Just wanted to add a few words to what the previous reviewer has said about "Fritz Zorn's" "Mars". I like what you have said about his views on Spain - maybe to his straitlaced ways Spain would really have seemed like an alien world. This book isnt an easy read - its perhaps the greatest "misery memoir" ever - but its harrowing insights into a soul so trapped, and restricted in self expression still stay in my mind now. I dont know many better books that go into this - eg his descriptions of his hallucinations etc, amazing insight into the body/mind or body / soul duality. His searing honesty is very powerful. Like you, reviewer from Spain, I hope he has the peace and rest he never had on earth. I will never forget you, Fritz Zorn.
a incredibly sad and angry book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
I read 'Mars' when I was 23 and it had a powerful effect on me, not least for making me feel fortunate to have not been born into a wealthy Swiss family. Zorn's autobiography is a cold, furious attack on his family, his constipated, airless, upbringing and not least, himself: his loneliness and social ineptitude (for me, the latter aspect was the saddest part).It's a self-portrait of a deeply disturbed and repressed individual. It's a long howl of pain.
Fritz Zorn, or "The man who never got a traffic fine".
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
I have read "Mars" ; much could be sayed, but over all, I think Fritz Zorn it is a perfect exponent of the politically correct: perhaps therefore it was mentally ill and died of cancer. Son of an accommodated family from Switerland, one of the richest nations on earth, where until the trains and villages seems as perfect scale models in large. But Zorn couldn' t love anybody. He explains how he visited Spain - my country - dressed with his impeccable Blazer jacket and was astonished by the spontaneity and the exuberance of life of a Catholic and less developed country. He returned to his natal Switerland. (Someone knows the name of the president of the Helvetic Confederation?). Unfortunately, Fritz Zorn was a stranger yet in his own country, in the kingdom of what is convenient -a deadly middle class-; his body don't resisted these lethal society and he contracted a cancer that not even the highly advanced helvetic medicine could cure. But before he die, he had an a solely act of vitality and rebellioussness and wrote this book. I think it isn' t a masterpiece of style, but in this time of best -sellers is quite good. Poor, rich, polite and correct Fritz Zorn: rest in peace!
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