An Evocation of Matthias Stimmberg

Book excerpt: A miniature Borgesian portrait in misanthropy In a sequence of anecdotes imbued with haughty melancholy and nihilistic irony, Alain-Paul Mallard assembles a puzzle of an Austrian writer who despises both the world he lives in and the work he himself has produced, whose fragmented life crosses paths with fictional and nonfictional protagonists from Hans Magnus Enzensberger to Paul Celan, and whose concise first-person reflections describe a complicated and sympathetic monster. A masterpiece of the miniature in the tradition of Robert Walser and Fleur Jaeggy, and a tribute to the legacy of Thomas Bernhard, Mallard's "imaginary life" offers a celebration of sterility and silence in its appropriately distilled essence. Writer and filmmaker Alain-Paul Mallardwas born in 1970 and raised in Mexico City. He studied Hispanic literature in his native city, and then studied European intellectual history in Toronto. Tempted by silence, he is the author of a short, highly concentrated body of work. His films include L'origine de la tendresse, Évidencesand L'adoption.