Bachelors: Novellas and Stories

In Margret Schaefer's third collection of newly translated fiction from Arthur Schnitzler, we find him focusing a clear and unforgiving eye on the minds of men who desire, fantasize about, and try to relate to women. Young or old, they are all bachelors--a young officer (Lieutenant Gustl), a middle-aged physician (Doctor Graesler), an aging roue (Casanova's Homecoming). Although Schnitzler's topic is relationships, his theme here as elsewhere is isolation--and the losses, fears, self-doubts, and self-absorption that make it inescapable. For no matter how much social and erotic contact the men in these tales have with women, in the end they cannot escape their own terrifying aloneness.