280- ] English Literature
Andrew Crumey's Novels
Mobius Dick
Mobius
Dick (2004) is a novel by Andrew Crumey. It features an alternate world in which
Nazi Germany invaded Great Britain and Erwin Schrödinger failed to find the
wave equation that bears his name. This world becomes connected to our world
due to experiments with quantum computers. The title parodies Moby-Dick.
The
science-fiction plot centres on a mysterious mountain hospital in the Scottish
highlands. Interweaving tales re-write the historical stories of Robert
Schumann's stay in a similar clinic in Endenich and Schrödinger's visit to the
Alpine sanatorium of Arosa, both of which echo the situation in Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain. Connections are drawn from the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann,
particularly The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr.
It
was longlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Reception
A
Companion to Crime Fiction describes Mobius Dick as a 'metaphysical detective
story', comparing it with Kobo Abe's Inter Ice Age 4 and Haruki Murakami's
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, 'linking apocalyptic science
fiction and metaphysical detective/mystery stories through antiphonal
narratives, alternating "science" and "mystery" to yield
reciprocal modes of displacement.'
Mr Mee
Mr
Mee (Picador, 2000; Dedalus Books, 2014) is a novel by Andrew Crumey, his third
set wholly or partly in the eighteenth century (following Pfitz and
D'Alembert's Principle). It has three alternating story-lines: one featuring a
pair of 18th-century French copyists, and two with modern protagonists -
elderly Scottish book collector Mr Mee and university lecturer Dr Petrie. The
lecturer's strand is serious in tone. Dissatisfied with his marriage and
suffering ill health, he muses on French literature and becomes infatuated with
a student. The other two strands are comic. The copyists become guardians of an
esoteric encyclopaedia, and Mr Mee wishes to find it. He turns to the World
Wide Web (still fairly new at the time of the novel) and discovers pornography
and drugs, with farcical consequences.
The
copyists, Ferrand and Minard, are based on two men mentioned briefly in
Rousseau's Confessions. Their fictional versions – described by one critic as
"something of an eighteenth-century Abbott and Costello"[1] –
resemble the title characters in Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet.[2] The
lecturer Dr Petrie thinks Ferrand and Minard never existed, comparing
Rousseau's Confessions to Proust's In Search of Lost Time - something that
appears to be a memoir but is really a novel.
The
copyists' encyclopaedia is the work of Jean-Bernard Rosier, a character from
D'Alembert's Principle. The name recurs in subsequent Crumey novels: The Rosier
Corporation in Mobius Dick, the Rosier Foundation in The Great Chain of
Unbeing.
The
first chapter of the novel includes a version of the Monty Hall problem,
presented as a letter from Rosier to D'Alembert about a hostage whose life
depends upon choosing which cup a ring is hidden under. Chapter 8 has a version
of the unexpected hanging paradox and also alludes to the uncertainty principle
and measurement problem.
The
name Mr Mee may be a pun on "me", reflecting the novel's concern with
truth and authorship in first-person writers such as Rousseau and Proust. It
might also hint at encyclopaedist Arthur Mee, or the novel's year of
publication, MM in Roman numerals. The title was changed by some foreign
publishers: the Italian translation was titled Il professore, Rousseau e l'arte
dell'adulterio; the German edition was Rousseau und die geilen Pelztierchen.
