I could not figure it out. The author's writing style is hard to understand. Apparently, he is very popular. Even in a German Lexikon (encyclopedia or dictionary), he was listed as "Peter Bichsel is described as a Switzerland writer, whose stories of superficial simplicity conceal some subtlety. p. 109, Bertelsmann Universal Lexikon, Wissen Media Verlag GmbH, Gütersloh/München, 2002"
Also, this story was added into a textbook for 10th grade (I don't know if it is in German or in US) and has a guide book which might be intended for the teachers.
Among other things, Peter Bichsel and Wolf Wondratschek (the author of "Lunch Break") were mentioned in German encyclopedia as:
Bichsel's short story has the prototypical characteristics of the short story and can therefore be found in numerous reading books as an introductory text for this genre. The text also contains numerous so-called blank spaces. Such open questions about the content provide an opportunity for creative development of the story and for one's own writing. Wolf Wondratschek presented such a literary treatment with his short story “Lunch Break”. While Bichsel's text examines the daughter's life solely from the parents' perspective, Wondratschek shows the daughter's lunch break in a café, dreaming of "catastrophes" that could make her late: men who approached her and with whom she fell in love .
- Peter Bichsel , The Daughter, from: “Mrs. Blum actually wants to get to know the milkman”, (21 stories), first published in 1964, current edition Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1993, ISBN 3-518-22125-6
- Wolf Wondratschek , Lunch Break, from: The day used to start with a gunshot wound, Munich (Hanser) 1969, pp. 52–53
If a story, after your reading, leads you to think, rethink and remember, I feel, that is a good story.
Thank you very much for reading, thinking and commenting
