New Books Network: Uncanny E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Wortsman

Date: October 2, 2025
Host: Uli Baer
Guest: Peter Wortsman

Episode Overview

This engaging episode centers on E. T. A. Hoffmann, a key figure in German Romanticism, known for his uncanny tales that explore the boundaries between reality and imagination, and their surprising resonance with the 21st century. Uli Baer interviews Peter Wortsman, celebrated translator, novelist, essayist, and playwright, who recently published E.T.A. Hoffmann: The Golden Pot and Other Tales of the Uncanny (Archipelago Books). The conversation delves deep into Hoffmann’s enduring influence—from psychological horror to detective fiction, and even to issues of artificial intelligence—while also highlighting how translation bridges cultures and eras.

Key Discussion Points

1. Defining the Uncanny and Hoffmann’s Place in Literature

• Definition: The uncanny is the unsettling fusion between the familiar and the unfamiliar that is both frightening and enticing.
  • “The uncanny is the psychological experience of an event or thing that is unsettling in a way that feels oddly familiar... It’s precisely that balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar that makes it so exciting.” (Wortsman, 03:48)
• Hoffmann as a “great storyteller”—more for imaginative storytelling than polished literary style, a precursor of Kafka.
  • “I’m interested in Hoffmann’s great, great grandchild, Mr. Kafka, who has an ability to express the ineffable in crystal clear classical language... The wealth and depth of [Hoffmann’s] imagination... I’m sure he had an awful childhood.” (Wortsman, 04:23)

2. Hoffmann as Proto-Detective Fiction and Beyond

• “Mademoiselle de Scudéry” discussed as an early detective story predating Poe, with a female protagonist reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Ms. Marple.
  • “It really reads like Poe before Edgar Allan Poe. It reads like Agatha Christie and it’s a female protagonist and it’s delicious reading.” (Baer, 06:18)
  • “The evil goldsmith... is kind of Moriarty before Moriarty. He’s brilliant.” (Wortsman, 06:45)

3. The Uncanny in Culture: Lineage and Influence

• Hoffmann’s legacy traced through Poe, Hawthorne, Irving, Cortázar, magical realism, Baudelaire’s translations, through to Stephen King.
  • “You can really trace this arc back to Dr. Hoffman.” (Wortsman, 08:14)
• Tension between domestic safety and the eruption of the uncanny: everyday objects suddenly become sinister.
  • Referenced Night of the Living Dead as a modern echo of Hoffmann’s uncanny in popular culture. (Wortsman, 07:48)

4. Storytelling, Imagination, and Modern Relevance

• Hoffman’s fiction juxtaposes the “real” and the “fantastical,” often via love triangles (e.g., between a real girlfriend and an idealized fantasy or automaton, as in “The Sandman” and “The Golden Pot”).
  • “What you have and can have and what you pine after... we all have it at our disposal.” (Wortsman, 17:13)
• The Sandman as an early meditation on simulacra, human vs. mechanical intelligence—a topic resonant with AI today.
  • “All these stories have to be read in what AI is doing to us right now, because it is the simulation of an intelligence and people fall for it.” (Baer, 17:25)

5. Play, Work, and Imagination—Personal and Philosophical Reflections

• Wortsman sees writing and translation as forms of play, essential for creativity and achievement—even for Nobel-winning scientists.
  • “I play all the time. That’s all I do. By the definition of play, I’m not being flighty but something very serious. Serious, by our own rules. It’s that dimension.” (Wortsman, 23:11)
• His earliest creative impulses—childhood play and language—lead to reflections on historical trauma, family, and the creative process (24:44-26:26).
• The value of the German language (and its long, semicolon-rich sentence structure) for opening multiple perspectives—contrasted with the simpler American sentence style.
  • “I wrote a whole essay in praise of the semicolon because the semicolon enables you… to think, it could be like this, or it could be like this.” (Wortsman, 28:44)

6. Literature and History: Jewish-German Identity

• Wortsman reflects on the “cultural marriage” of Germans and Jews, arguing for a nuanced inheritance of both good and evil legacies (27:35-32:29).
• Literature is open to ambiguity: “We inherit both sides. We inherit the evil and the good. They’re both inside us. And Hoffmann is great enough to allow that...” (Wortsman, 31:25)

7. Translation as Creation and Performance

• Translating Hoffmann is not just about accuracy, but channeling rhythm, music, wit, and the inexhaustible energy of the prose.
  • “You have to sing his song. In his case... there’s always music there.” (Wortsman, 55:04)
• Living between languages is framed as “internal travel”—a privileged, enriching state opening “more than one way of looking at the world” (58:58–59:32).

