Robert Walser 'Stories' Fail to Deceive One Reviewer

Kudos to The Sunday New York Times Book Review for correctly suspecting that Robert Walser's "Berlin Stories" (see here,) issued by the New York Review of Books as a fiction title, are not really stories, not really fiction -- although it is in the Fiction Chronicle column that The Times chose to review the book. When Jan Stuart describes the book's offerings as "essayish 'stories'" you can feel the reviewer groping for the term that has gone missing from the English-language dictionary of literary genres: the chronicle. Which is ironic since Jan Stuart is the author of a book with the terms in its title: "The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece."