Hoffman is a supreme storyteller, and this is his funniest and most
readable novel. First published in 1820, it is a light-hearted
exploration of the romantic fascination with the individual and the
imagination, with nature and the supernatural, and with art itself.
Murr, a vain and bourgeois tomcat, is writing his memoirs, using as
a blotting pad a biography of Kreisler, a moody but brilliant
musician. By a printer's error the two lives are spliced together,
commenting implicitly on each other. Hoffman's playfulness and
experimentation introduced techniques that were later used by
writers as various as Dickens, Kafka, Poe and Garcia Marquez.
(Kirkus UK)
It was E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) who first explored many of the themes and techniques which were later used by writers from Dickens to Dostoyevsky, Poe to Kafka, Baudelaire to Marquez. His career reached a glorious climax in The Tomcat Murr, perhaps the strangest novel of the nineteenth century. Hoffmann was a follower of Cervantes and Sterne, a pioneering ‘magic realist’, fascinated by Gothic horror, extreme mental states and supernatural events occurring within sharply (and sometimes satirically) rendered social settings. A talented composer and painter, he portrayed himself in the guise of the hypochondriac, antisocial and moody but brilliant musician Johannes Kreisler. In this astonishing book, a vain and very bourgeois tomcat sets out to write his memoirs, using a biography of Kreisler as a blotting pad. By a printer’s error, the two lives get spliced together into a bizarre double narrative. A supreme example of literary bravado, The Tomcat Murr is also shot through with the warmth, humanity and almost uncanny ability to captivate his readers which make Hoffmann the greatest of German story tellers.
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