Breakers
Subtitle: a novel
By: by Martin Walser ; translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: H. Holt
Published: 1987
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng; ger
Number of pages: 305
ISBN-13: 9780805004151
Work titles: Brandung
Description: English and European novels set in American university communities have become something of a tradition in recent decades as itinerant novelists sojourn here as visiting professors and later go home to tell all. Notable German writer Walser has entered the lists with a feeling, clear-eyed novel of manners, a trenchant commentary on both academia and a contemporary, self-indulgent lifestyle. Helmut Halm, a German scholar in his 50s and a man of wide, general culture is teaching for a semester at a Bay Area university and is greatly taken with the inevitable coed blonde, Porsche-driving, milk-drinking Fran. As much as with Fran, Halm falls in love with California: the eternal sun, the coast and sea, the mellow, laid-back existence. So infatuated is he with its rituals that this repressed Teuton decks himself out in trendy clothes and even undertakes the ordeal of jogging... But eventually even here grim realities intrude. Two shocking deaths restore Halm's psychological equilibrium and end the novel on a sobering note. --Publishers Weekly.
Notes: Translation of: Brandung.