Peter Bichsel 1972

Summary

PETER BICHSEL WAS BORN IN 1935 in Lucerne, Switzerland and lives now with his wife and two children in Solothurn. Until recently, he was active as a school teacher in local Swiss schools. Lately, in addition to spending most of his time writing, he has begun making movies. This is his second visit to the United States. Several years ago, he attended the meetings of the Gruppe 47 held in Princeton.

His major published work includes: Eigentlich möchte Frau Blum den Milchmann kennenlernen (1964) — a superb collection of short prose sketches; Die Jahreszeiten (1967) — a highly experimental novel for which he received the distinguished prize of the Gruppe 47; and, most recently, Kindergeschichten (1969) — a much acclaimed collection of short stories. Presently he is working on new stories as well as a novel.

Peter Bichsel can write in a mean and depressing rain — absolutely sure of the kind of story he wants to tell and totally in control of the means for telling it. Once it starts, the story tells itself. Basic to the way he works is an abstract notion, existing only in his head and having nothing to do with obvious reality, that sets this problem: how would I tell myself the story of the man who set out to prove the world round? or, how would I tell the story of a schizophrenic who's packing her suitcase for a trip to the clinic? In his own words: “I’m interested in what happens on the paper when I write the word table — I expect that it will bring other words out into the open, enter into a constellation with other words, provoke sentences … Like a drunk who wants to talk, I need a pretext, a real background. An idea. That idea is as good as what it lets me write. Sometimes it's enough if an idea (or story) delivers just a single sentence. (Terribly unusual things always deliver too many sentences) … And this corresponds to the view that the painting gets its direction from the painter's very first brush stroke …” And perhaps most important of all, this observation: “A story must be able to surprise me while I’m writing it, the turns it takes must not take place in any model, any preconception.”