Martin Walser is a curious example of a contemporary novelist who, despite more than a decade of prolific writing, has failed to gain appreciable recognition from Germany's literary critics…. There are two aspects of Walser's work that appear to disturb critics most: his apparent lack of concern for plot and for integration of detail into a unified whole, and his failure to present anything like a constructive alternative to the hypercritical and devastating picture he paints of postwar German society. With regard to the latter, it is true that Walser has not arrived at a synthesis of satire and the vision of a positive moral philosophy which has contributed in large measure to Heinrich Böll's success. But a criticism leveled at the lack of architecture in Walser's works which, from the point of view of traditional poetic theory, is their most vulnerable aspect, fails to do justice to the author, inasmuch as it overlooks the real literary merit of the work: the unity of style and subject….

[Walser] shapes language into an apt idiom for his principal theme—the breakdown of social communication and the depersonalization of human behavior—and also for the undifferentiated character of the world he depicts. My focus is on the way language is used to express a particular quality of experience and perception. My observations are restricted to two prose works: Die Ehen in Philippsburg and Halbzeit. The breakdown of social communication, the depersonalization, leveling and stereotyping of human behavior, the increasing emphasis on the artifact—the most crucial aspects of our contemporary cultural crisis as Walser perceives it—are given symbolic representation in the details of his language use. (p. 204)

The breakdown of genuine communication in society involves a crisis of language. In his attitude toward language Walser is an adamant realist…. All of his attacks on contemporary language stem from the conviction that language has degenerated into a vast repertoire of formulas…. In short, language no longer corresponds to reality or to truth. This iconoclastic attitude toward conventional language occasionally finds expression bordering on nihilism. (p. 205)

In Walser's first novel, Die Ehen in Philippsburg (1957), the neophyte hero pays for his acceptance and integration into society by forfeiting both his individuality and his freedom. The protagonist, Hans Beumann, is in many ways a twentieth-century Parzival who succeeds in his struggle to be accepted by carefully observing and appropriating, through mimicry, the social behavior of the cocktail party set…. [The novel] is a satirical and scathing condemnation of postwar German society with its stereotyped language and behavior. Here the problems of communication and depersonalization are no longer treated on the abstract level of parable, as in the early collection of stories, Flugzeug über dem Haus (1955); they are presented as symptoms of a cultural crisis. Now the problem is not primarily a lack of communication with a mute or apathetic environment reminiscent of Kafka, but rather that communication has become impersonal and stereotyped, devitalized by the ready-made phrase, just as human behavior has become depersonalized, undifferentiated, and stereotyped by mimicry and by set forms of gesture in social intercourse. A general social and cultural leveling is the result.

This depersonalization and leveling finds expression in certain recurrent linguistic traits: 1) the frequent use of an inanimate or impersonal subject in place of an animate or personal one; very often this takes the form of a pars pro toto in which a part of the body stands for the person; 2) the use of anaphoric or repetitive constructions; and 3) the preponderance of indirect discourse over direct discourse. The recurrence of these traits underscores the impersonality of communication and the depersonalization of the individual in a society that is distinctly object-oriented, stressing the artifacts of its culture to the virtual exclusion of all human and personal values. (pp. 205-06)

It is not insignificant that indirect discourse or the absence of dialogue prevails over long tracts of Walser's prose. To cite one statistic: the entire novel consists roughly of 11,000 lines, of which only 450 or somewhat less than five percent are dialogue. This is all the more conspicuous in a novel in which social gatherings have such a large share in the plot. It is as though indirect discourse were the ironic insinuation that in an object-oriented society what people actually say is of no importance. In a world in which, in addition to the stereotyping of gesture and external appearance, speech has become largely standardized jargon and a genuine dialogue of mutual exchange and edification is virtually nonexistent, the functionality of direct discourse becomes restricted. When direct discourse does occur, it takes on the nature of a tiny island of dialogue surrounded by a vast ocean of impersonal and undifferentiated communication. Rather than exploiting dialogue as a means of revealing human inanities and foibles, Walser concentrates on externals, on physiognomy and gesture, which he analyzes with extreme and merciless precision. (p. 207)