8. Technology, Artifice, and the Human: Hoffmann’s Modern Parable

• Stories like “The Automaton” and “The Sandman” prefigure anxieties around AI, performance, and authenticity.
  • “Mechanical music is for me an entirely frightful and ghoulish thing... To seek to manipulate [machines] to make it sound musical... constitutes... a foolish and futile effort to make the medium itself spurred at that secret. Something that only the inner strength of the human spirit can bring to life...” (Hoffmann, via Baer, 64:49)
• Wortsman on party small-talk vs. authenticity, his relationship’s origins in honesty:
  • “She asked me what I liked in life. And I said travel, literature and sex... I don’t know any other way to be.” (Wortsman, 66:44–67:25)

9. Ambiguity, Moral Complexity, and Political Parallels

• The conversation draws contemporary analogies: the persistence of the uncanny in American societal and political life, race relations, and the inability of “progress” to erase darker undercurrents.
  • “There are some things in our reality we tend to overlook. And Hoffmann says they’re always there. You just have to look a little bit differently.” (Baer, 71:57)
• Fiction as rehearsal space for moral ambiguity; literature allows one to entertain unresolved dilemmas and acknowledge darkness as well as creativity within.
  • “We have to make decisions... But I don’t censor the possibility of doing evil.” (Wortsman, 82:19)

10. Advice for Readers and Onward Projects

• Wortsman recommends Counselor Krespel and Arthur Glück as favorite stories; Baer highlights The Automaton, The Sandman, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry.
  • “He’s brilliant and it’s so well written. It’s incredible. It’s an incredible... story.” (Baer, 87:33)
• Wortsman teases upcoming work: a dystopian novel where people can’t dream and must hire surrogates; a collaboration with his daughter on Unreal Estate—New York’s Notes of a Native New Yorker (89:09–89:37).

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Uncanny:
  “It’s all because it comes too close. If it stays far, it doesn’t work.” (Wortsman, 03:48)
• On Storytelling:
  “When you start judging it, then it becomes morality. I am all for freedom of the imagination.” (Wortsman, 43:59)
• On Childhood and Imagination:
  “I continue to play my life as I played as a five year old... The only work that I’ve ever done that was any worth anything was when I was playing.” (Wortsman, 22:06)
• On Language and Translation:
  “A sentence is a motor of meaning, and it rolls on the verbs. And the body of the car is the noun. And adjective is not indispensable.” (Wortsman, 46:16)
• On Political and Historical Memory:
  “We have never really taken upon us and acknowledged the history of slavery. We’ve never really acknowledged the slaughter of the Native Americans. And it’s there. It’s there weighing on us.” (Wortsman, 71:57)
• On Hoffmann’s Modern Relevance:
  “All these stories have to be read in what AI is doing to us right now, because it is the simulation of an intelligence and people fall for it.” (Baer, 17:25)
• On Literary Style:
  “First word, best word, nonsense. First word is just the first word. It might not be the best word. I spend endless amounts of time working on the verb…” (Wortsman, 46:14)
• On Aging, Creation, and Illness:
  “In my current state, my illness... There’s a great liberating sense about it all... I am having the time of my life.” (Wortsman, 51:13–53:00)

Notable Timestamps & Segments

• [03:48] – Defining the uncanny, Hoffmann vs. Kafka’s style
• [06:18] – Mademoiselle de Scudéry as first detective story
• [08:46] – Hoffmann’s influence on Poe, Hawthorne, magical realism
• [17:25] – The uncanny, automata, and parallels with AI
• [22:06] – Imagination, work, and serious play
• [28:44] – Praise for the German sentence and ambiguity
• [41:44] – The dangers of striving toward the ‘perfect human’, and American attempts at purity
• [64:49] – The human vs. machine debate (Automaton quote)
• [71:57] – The persistent “crack” in American history
• [82:19] – Literature as a rehearsal space for moral ambiguity
• [87:16–88:10] – Favorite Hoffmann stories recommended
• [89:09–89:37] – Current and future writing projects

Final Thoughts

This episode, rich with insight, positions Hoffmann as both an originator and a commentator on the unresolvable tensions that persist in modern life—between the human and the artificial, the familiar and the strange, progress and repetition. Wortsman’s reflections—on language, imagination, translation, and the ethical dimensions of literature—make a compelling case for revisiting Hoffmann, not merely as a relic, but as an urgent tonic for our uncanny times.