NOT ALL GREAT WRITERS are great storytellers, especially not in the traditional sense of storytelling. In order to construct a story, a writer has to possess specific talents and a certain temperament. A good story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It must cohere to the extent that characters are consistent psychologically throughout the various phases of the story. The actions and activities of the characters must be motivated by a credible psychology, and the events must develop in a logical pattern. Elements of the story must be carefully arranged to elicit reader responses. Often suspense is a reaction storytellers seek to evoke, and for each reaction the author is trying to provoke in the audience, he or she must apply appropriate techniques. Narration must demonstrate the same type of relationship to characters throughout, and the narrator has to remain consistent in tone and level of diction. If the writer is composing a short story or a novella, we will often find a focus on one event or a series of related events, but even in cases of shorter prose fiction we count on consistency in characters and character development, logical plots, and psychological credibility. With longer prose fiction, such as novels, there are additional demands for attention to detail and development. The reader expects an exposition when new characters are introduced, or when the scene shifts from one place to another. Descriptions must be consistent from one part of the novel to another. Obviously some modernist tendencies in prose fiction play with these conventions, intentionally disappointing readers’ expectations and the norms that have become established for fiction. But even in the case of the deviation from narrative norms, the writer must display a command that allows the reader to appreciate the deviation as part of the compositional strategy. If the deviation from norms and consistency appears to result from a mistake or deficient capacity, then the writer fails to accomplish his purpose and will be considered lacking in talent.

It is quite possible to imagine a writer who is constitutionally unable to accomplish storytelling in this traditional sense, yet who is an outstanding prose stylist and insightful author. Heinrich Heine is a case in point.

MY TITLE ALLUDES TO an essay by Max Weber, published in 1919, titled “Wissenschaft als Beruf.” That essay was the expanded written version of a talk delivered almost exactly a hundred years ago, on November 7, 1917, to students in Munich in a series “Geistige Arbeit als Beruf.” Weber's essay seemed appropriate to me as an inspiration not only because of its centennial, but also, and more importantly, because it takes up issues of selecting the path of academic life as a career choice, and thus relates to my past, and quite likely to the past decisions of many of my colleagues. The latter part of Weber's essay, perhaps the most interesting from a theoretical standpoint, deals with the nature of knowledge and how it has changed over the centuries, and delves into Weber's theory concerning the disenchantment of the world with the advent of modernity. But the more relevant sections of the talk and the essay for our context are those that occur in the first half, relating to external and internal factors that confront young men and women in considering the professoriate. To his credit, Weber explores both connotations of the word “Beruf.” His audience was probably expecting him to focus on its meaning as a calling and to hear his views on the internal motivation necessary for pursuing a scholarly career. But Weber disappoints in his initial remarks by looking first at Beruf as an occupation that entails the mundane considerations of monetary compensation, workload, and career advancement (3–9).

Before I even came to consider these practical matters of the profession, I encountered as a graduating senior from the University of Pennsylvania several complicating factors to pursuing German studies as a vocation. The first was that I knew no German. In high school I had studied Spanish, and as an undergraduate I had completed the three-year language requirement by struggling through the fifth and sixth semesters of that language. The second difficulty was that I had very little familiarity with German literature or culture. My major was Natural Sciences, a composite course of instruction that demanded three semesters of mathematics and physics, and two years of chemistry (inorganic and organic), biology, and a focus on one scientific discipline with a series of courses beyond the minimum requirement.

In its ascription of a tripartite personality to Nietzsche, my title recalls the most important book of the American Nietzsche reception, Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, which since its publication in 1950 has gone through four editions. Kaufmann's volume was important precisely because it allowed the American public to speak again of Nietzsche after he had been associated for a dozen years with the National Socialists, with war, with anti-Semitism, with immorality and barbarism, and with a system of values inimical to the American and western way of life. Kaufmann's monograph, as well as his many subsequent translations of Nietzsche's writings, removed him from the political sphere and placed him in the role of existential theorist, whose main concerns were being, art, the human mind, and creativity. Kaufmann thereby acted as an important midwife in the birth of Nietzsche as a philosopher, an event that takes place only after the Second World War. Although he was accorded the label of philosopher early on by many readers, he was rarely taken seriously by academic philosophers: in both Germany and the United States his writings were initially more attractive to creative writers and to a general public searching for alternatives to the mainstream bourgeois ethos. He dispensed life wisdom and inspiration, not academic philosophy. The works of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger in German-speaking nations, and of Kaufmann in the Anglophone world, which were all widely promulgated after the war, legitimized Nietzsche's credentials in the world of abstract thought and extricated him from the political fray surrounding his writings in their initial reception. Kaufmann's book thereby represents an overcoming in its own right: Nietzsche was no longer considered the philosopher of the Third Reich — his sister was blamed for doctoring his texts and delivering him into the hands of the far right. Kaufmann assures us that he detested politics and was really apolitical, or even anti-political; he was not anti-Semitic, but anti-anti-Semitic; he was not a supporter of German nationalism, but its most vocal adversary; and any citations from his books that found their way into Nazi propaganda were simply distortions and lies.