Today's is another story by an author of whom I know very little, which I've plucked from a collection of Big Guns German fiction including Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Hoffmansthall, Hermann Broch, ad krautium, serious big-league uberplayers, which only deepens the rift in my brow over the fact that I don't know much about Brentano. The biographical paragraph accompanying the story doesn't reveal much, but does inform The Reader that "His was a restless, thoroughly unhappy life. Married to a hysterical woman, he divorced her, thus thwarting his subsequent ambition to become a priest."
Which makes me think that whomever was responsible for penning these blurbs must've taken a gripe with Brentano, had unsettled family debt, or was the progeny of the next husband of this hysterical woman, or had had a very bad day. And it also makes Yourstruly a full-blooded Brentano sympathizer.