Reception
Booker
Prize judge Roy Foster wrote in the Financial Times: "We ended with a
shortlist to be proud of, and a magnificent winner in Margaret Atwood's The
Blind Assassin, but I still think regretfully of a few that got away (some only
just)... Andrew Crumey's Mr Mee is wildly expansive and generally
light-hearted: it weaves together the story of an octogenarian Scottish scholar
discovering sex through the internet, with an 18th-century French whodunnit
about a lost philosophe encyclopaedia and a dying academic's obsession with one
of his students. The French element is a triumph in itself, but each story is
reported in a perfectly manipulated voice, the deadpan humour never wavers, the
cross-references thicken intriguingly, and in the end all the tangled threads
resolve into a beautifully executed pattern which is oddly moving.[3]
Miranda
Seymour wrote in the New Statesman: "Andrew Crumey is one of the most
original novelists around. I wish that Mr Mee, in which he mixes together
murder, fairy tales, Rousseau, pornographers and the internet to dazzling
effect, had made it on to the Booker list. It deserved a place there.[4]
Reviewing
Mr Mee in The Washington Post, Andrew Ervin noted the similarity between a line
near the start of the novel and the opening of Borges' story "Tlön, Uqbar,
Orbis Tertius": "I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of
an encyclopaedia and a mirror". Crumey's character says, "I owe my
discovery of the Xanthics (and hence of Rosier’s Encyclopaedia) to the
coincidence of a flat tyre and a shower of rain." Ervin wrote:
"Borges lurks in the shadows of Mr Mee, and he becomes the reader's Virgil,
an essential guide through an abyss of literary references, allusions and
constructs. Although his name remains unuttered through the vast majority of
the book, other historical figures do turn up as characters, minor plot
functionaries and tongue-in-cheek jokes on the part of the author. Rousseau
plays a sizable role in the goings-on, and Diderot turns up to tremendous comic
effect. The works of Kafka, Kant and especially Proust, among many others, line
up for inspection before it's over... It's the rare novel that makes you want
to begin anew as soon as you've finished the last page."[5]
In
Scotland on Sunday, Ruth Thomas wrote: "My own sympathies lay with the
dying lecturer, whose story is the least contrived of the three, and whose
character the least like a caricature. His infatuation with his student,
although rather sickening and Humbert Humbert-like, also reveals a real sadness
and emptiness at the core of his life, and this is poignantly and delicately
written. Similarly, Mr Mee's incompatibility with the 20th century, let alone
the 21st, is at times a very moving portrayal of the way old people's needs are
overlooked by society. In common with the others, Mr Mee has a strong voice,
full of enthusiasm and passion for life - or at least, his interpretation of
it. And this is ultimately how the whole novel comes across - an odd story,
occasionally a little hard to stomach, but told with such energy and conviction
that you can't help admiring it."[6]
Hilary
Mantel wrote in the New York Times: " In a novel so cerebral as Mr. Mee,
it would not be surprising if the characters were paper-thin and the jokes a
species of facetious quibbling. But Crumey is a sensitive writer, and he
creates an unexpected amount of sympathy for both the wistful Dr. Petrie and
the awesomely naive Mr. Mee. He has a sharp wit and taps the sort of deep, rich
vein of comedy accessible only to authors who respect their own characters...
Fans of Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn will relish this novel's puzzles and
paradoxes, its unfolding and ingenious designs. Yet it is never hard going,
always good-humored, jaunty and sometimes enjoyably silly. Crumey is a
confident narrator, and his book has a heart as well as a brain. It is not only
an intellectual treat but a moving meditation on aspiration and desire."
In
2003 Hilary Mantel was a judge of Granta's "20 best British writers under
40", along with Ian Jack, Robert McCrum, Nicholas Clee and Alex Clark.[8]
Crumey was selected on the strength of Mr Mee, but on being told, immediately pointed
out that although the book was published before his 39th birthday, he was now
over 40, hence ineligible.[9] Two other writers were then found to be
ineligible as well, and all three had to be replaced on the list. Ian Jack
later wrote, "That meant the published list included three names we'd
previously ruled out - three writers who, after a little flurry of phone calls
between the judges, moved up in our ranking from "Quite Good" to
"Best". There can be no more telling illustration of the arbitrariness
of literary lists. I write this as a comfort to those who fail to get on them,
and a caution to those who do."
Critical
analysis
Timothy
C. Baker commented on the use of Gothic tropes such as found manuscripts in the
work of Crumey and other Scottish writers. "Use of such tropes can be
limiting... In other texts, however, including Gray's Poor Things, Crumey's Mr
Mee, and A. L. Kennedy's So I Am Glad, each of which embeds Gothic elements in
another genre or mode, the trope exceeds these limitations and allows for a
greater reflection on the relationship between language and experience."
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