Agnes [Hardcover]

There is that wonderful Escher lithograph of a hand drawing a hand drawing a hand. The Swiss writer Peter Stamm does something similar in his first novella, AGNES. We have an unnamed Swiss author, a would-be novelist with writer's block, living for a while in Chicago while researching a book on American luxury trains. In the library, he meets a much younger research student named Agnes, a crystallographer and amateur cellist, who eventually moves in with him. Agnes suggests that he write a story about her, about them, and he begins to do so. At first, this is a game, a kind of foreplay: he writes a paragraph about the dress that Agnes will change into when she gets home, what they will do together, when he will take it off; she reads the what he has written and follows his cues.

But while Escher's hands are inexorably linked in the plane of the paper, Stamm takes care to give Agnes an independent existence also. She has her music and her own friends. Things happen between them that are not prefigured in the written story, and soon the writer is trying to write alternate outcomes to events that have overtaken his control over them. The surreal linkage of author and subject would be interesting up to a point, but Stamm's dialogue between real life and the written-out constructs of fiction is even more fascinating. It is a wonderful metaphor for those relationships where one is torn between accepting the loved one for what she is and the desire to make her fit into some ideal vision of her. It also parallels the fiction writer's dilemma of exerting control over his material only at the risk of squeezing the life out of it. This brief book (a joy to hold in the hands, and unfortunately out of print) is full of small symbolic details that reinforce the central metaphor, even down to the contrast between Agnes' pursuits: the frozen symmetry of crystals and the fluidity of music. So it is not coincidental that our writer begins to study the Pullman strike of 1894, which he sees as much more than a mere labor dispute, rather a tragedy of over-control:

"It seemed that Pullman had planned for every contingency, except his workers' desire for freedom. He thought he had constructed a kind of paradisal community for them. But his Paradise didn't have a door, and as times grew harder and jobs were in ever shorter supply the workers felt they were little more than prisoners."

AGNES is a very different book from the two later Stamm novels I have read, more obviously experimental in tone. But it makes me look back at them with new eyes, to wonder whether the written-out life is not a central theme even in those quite realistic books. The protagonist in UNFORMED LANDSCAPE, for instance, lives in a kind of limbo in the arctic north of Norway, until she makes a conscious decision to construct a new life for herself, and travels south to France in an attempt to do so. The triangle situation in SEVEN YEARS involves a contrast between two women, one of whom is so unattractive by most usual standards that her existence can only be explained as an act of perverse authorial will, but whether on the part of Stamm himself or the protagonist of the story is open to debate. I was also struck by the parallel between AGNES and MONTAUK by Max Frisch, another novella by a Swiss author detailing an affair with an American woman, and similarly playing with life as an accumulation of realistic detail (Agnes herself writes a story that might almost be a parody of Frisch) versus life as a conscious construct of the controlling author. And the thought of Frisch takes me forward to German writer Thomas Pletzinger whose FUNERAL FOR A DOG, in explicit acknowledgement of Frisch, involves a kind of a duel between two writers, setting out their rival versions of events, the one in minute objective detail, the other as almost psychedelic fantasy.

But back to AGNES. The novella has an arresting opening: "Agnes is dead. Killed by a story. All that's left of her now is this story." Is this literally true, or just another metaphor? The possibility of Agnes' actual death does hang over the book at several points, but the ending is a matter for interpretation. Near the beginning, the writer watches a video made by Agnes on a trip to a national park. The images seem almost random: empty landscape, staccato shots, people trying to hide from the camera. The writer returns to the video at the end; it seems about to confirm some personal contact, but then abruptly stops.

"...You wanted me to write it that way." I said, "we wrote it together."

