Walter Gieseking has to do something. Something positive. Preferably something big, exceptional, »something he can say yes« to. Until now, he’s only ever been good at saying »no«. But that’s all over. A thing of the past. Finito.
Walter Gieseking is 30 years old, he has grown up in cities, and has been going out with Ellen von Galgern for the past six or seven years. But suddenly he’s on his own again. He has six months left before marriage – which is what is probably going to happen with ex-girlfriend Ellen. He leaves their joint weekend residence Waldstein, a country house in Upper Franconia, and slips back into his old way of life in the weary capital of Berlin. Friendships are renewed or fizzle out, work is done, bank accounts dry up. The problem is not that life doesn’t work this way, but that it works only too well. Things simply continue as always. Gradual decline. Gieseking eventually shakes himself.
He travels to Munich, Ellen’s home town, in search of some girls. By the end, Gieseking is suddenly able to play the piano (Beethoven’s piano sonata Opus 53) like his famous namesake. He returns to Waldstein, to the countryside and domestic bliss à deux.
In a brilliant monologue, Uslar allows Gieseking to address with virtuosity all important issues: nature, city, love, friendship, bourgeois marriage, growing old, God in heaven, classic versus pop, and, of course, women. The narrator Gieseking hammers on his keys with such force that the readers’ ears ring, but then he withdraws again. These are variations on a lifestyle from which a piece of great literature emerges. Tender and powerful, beguiling and besieging – a book with clout.
