SOURCE: "Ignorance, Analogy, Motion: Robert Walser's 'Boat Trip'," in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring, 1992, pp. 122-27.

In the following essay, Whalen examines the functions of ignorance, analogy, and motion in "Boat Trip, " concluding that Walser "relies often on the principle of analogy to reveal the truths of the world. "

We have observed the scene before: sunlight on a river, trees touching shoulders along the banks, perhaps a cloudless sky, bluer than blue, and beneath it a boat bearing a group of people. How many people Robert Walser never tells us. There is a woman who calls water her "sweetheart," someone who finds it "odd that water is wet and not dry," a storyteller to whom everyone listens attentively, the narrator who wishes he could be "as fascinating a storyteller" as the other, and a "thoughtful girl" who "compare[s] travelling over the water to the...