Herr Adamson

by Urs Widmer

Es ist Freitag, der 22. Mai 2032. Einen Tag nach seinem vierundneunzigsten Geburtstag sitzt ein Mann in einem üppig blühenden Garten – es ist der Paradiesgarten seiner Kindheit –, neben sich einen Rekorder, und spricht seine Geschichte mit Herrn Adamson auf Band. Ein Buch über den Tod, erzählt in einer herzerwärmenden Heiterkeit.

Genres: Fiction, German Literature

199 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 2009

About the author

Urs Widmer was born in Basel in 1938. He studied German, Romance languages and History in Basel, Montpellier and Paris. In 1966 he completed his doctoral thesis on German postwar prose, and then worked as an editor for Walter Publishing House in Olten, Switzerland, and for Suhrkamp Publishing House in Frankfurt. In Frankfurt he stayed for 17 years, though with Suhrkamp only until 1968. Together with other editors he founded the ›Verlag der Autoren‹. Until his death Urs Widmer lived and worked as a writer in Zurich.

Reviews

[Fahime · Rating 1 out of 5]

دوستش نداشتم.
کسل‌کننده بود و به زور تمومش کردم.
کلا خاطرات یک پیرمرد نود و چند ساله از هشت سالگی‌ش و آشنایی‌ش با مردی به نام آقای آدامسونه‌ و ماجراهای عجیبی که دارن. آقای آدامسون اول بسیار عادی به نظر می‌رسه و مدتی طول می‌کشه که پسر متوجه ماهیت‌ش بشه...

[Amene · Rating 3 out of 5]

باورت میشه آنی؟من از توی یک مرده رد شدم!
کتاب یه فانتزی فلسفی و هجو آمیز آبسورد از دغدغه ای بزرگ به نام مرگه.
گوارا بود

[Fredrik Strömberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that has to be one of the strangest reading experiences of my life. Why on earth did this Swiss author choose the early Swedish comics character Adamson to be the ghost/Death of his story? There´s even a female grandchild of Adamson, compete with the iconic three strands of hair...

This book is sort of equivalent to Frederic Tuten's novel Tintin in the New world, with the big difference that almost no-one today knows anything about the character Adamson. I've read several high-brow reviews of the book and none caught on to that fact, even though I would say that it is fairly central to understanding the storyline.

So, was this a private joke by Widmer? Did he grow up with Adamson comics and longed to somewhere within his writing include the character? Seeing that Widmer shares some characteristics with the main characters and that he died five years after having released this book, a book about being ushered into the netherworld by Adamson, was this some sort of premonition? I'm not sure of anything by now, but the book certainly belongs in the "Esoterica" section of my library...

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a chance pick off the library shelf. A Swiss writer I hadn't heard of, but he appears to have won a few awards and the blurb sounded interesting.

Anyway, it was a dud pick. Serendipity did not strike. This is a dog of a book. Clumsy and boring.

[jm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flows pleasantly enough, sometimes with the mildly bemused, detached turn of phrase only an old author is capable of, but overall doesn't go very deep.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr Adamson is a short work, and started off well, but then seemed to get confused as to its path. There are too many coincidences and characters who start off strong but fade away, and the 3-star rating is due to the beginning third of this book, which was clever and showed a child's wonder at the world in a creative way. The other two-thirds of this book, however, was not as good.

[Joanna Forde · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 sweet and nostalgic but random in a way that was empty

[Aaron (Typographical Era) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghost stories are a tricky beast to get right. Ghost stories in translation, told across cultural and language divides, even more so. With the exception of perhaps The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin (translated by Marlaine Delargy) there are almost none that I can think of that I’d go out of my way to personally reread or to recommend to others. In fact I almost didn’t even bother to crack open Urs Widmer’s Mr Adamson for this very reason. What a huge mistake that would have been.

To label Mr Adamson as simply another ghost story is to do it a humongous disservice. Yes, it’s about a boy who comes face to face with an honest-to-goodness apparition while playing Indian in his neighbor’s tranquil garden one day, but this plot is merely a means to end, and serves as a jumping off point for Widmer to explore the delicate nature and balance of extreme opposites. Youth and old age. Life and death. Beauty and decay. War and peace. Cycles that seem to repeat endlessly. Things that we all feel powerless to control. As the narrator recounts his dealings with the friendly Adamson—how they came to meet, the adventures they shared, how he discovered that the old man was no longer actually alive—the reader becomes lost in their own garden of mental delights, warmly embraced by the allure of Widmer’s whimsical language and the strange, yet oddly compelling story that slowly begins to bloom before them. And what a story it is.

READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/mr-ad...

[Johann Guenther · Rating 5 out of 5]

WIDMER, Urs: „Herr Adamson“, Zürich 2009
Ein Märchen, das die Welt des Todes beschreibt. Erzählt von einem über 90jährigen, der sich an seine Kindheit zurück erinnert und an seine Erlebnisse mit dem Tod. Unerlaubt hat er sich in den Garten des Nachbarn geschlichen und lernte dort einen alten Mann kennen – Herrn Adamson -, der sich als Toter herausstellte und der ihn in die Welt des Todes einführte. Zwei Tage und zwei Nächte war er weg und erlebte Dinge und Geschichten, die es auf Erden nicht gibt. Zurück gekehrt in das Reich der Lebenden bringt ihn ein Polizist nach Hause. Er erzählt seine Erlebnisse den Eltern, die das aber nicht glauben können. Als dann über 90jähriger erzählt er dann seine Erlebnisse – auf ein Tonband sprechend – seiner Enkelin. Die Geschichte ist so in mehrere Rahmen gesetzt, was sie sehr schön macht. Beim letzten Wort des Diktats kommt Herr Adamson als Tod und holt ihn.
(Buraimi, 03.05.2011)

[Nazanin Banaei · Rating 2 out of 5]

یعنی گرفتار میدون نیروی اون سیاه چاله توی خودم شده بودم که تمام تجربه های من رو توی خودش می مکید و نگه می داشت؟ گرفتار میدون نیروی اون انبار مخفی که همه چی رو توی خودش داشت اما به ندرت چیزی رو پس می داد؟ خودش بود،حتماًخودش بود.من توی خودم بودم،تویِ توی خودم،داشتم میدیدم و این مزد جسارتم بود.نمی تونستم دیگه از دست نیروی انبار ذخیره ی درون خودم که همه چیز رو می بلعید،خلاص بشم.من گرفتار حافظه ی خودم شده بودم.زندونی ابدی اونجا

[Eshraq · Rating 3 out of 5]

داستان.