Conversation of the Three Wayfarers

by Peter Weiss, E.B. Garside (Translator), John Keene (Introduction)

Overview

This fast-moving, tightly-wound, and gleefully dark novella contains an entire universe in miniature

Conversation of the Three Wayfarers is a tale overheard, rather than told directly. Abel, Babel, and Cabel, the wayfarers, carry on a three-sided monologue, each reporting curious incidents—the effect is of three capers rolled into one: a steeplechase performed on a floating pontoon. But are they really three distinct individuals? Why do their lives blend in such a fantastic manner? Weiss’s strikingly original prose has an impossibly contained quality, with each sentence doing a perfect double-double backflip before neatly landing. This essential rediscovered work, from the masterful and acclaimed German modernist Peter Weiss, will be a delightful discovery for readers of Kafka, Musil, and Gombrowicz.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811231633
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 4.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Peter Weiss (1916–1982) was a German playwright, dramatist, visual artist, filmmaker, and novelist. His works include The Aesthetics of Resistance and The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body. He is best known in the US for his play Marat/Sade: Peter Brook’s production received the Tony Award for Best Play in 1966. His documentary drama The Investigation, which recreates the trial of Auschwitz concentration camp guards, was produced on American television in the 1960s. He was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize after his death in 1982.

E. B. Garside was a German translator and the author of The Man From Brazil.

John Keene is the author, co-author, and translator of a handful of books, including Annotations (1995) and Counternarratives (2015), both published by New Directions. Counternarratives received an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Republic of Consciousness Prize (UK), and a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. His most recent publication, Punks: New & Selected Poems (The Song Cave, 2021),received the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry, the Thom Gunn Award from the Publishing Triangle and a 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, he is Distinguished Professor and serves as department chair at Rutgers University-Newark

Editorial Reviews

02/28/2022

This searching novella from Weiss (1916–1982), a German filmmaker and painter best known for his play Marat/Sade, comprises the disjointed and often contradictory memories of three indistinguishable narrators. Abel, Babel, and Cabel are big, bearded men who tell and retell seemingly unrelated tales during their walks together, though it is impossible to discern who is speaking at any given time. Depending on who’s talking, the city’s pontoon bridge is either new or has been there for a long time. One of the men crossed with his bride in a coach that was rear-ended after she vomited. Another crossed to marry a woman he had gotten pregnant, though he later says he left her within the hour. The ferryman, who provided passage before the bridge was built, is a recurring character as well, along with his wife and six sons—Jam, Jem, Jim, Jom, Jum, and Jym. Some of their stories blossom into engaging fantasies, as one of the men recollects his “seven years of prejudice, habit and fallacy” while visiting his former home. Others are opaque and rambling, like the man who wanders through his building wearing one slipper while trying to restore phone service. Weiss carries readers along by sustaining the impression of deeper, hidden meanings, even if they don’t always reveal themselves. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Staggering ambition! Extraordinary richness."

Susan Sontag

"Peter Weiss embarks on his literary work and enters purgatory. All his work is designed as a visit to the dead."

W. G. Sebald

"Weiss remains among the most important postwar German authors no one’s read."

Slate