Max Frisch -- Homo Faber
I'm rereading Max Frisch's most popular opus; Man in control of his being, his technology, and surroundings, as the Latin term defines, "Homo faber". What if your rational "Weltbild" is challenged by a series of events that defies logic? Shall we depend on the use of percentages, statistics, or the truth of numbers? Are there such things as equations of accidents and coincidences? I first encountered Frisch in a discussion (I felt it was a debate) around a table filled with various sweets and cups of brewed coffee. In a dismal Zurich weather, the people around challenged me to give my opinion about the writer, who I only knew then in some magazine articles. A young colleague who prided herself belonging to a family of traditional village cheese makers sarcastically smiled at me, her eyes glowed with schadenfroh glee as if saying to hell with your Third World Literature, having labeled me before as disseminator of the narratives of pain and the displaced de...