Yes, Agnes had wanted her lover to write her life story, but, until now she had not warned him how stories can influence her thinking and behaviour. The novel's opening sentences suggest that much in very short blunt sentences: "Agnes is dead. Killed by a story. All that's left of her now is this story." He, the nameless narrator, a Swiss author staying in Chicago for research for a glossy book on luxury trains, agrees to retell the story of their relationship. It lasted nine months. His previous success as a fiction writer had been modest, and his only effort at a novel abandoned, until Agnes rekindles his interest. AGNES is Swiss author, Peter Stamm's first novel (1998) and for those familiar with his most recent novel, Seven Years, his style and, in particular, the depiction of human relationships and personality traits in the narrator/central character will be recognizable. This novel being much shorter, more a novella, he touches on themes effectively without developing them, however, in comparable depth to later novels.

Agnes is something of a loner and not particularly attractive: a physics student, writing a doctoral thesis on the symmetry in crystals, she prefers touching objects to being touched, even accidentally, by people. Nonetheless, she attaches herself quickly to the narrator, in an all-or-nothing kind of way. Initially, the narrator, considerably older than Agnes, appears only intrigued, his flirtations with her casual. "My freedom had always mattered more to me than my happiness." Stamm's matter-of-fact language and detached style underline the impression of the protagonist's reluctance or even inability for involvement with his surroundings.

Throughout the novel, Stamm uses his descriptions of the city- and, especially, the landscape around Chicago, to evoke the changing moods of his characters. Their walks along the Lake and into to National Park brings the couple most intimately together. Their lives are "too happy" to make a good story, the narrator keep telling Agnes as she, gradually becomes more of a fixture in his space and life. It is only when she is not there, do his feelings for her coming to the fore.

Eventually, his writing of their story catches up with the present: can he imagine their future and will it be happy? All of a sudden, his narrative intentions no longer matter, the story takes over and dictates what to write... Stamm brings out the writer's inner conflict: his sense of freedom to imagine a different future is intense. The temptation to create a different Agnes, whose life he can control totally, is powerful. Agnes, on the other hand, while regularly reading what he writes, is starting to act out the story's character and demands that he play along. Fact and fiction are in serious danger of coming into conflict with each other. "'I don't read much anymore,' said Agnes. 'Because I didn't want books to have me in their power. It's like poison.' [...] 'I'm always sad when I finish a book, ... It feels to me that I'd become the character in it, and the character's life ends when the book does.'" The danger signs are obvious to the reader, but the author continues to make light of them: "it's just a story." similarly to his later novel, Stamm introduces the 'other woman' into the story: she is attractive, independent and casual in her dealings with men, the opposite of Agnes. Again, his central male character does not fully realize the consequences of his actions.

To have the beginning of a novel pre-empt the ending can enhance or reduce the reading pleasure. In this case, for me at least, it did both - increase and diminish the creative tension that Stamm builds very well throughout the narrative. I didn't spend as much thought on some of the finer intriguing touches of the novel and rather felt myself focusing on wondering what could trigger Agnes' end and how, anyway, could a story kill... As can be anticipated, the end of the book cycles back to the beginning, or, maybe, not quite as straightforwardly. The reader will have to decide how to interpret it. Michael Hofmann has presented an exquisite and finely-tuned translation; he has since translated all books published by Peter Stamm. [Friederike Knabe]

This, the first sentence, intrigued me enough to borrow this novella from the library.
My overall impression is of a very 'cold' book, written by an unnamed narrator (he reminds me somehow of the narrator in Camus' 'L'etranger') in short abrupt sentences. We learn how he prizes his freedom over relationships, how he goes to a rundown cafe 'because none of the waitresses knew me or talked to me'.
While researching his latest book at the Chicago Library, he encounters Agnes, a physics student. Although she comes across as pretty weird too, we are only seeing her through his eyes.
Soon she asks him to write a book about her. This begins harmlessly enough as he recalls their first dates; soon he starts to imagine how their future will be:
' "You'll be wearing your navy blue dress", I said.
"What do you mean?" she said in amazement.
"I've overtaken the present", I said. "I know the future." '
As issues arise in their life together, he comes up with imagined resolutions to them...
A book you could certainly study and ponder what Stamm was getting at but for me personally not an enjoyable read.