[.ca] Homo faber (ISBN 2070374181)

Chronique amazon.fr:
Né en 1911, mort en 1991, écrivain suisse d'expression allemande, Max Frisch a traversé le siècle en commençant par exercer le métier d'architecte avant de devenir écrivain. Walter Faber, le héros d'Homo Faber, est-il le portrait jumeau de son auteur ? Ingénieur au service de l'Unesco, Faber entreprend de raconter sa vie dans une langue sèche, précise, rigoureuse et parfaitement désincarnée. Mais comment parler de sa vie ainsi ? Si la langue technique est exemplaire et adéquate pour rendre compte des lois de la nature, que peut-elle exprimer de notre intériorité ? Rien ou pas grand-chose. C'est le constat que fait Walter Faber à ses dépens, lui qui s'est efforcé de parcourir le monde et s'est épuisé à vouloir l'analyser et le retranscrire en formule, mais qui jamais ne s'est découvert lui-même. Critique en creux de la civilisation actuelle, le héros de Frisch croit tout dominer et ne domine rien. Il incarne en quelque sorte le prototype de l'homme moderne, incapable de présider à son destin. Ce qui fascine, peut faire rire ou grincer dans l'Homo Faber de Frisch, c'est que chacun d'entre nous finit par s'y retrouver. Ainsi sommes-nous, à l'image de Walter Faber, les grands antihéros du XXe siècle. --Denis Gombert

The Techniker finds his soul:
I read this book in the German and enjoyed it immensely. Walter Faber, a globe-trotting engineer, uses technology and his scientific worldview as a shield against other people and against his own humanity. When his shield fails him, he learns to open his heart and live fully. Regardless of whether you share Frisch's opinions about science, the book is beautifully written. Walter Faber is both horrifying and touchingly sympathetic. Despite the tragic plot, the strength of the novel is its small comic moments, of which there are many. If you just watch the movie (even the German-language adaptation, which is much more faithful to the book than the American film), you will miss almost everything that is worthwhile about Homo Faber. Read the book! (In German, if possible.)

Technology, Life, Love and Irony:
This report is a difficult lovestory. The dry life of a technologist faints more and more during a love-relationship with his own daughter. The world of probability and dull nature changes into the world of "family" and love, death and warm rain. Max Frisch did already a wonderful job in the original, german version, but even translated it will enchant you. I give this book 5 stars, because it is "eyeglue" and won't let you go. It made it happen that I can see the nature in a different way and it is still influencing my life. The end was completely shocking, but it was the right one. This book is recommended for people who want to read an experience and not just a pulp pamphlet.

Oh my God!What a horrendous book!:
I also read this book in German, also at "high school" (in Luxembourg). I found it was one of the worst books I ever read, and the more often i read it, the more i hated it. This books tells the story of a man who has built a perfect-life fassade and shows how this fassade crumbles. This happenes by a series of really impossible random events, which in real life have a probability of 0.00000 to happen. The whole book is based on that. That makes the whole book completely unbelievable (in the first sense). Ugh...I was really disgusted that someone could write such a piece of...well let's say rubbish.

Could it get any worse?:
I think this book is a work of an artist because it makes you think. The idea and plot of the book is so well-thought-through that it amazes me. The love between the main-character and his daughter will never be accepted, and this leaves them all in an unhappy position. One might say that it was for the best that Sabeth died in the end, but one really wishes that everything will work out, eventhough it is bound to failed. I'm not sure whether the main-charakter really loves Sabeth. I think he is fascinated by her, because she is different than anyone he has ever known, exept from her mother Hanna. Something makes him feel drawn to her, and I'm positive that it is because of the happiness, Hanna and him once had that he has never experienced after. His unconscienceness is still in love with Hanna, but he doesn't think that far. And one can't really blame him for that, the chance of meeting his own daughter who he really didn't believe existed is quite little. I also found the book to be an "eye-gluer." And I would love to get some feed-back on it, I'm gonna write a huge assignment on it! Sofie Norsker

A tragedy of a technicist:
This book is one of the most important novels (although Frisch calls it "report") in German language, and I like it immensely ALTHOUGH it is being treated in German lessons, and I was shocked when I read the review in which the reviewer writes that the translator left out the criticism of the "American Way of Life" (one of the most important parts in the development, I think: Walter Faber, the main person, is sitting in Cuba, enjoying tropical thunderstorms and swears about America because it "destroyed the white race". This was also the attitude of an archaeologist he had met six months before and he didn't understand it at all). I won't tell you all the story because it's like in a criminal novel: you shouldn't know the end because if you knew it, you would read it with less attention. The main thing is that Walter Faber, an engineer who is absolutely hostile towards feelings, women etc., is overwhelmed by some happenings he would never have considered to be possible. He changes his views radically and becomes a real tragic person. Frisch's use of foreshadowings makes the reader feel the tragedy even more closely, but in his language, there are some weak points (the detailed technical pieces of information which Faber, the 1st-person-narrator, uses), which have been transformed into a wonderful parody (called "Frener") by Robert Neumann.