Books like Montauk

"Montauk" is Max Frisch' final novel in which the mature writer - he was 64 at the time - gives an account of two weekend trips with a relatively young woman he has only just met. This is not a story of romance. These are two people who happen to like and trust each other enough to spend a few days together, without the burden of expectations with respect to a longer term commitment.Two uneventful trips to Long Island form the backbone of the narrative. And Frisch sets himself the task to use this modest subject matter as `truthfully' as possible: no embellishments, no cutting-and-pasting, no twisting of facts and characters for the sake of artistic or ideological ends. Frisch' ambition in this novel is to come as close to `writerly truth' as he can. At the same time, the novel offers him a canvas to reflect on what has been left unsaid or what has been said untruthfully in his earlier literary work. So, the novel can be read at different levels: as a modest travelogue, as an epistemological experiment in search of `truth', and as a confession of past `sins'.Frisch' infatuation with recording factual and emotional truth is interesting but one could wonder whether, from a reader perspective, it ultimately isn't a superfluous element. It is perhaps nice to know that he factually saw Lynn and Long Island during these days as recorded in the novel but that in itself does not necessarily make "Montauk" a more rewarding reading experience. What makes "Montauk" such a compelling read is the truth that has been there all along in Max Frisch' work: it is his unadorned view on a fractured, dislocated human condition and it is the truth that pervades his direct, precise yet warm prose.Frisch' protagonists are smart people. But their smartness can't avoid them losing their bearings in the truthlessness, pain and spiritual poverty of late 20th century, western society. They are heroic people too. Invariably they face up to their failures and they perish with full conscience of their shortcomings and the wounds inflicted on others. It is this willingness to ultimately see truth in the eye which makes a Frisch novel often such a moving journey.However, more than anything else it is the truth of Max Frisch' language that keeps drawing me to his work. I have alluded to the `precision', `directness' and `warmth' of his prose. It is really very difficult to put the finger on the very particular texture of his writing. Every sentence has weight. Individual words are clearly etched against a luminous background and yet together they form a balanced whole. There is also a most peculiar tension between a certain timelessness - derived from an apparent simplicity and honesty in the choice of words and structure of sentences - and graphic references to very specific circumstances of time and place. Frisch has been an inveterate traveler and this cosmopolitanism has always pervaded his books. Remarkably, also in our age of widespread and unrestrained traveling, I remain mesmerised by the exoticism of his locales (whether it's his beloved Ticino, Greece, Cuba or US). When Frisch reminisces about a trip to the Greek island of Mykonos, there is still the `frisson' of the unknown, as if we are undertaking the long-anticipated trip ourselves for the very first time. Similarly, when, from an airplane window, he watches the sunlight vanish from the summit of the Finsteraarhorn (in the Bernese Alps), it is as if we are witnessing this mundane and yet timeless spectacle ourselves.I would ultimately characterise Frisch' prose as "earthy" and that is at the same time a phenomenological, esthetic, moral and epistemological quality. It is phenomenological because it tells us how the earth is perceived by our senses. It is esthetic because it tells us how the earth bestows her grace on human affairs. It is moral because it tells us what the earth commands. It is epistemological because it tells us how the earth separates truth from untruth.In that deeper sense, all of Frisch' work is truthful. And that is why I really don't care whether everything happened as described on those days, sometime in 1974. He might as well have made up every bit of "Montauk": I would love it nonetheless.