Rainer Wieczorek's trilogy of artist novellas is traditional in the best sense. He shares with Wolfgang Hildesheimer the subject matter and grotesque humor, and with Samuel Beckett a sense for absurdities as well as a desire for reduction. There are even stylistic affinities with Thomas Bernhard: a musicality of language and the circling around a theme in loops of thought. On the other hand, Wieczorek's shimmering lightness has little in common with the weighty tirades of the great grumbler. Wieczorek's view of the artist's existence is free from world-weariness. His stories have a playful, gentle quality. His protagonists are sympathetic loners who seek refuge from the demands of the world in isolation, in order to pursue their work undeterred. This connects them with their creator, the committed novelist Rainer Wieczorek, whose artist trilogy is in the making.