Max Frisch: I'm Not Stiller

In my post on Frisch's play Andorra, I indicated that it didn't seem to justify its existence, and that it would have been better served as a novel or short story.  As it happens, I'm Not Stiller is exactly that.  It addresses the same ideas as Andorra, namely to what extent we are our own creation and to what extent the creation of others, in more depth and in a way that plays more to Frisch's strengths.  His prose is so much more beguiling than his dialogue, one wonders why he felt compelled to revisit the theme seven years later in such an inadequate way.  Perhaps there was some aspect of it that he felt remained unaddressed, but for my money I'm Not Stiller is a definitive statement on the subject, and Andorra a lame aftershock.

Which is not to say that it gives a conclusive answer to the question of the extent to which our identities are simply social constructs; merely that it opens the dialogue and pinpoints a few of the pivotal elements.  According to Frisch's model, the self is obscured by myriad things, many of which we mistake for self.   One of the less influential of these obscuring influences is that of so-called society. Anything we have received from literature, art, philosophy, or discussion of the same with friends, is manifestly not us.  The eponymous hero asks,

How the devil am I to prove to my counsel that I don't know my murderous impulses through C.G. Jung, jealousy through Marcel Proust, Spain from Hemingway . . . and all sorts of other things through Thomas Mann? It's true, you need never even have read these authorities, you can absorb them through your friends who also live all their experiences second-hand (158).

And even if the stories that seem to comprise our identities are not received in the above way, they may well be constructed.  Frisch leads the reader to believe the narrator's assertion that he is not Stiller, partly through the painstaking detail of his narrative, only to pull the rug out when he admits that he was simply "too tired to make up another murder story" (53).  For the rest of the novel, one continues to wonder what to believe, and is never fully satisfied.  As the reader becomes invested in the narrator, every question one asks of him one asks of oneself as well: "To what extent can I believe my own version of events?

Frisch thus systematically deconsructs the identity of the Narrator, and allows him to serve as a nameless (as advertised by the title) proxy for the reader.  Having peeled away the obviously unreliable sources of identity--society, narrative, perception, associations--he proceeds to identify the ultimate, and ultimately inescapable, culprit for the unreality of our identities: language. "You can put anything into words, except your own life" and "I have no words for my reality", the narrator laments, to cite two of the more clear examples (53, 70).

Which does not mean, by Frisch's model, that there is no such thing as identity, simply that it requires an extraordinary amount of bravery, clarity and self-reflection to perceive it.  This, sadly is a task that so-called Stiller (this reader remains unconvinced that he is indeed the man in question) seems to fail.  The narrator comes to the cusp of clarity, but retreats out of fear.  This affects those around him, for "if he took [Julika's] love really seriously, he would be compelled as a result to accept himself--and that is the last thing he wants" (216). For this reason, he is unable to know the other central character of the book: Julika.  We as readers never come close to knowing her, since "Stiller"'s version and Rolf's are at odds, and it is certainly for this reason that neither of them really come to know her either.  The book's title takes on a rather sly note, for one realizes by the end that the Narrator may or not be Stiller, but the book was never about him to begin with, but rather "the picture of a being who was dead and had never been recognized by anyone when she was alive" (377).