The Review of Contemporary Fiction

A German Picturesque by Jason Schwartz
Brian Evenson

Jason Schwartz. A German Picturesque. Knopf, 1998. 133 pp. $21.00.

A German Picturesque, Jason Schwartz’s first book, takes as its central topic the static objectification of what is seen. With many of these stories either devoid of actions and characters or with these elements taking only a secondary role, small things—the curve in a sleeve, a winter scene on a dish, a shining spot on a doorknob—take on a curious power that somehow is equal to that of the grander events these narratives hint at. The narrators themselves, too, are hinted at, partly visible but never quite completely visible.

Behind this stasis a sense of history and of accumulated tradition gathers. In “Staves” for instance, an effigy is discussed in ways that hint at Judas Iscariot. A postage stamp can lead to a submerged discussion of a king. The formal occasions vary as well, the stories sometimes seeming to be based on a museum tour or on where the gaze goes in the gaps of writing a letter at one’s desk or on movement through an architectural space, sometimes almost partly digested descriptions of paintings or landscapes (similar to what Robbe-Grillet does in In the Labyrinth).

While there is some variation in scene and in the occasions each story appropriates for its form, A German Picturesque insists on similar devices and similar narrators from story to story, varying them only slightly, subtly. While most first books of stories tend to be a showcase for an author’s range, Schwartz’s book very deliberately maps an enclosed stylistic space, exhausting all its possibilities. At their best, these are striking pieces, simple yet opaque. An unusual, interesting, and somewhat claustrophobic book, A German Picturesque shows Schwartz operating in a style entirely his own. [Brian Evenson]