SOURCE: Kieser, Rolf. “From Utopia to Eschatology: The Road of the Thinker Max Frisch.” World Literature Today 60, no. 4 (autumn 1986): 561-65.

In the following essay, Kieser enumerates several reasons for Frisch's impressive reputation in European literary circles and investigates his relative obscurity in America.

Max Frisch has recently been paid tribute in America in the form of honorary doctorates, honorary fellowship in the MLA, the 1985 Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and now the Neustadt Prize. He is a writer whose fame in Europe is already legendary. Frisch's awesome reputation among German-writing authors as the dean of their trade is hard for an American audience to grasp. This exemplifies the difference in critical appreciation that exists between his own country—Switzerland—and Germany, on the one hand, and between Europe and the United States on the other. The tardiness of Frisch's American recognition, in my opinion, has...