July 29, 2004

Mobius Dick

Posted by Chris

I’ve just finished another Andrew Crumey novel, his latest, Mobius Dick . I thought I might be reporting that, whilst I’d enjoyed it, I enjoyed it less than his Mr Mee (which I completed the other day ). But the last twenty pages where all the different threads come together with a rush (a bit like a Jonathan Coe novel), gave me such delight that I’d have to rank them equally. Crumey is that unusual thing, a novelist with a PhD in theoretical physics. And here his learning is fully deployed: the Copenhagen interpretation, multiverses, Schrodinger; Schopenhauer, Nietszche and Thomas Mann; mad Nazis, Marxism, and a British Democratic Republic; Robert and Clara Schumann; a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps and a Scottish nuclear power plant; weapons of mass destruction. All there, and he brings off the connections brilliantly (even lacerating literary postmodernists in the process). Fantastic. (Not yet published outside the UK as far as I can see, so my link is to Amazon.co.uk).

Posted on July 29, 2004 10:31 PM UTC
Comments

There’s nothing fantastic about lacerating literary postmodernists. You can find that happening in journals as mundane as Commentary. A more important question involves The Fourth Circle: viz., why hasn’t it been published yet?

Posted by chun the unavoidable · July 29, 2004 10:45 PM

I would feel less embarrassed if Crooked Timber undertook a course of reading genre fiction and finding deep meaning in it. I can give recommendations

Posted by PG · July 30, 2004 07:24 AM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.