Nailing Robert Walser's Genre

The Guardian's Nicholas Lezard also got the genre right in his review of Robert Walser's "Berlin Stories." He writes: "You might remember that last week I compared islands to novels. It occurs to me that cities are, by a similar token, collections of short stories, or feuilletons like this."

A feuilleton is, of course, an alternative, French term (though it is also used in Germany) for what is otherwise known as a cronica, or chronicle.

Lezard was very taken with Walser's chronicles. He writes: "In this unbelievably delightful and timeless collection of short pieces, we can recover the delight of ordinary, uncondescending appreciation, places where the vacant-minded stroller can take 'peculiar pleasure'. The tram, the theatre, the train station, the park."