The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Radio Dialogs II, by Arno Schmidt, translated by John E. Woods
reviewed by James Crossley

Untitled document

Trans. and intro. John E. Woods. Green Integer, 2003. 405 pp. Paper: $13.95.

This pocket-sized volume is the second of three collecting Schmidt’s musings on writers and their works. As one might expect from this most ludic author, one of the more undeservedly unknown masters of twentieth-century prose, these essays are hardly traditional academic exercises. Rather, they appear in the form of two- or three-part conversations between nameless speakers, playlets about such figures as Herder, Frenssen, Bulwer-Lytton, and Joyce, and were originally broadcast on German radio mainly in the 1950s and sixties. As most of the names under discussion are relatively unrecognizable to readers of English—raise your hand if you’ve never heard before of Johann Schnabel’s 2,300-page utopia, Felsenburg Island—the central appeal of this translation of Radio Dialogs lies not in what Schmidt says about other writers, but in what his comments suggest about his own work. The Joyce chapter is most telling in this regard. In it, two of Schmidt’s somewhat Beckettian characters attempt to make sense of the many connotations of the coinages in Finnegans Wake: “A: . . . What does an Englishman . . . think about when he hears the syllable <vail>?” “B. (reserved): Well, a poetical : . . . and or . — (experimenting): . . .” “A.: Hmyes. There are, of course, still more . . . but that’s enough. . . . We had best invent a new technical term for use on this compelling evening of Ours. . . . What shall We call this basic structure of the linguistic fabric that ties so many things together? What might be available? – (feigns enlightenment): : the system of genuine meaning : let Us simply baptize this polyvalenced fellow an <etym>—agreed?” “B. Presuming there’s not some other new trick hidden in it.” Many of Schmidt’s books, of course, are rich in meaning precisely because they are built of such etyms. These are strung together by a system of punctuation far more difficult to parse than in the above example; Radio Dialogs would have benefited from a more comprehensive introduction to Schmidt’s methods and perhaps an explanation of how this kind of typographical holy-foolery came across in an aural medium. Such supporting material isn’t essential, however, and the book is unquestionably an intriguing puzzle that provides an infinite number of launching points for study and imagination.


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Radio Dialogs II, by Arno Schmidt, translated by John E. Woods reviewed by James Crossley Untitled document Trans. and intro. John E. Woods. Green Integer, 2003. 405 pp. Paper: $13.95. This pocket-sized volume is the second of three collecting Schmidt’s musings on writers and their works. As one might expect from this most ludic author, one of the more undeservedly unknown masters of twentieth-century prose, these essays are hardly traditional academic exercises. Rather, they appear in the form of two- or three-part conversations between nameless speakers, playlets about such figures as Herder, Frenssen, Bulwer-Lytton, and Joyce, and were originally broadcast on German radio mainly in the 1950s and sixties. As most of the names under discussion are relatively unrecognizable to readers of English—raise your hand if you’ve never heard before of Johann Schnabel’s 2,300-page utopia, Felsenburg Island—the central appeal of this translation of Radio Dialogs lies not in what Schmidt says about other writers, but in what his comments suggest about his own work. The Joyce chapter is most telling in this regard. In it, two of Schmidt’s somewhat Beckettian characters attempt to make sense of the many connotations of the coinages in Finnegans Wake: “A: . . . What does an Englishman . . . think about when he hears the syllable <vail>?” “B. (reserved): Well, a poetical : . . . and or . — (experimenting): . . .” “A.: Hmyes. There are, of course, still more . . . but that’s enough. . . . We had best invent a new technical term for use on this compelling evening of Ours. . . . What shall We call this basic structure of the linguistic fabric that ties so many things together? What might be available? – (feigns enlightenment): : the system of genuine meaning : let Us simply baptize this polyvalenced fellow an <etym>—agreed?” “B. Presuming there’s not some other new trick hidden in it.” Many of Schmidt’s books, of course, are rich in meaning precisely because they are built of such etyms. These are strung together by a system of punctuation far more difficult to parse than in the above example; Radio Dialogs would have benefited from a more comprehensive introduction to Schmidt’s methods and perhaps an explanation of how this kind of typographical holy-foolery came across in an aural medium. Such supporting material isn’t essential, however, and the book is unquestionably an intriguing puzzle that provides an infinite number of launching points for study and imagination.

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