Robert Walser (1878-1956) left school at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence while producing poems, stories, essays, and three novels: The Tanners(1906), The Assistant (1908), and Jakob Von Gunten (1909). 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.”