[Mimicry] plays a central role in Walser's world. In the biological sense mimicry is the superficial resemblance which certain animals exhibit to other animals or to the natural objects of their environment, thereby securing concealment or protection. Applied to Walser's social world, mimicry means an expedient adjustment to the exigencies of the situation by wearing the prescribed face, by executing the prescribed gesture, and by saying the prescribed ready-made phrase. Mimicry is thus a most powerful force in causing a depersonalization and standardization of social communication and social behavior. In mimicry the individual simulates the form of his surroundings with the result that the world becomes undifferentiated in character. Hans Beumann, in his process of adaptation, develops into the adroit mimic and liar, deceiving his fiancée, Anne Volkmann, by pursuing extramural amorous adventures that brand him as a future adulterer. These acquired characteristics in a predominantly mimetic environment along with his forfeiture of individuality and freedom are the price he must pay for his ultimate acceptance into the social clique.

Halbzeit (1960) is the organic outgrowth of and sequel to Die Ehen in Philippsburg, both in plot and ideas. The hero, Anselm Kristlein, is an experienced and established Hans Beumann. He has become the inveterate mimic whose rise from traveling salesman to professional adman culminates in his becoming the "chosen one" to travel to New York, the Mecca of the admen. Here he is to learn the art of creating psychological obsolescence in commercial products for the purpose of creating new and artificial needs for the consumer. (pp. 210-11)

In Halbzeit the world of commercial advertising is the immense conditioning apparatus, manipulator, and leveler of human thought, language, and behavior. No other single force, Walser asserts, not even politics, has had such an impact on language as have business and public relations. This gigantic empire which holds such unprecedented sway over communication is the chief fashioner and dictator of the style of life in the postwar German society of the "economic miracle." Germany, Walser insinuates, has merely passed from the totalitarian dictatorship of National Socialism to the dictatorship of public relations philosophy and tactics. In fact, in Halbzeit many former high-ranking Nazis are participants in a huge advertising campaign aimed at brainwashing and conquering the consumer and making the incredible credible by adroit propaganda. The deep ramifications and unhappy consequences of this new style of life, its impact on communication and social behavior—this is what Walser strives to portray in his mammoth epic.

In Halbzeit the world unrolls before us like a perpetual series of television commercials and magazine ads. For a better appreciation of this technique we might imagine ourselves, for example, viewing television and witnessing on the screen nothing more than one commercial after another without interruption, or glancing through a magazine and finding nothing but advertisements on every page. Two things would become strikingly obvious to the critical observer: first, the disconnected, fragmentary, and stereotyped nature of the world depicted and of the communication taking place in it, and second, the exaggerated emphasis on the object. Television commercials and magazine advertisements tend generally to stress the object, the artifact. Parts of the body assume exaggerated importance. Camera close-ups focus attention on a particular part of the body: the hair, eyes, teeth, hands, and legs. The ironic paradox of the advertisement is that while it pretends to endow the object (human or artifact) with individuality and distinction, it actually makes a stereotype of it. The subject is depersonalized and transformed into an object. This is often the perspective from which Kristlein perceives the human objects in his environment…. (pp. 211-12)

So far-reaching and all-pervasive are the effects of commercialism as the dictator of the contemporary style of life that in Halbzeit all naturalness and genuineness of emotion and gesture have vanished. To a far more radical degree than Hans Beumann, Anselm Kristlein is dependent on mimicry in adapting himself to society and to life. Mimicry has become second nature to him, having evolved to the stage where it is the expression of the instinct for self-preservation. In one reference after another to a facial expression or to a mood Walser stresses their artificial and rehearsed character, usually by means of a verb which either denotes or implies artifice…. (pp. 212-13)

The competitiveness of the struggle for survival in the economic jungle is transferred to the social plane in the episode in which Walser depicts a grand social reception at the sumptuous villa of Herr Frantzke, the advertising magnate. Kristlein fully realizes that here amidst the pomp, luxury, and outward civility the Darwinian theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest is operative. (p. 213)

Walser is averse to all poetic embellishment in his description of the external world of inanimate objects. (p. 214)

In terms of language use and syntax, Walser's style is the correlate of the world he portrays: a world devoid of articulation, individuality, and substance. But it is not merely description which perpetually remains arrested in surface detail. In his intensive and burrowing psychological analysis Walser probes the very depths of a mimetic world in which truth is never on the surface of things, but is inward and concealed. (p. 215)