serialize the novel, insisting that "Jürg Reinhart" was not a novel for the younger generation and that for him personally the subject matter did not seem to be in keeping with the times. Instead, the NZZ published a fictitious interview, and later Korrodi pushed a gloss regarding Frisch, concerning a young author who scanned the windows of all the book shops looking for his own first novel. The distribution of Frisch's novel soon exceeded 2,000 copies. In December 1934 the Zürich Literature Commission recognized the achievement with a 500 franc award, noting that it was "poignant how the hero grew to manhood by taking a major responsibility to himself," in an evolution of the plot "from the erotic to the ethical". It took Emil Ermatinger to offer in a note the qualification that the work was "an extensive display of a man with a somewhat unnatural soul" Privately, the author received further critical reproof from his friend Werner Coninx. Later Frisch recalled: "He tore into my first-born novel with great love, but with such insight that he sometimes left me with the impression that I understood absolutely nothing about poetry". More recent scholars and commentators, with the benefit of a little more distance, have accepted Frisch's own criticisms. Volker Weidermann reckoned "Jürg Reinhart" a "pretty dreadful" ("ziemlich schauderhaft") novel. Volker Hage emphasized that the work could not "avoid being characterized as a beginner's novel, but that does not invalidate it as a literary mark of a twenty-three year old author's progress. Above all the novel has been studied as an early exhibition for various themes and thought patterns which would be crystallized and developed in Frisch's later output. "Jürg Reinhart" also offers students at all levels an early excursion into Frisch's characteristic blending of autobiography into fiction Reading lists Editions Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. Eine sommerliche Schicksalsfahrt. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1934. (First edition) Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. In: Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge. Erster Band (Collected works chronologically sequence: First volume). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1998, , S. 225–385. Secondary sources Urs Bircher: Vom langsamen Wachsen eines Zorns: Max Frisch 1911–1955. Limmat. Zürich 1997, , P. 46–51. : Max Frisch: Das Werk (1931–1961). Studien zu Tradition und Traditionsverarbeitung. Peter Lang, Bern 1985, , P. 24–37. Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biographie eines Aufstiegs. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2011, , P. 141–144. Walburg Schwenke: Was bin ich? – Gedanken zum Frühwerk Max Frischs.