The Sorrows of Young Mike by John Zelazny

An epistolary novel, Goethe suffuses the reader with the urge to write back to Werther and call him a foolish a prat. Werther fails to manage a beautiful, moving death, like the famous statue of the poet Shelley. Which is genius of the novel, in the way it subverts expectations. And her poor husband Albert, who both pities and is terribly frustrated by Werther’s ignorant innocence and who knows he is being victimized by a form of emotional cuckolding.Īnd when poor Werther tries to kill himself and fails, only to die slowly and, frankly, embarrassingly, over the course of several days. Encouraging affections she knows she cannot return and always doing just enough to keep the young man hanging on. Certainly Werther has little idea of what’s going on (as evidenced by his apparent social faux pas while serving as the personal secretary to a high ranking official while trying to forget his unrequited love).Ĭharlotte, to the outside eye, seems as a far more predatory character than Werther views her. You can see the coming storm and no one seems to be doing anything about it. And I’m not so young as I used to be (though younger than I will be) and am a little removed from the inner sensations that roiled me at age nineteen or twenty or even twenty-five.

Consequently, the raging, unconcealed emotionality of Werther, which seems overwrought and a little embarrassing to the modern reader, was far less so a couple of centuries ago (though the other characters make it clear that they find Werther a little over the top). Wertheris a one of the most emblematic products of German romanticism, of sturm und drang (storm and stress). It’s a short book and a swift read, but for the modern reader, it takes some getting used to. Some time ago, at a library book sale near my apartment, I purchased a copy of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, the quintessential book of the sensitive young man and the unobtainable woman.

The Sorrows of Young Mike by John Zelazny