Messmers Reisen

"Razor-sharp observations, formulated with aphoristic brilliance", wrote the Hamburger Abendblatt: "A book full of life wisdom and philosophical aphorisms - witty, trenchant and linguistically sophisticated. With Messmer's Travels, Martin Walser takes up the theme of his book Messmer's Thoughts, published in 1985. It is a self- and world-exploration of almost disturbing radicalism. What the author presents here is nothing less than a kind of innermost autobiography, an autobiography of existence. He does not occupy the shelter of a narrated story, but invents the figure of Meßmer, to whom he turns in a thoughtful, aggressive, epistemic manner; in doing so, he repeatedly switches from "he" to an unadulterated "I", which treats itself neither with a mask nor with protection. Walser lets his Messmer be on the road as someone who does not disregard his experience and yet with s.