Robert Walser (1878?1956) was born in Switzerland. He left school at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence working as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant while producing essays, stories, and novels. In 1933 he abandoned writing and entered a sanatorium?where he remained for the rest of his life. "I am not here to write," Walser said, "but to be mad."