Culture May 25, 2017

It’s perilous when the words spoken by a writer end up more well known than those he actually wrote. The line “I’m not here to write, I’m here to be mad” has appeared in most articles about Robert Walser written since his death in 1956. The “here” is, supposedly, the Sanatorium of Appenzell in Herisau, Switzerland, and the hearer was, allegedly, Carl Seelig, whose recollected visits to the no-longer-writing writer, Walks with Walser, was just published by New Directions.