The case of Franz Horn and the chronically clenched teeth that are its symptom result, as Walser demonstrates in this bestselling novel [Jenseits der Liebe], from a compounding of pressures: the pressure to succeed in the economic-miracle society (familiar from his Kristlein trilogy) and the psychological pressures—the sense of self-doubt, inferiority and guilt—of failing within that society.

Horn, an average man of forty-four, has spent seventeen years working, suppressing everything else for the success of a denture company. But recently his usefulness to the firm has begun to decline…. Yet even as he now willfully neglects his business obligations, he acquiesces—with almost malicious relish—in his society's values and thus convinces himself of his monstrous worthlessness.

Kafka connoisseur that he is, Walser has Horn reach this conviction via truly Kafkaesque casuistry. Moreover, from the very beginning—strikingly like Gregor Samsa's awakening, with Franz Horn waking up to find his teeth clenched beyond his control—to Horn's final view of himself as monstrous, the novel appears a contemporary "Metamorphosis." But Horn's fate may be worse: he seems condemned to live on, isolated and superfluous, beyond love. Perhaps such literary similarities are all too predominant, given too the dental motif shared with Grass's Local Anaesthetic. And perhaps the dehumanizing effects, the artificialities of this society and the impotence of its individual member are all too familiar as well. Yet Walser's own style, his penetrating empathy and engaging wit make it a fresh demonstration as convincing as it is enjoyable.