Volume 29, Number 5 · April 1, 1982
A Funny Meister
By Gabriele Annan
The Genius of Wilhelm Busch: Comedy of Frustration
edited and translated by Walter Arndt
University of California Press, 253 pp., $35.00
All translators of dead writers are pushers. Introducing his translations of the German comic poet/illustrator Wilhelm Busch, Walter Arndt gropes around for comparisons to sell his product: Daumier, Gogol, Dickens, Ogden Nash, Thurber, Al Capp, Dostoevski, Goncharov, Lewis Carroll, and Morgenstern are all tried out for one aspect or another. A pity Arndt didn't think of W.C. Fields: his cuddly, avuncular exterior belies a sophisticated, savage, and cynical heart as he stumbles grimly through a world littered with banana skins: it is Busch's world, and Fields comes pretty close to his persona.
Review, 3551 words
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