The problem is that Walser's name...