The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Collection of Tall Tales!
Review: Anyone who ever laughed at the exploits of tall-tale heroes such as Paul Bunyan will instantly recognize the character of the Baron von Munchausen as the king of such heroes. His amazing and daring exploits are rife with hilarity and implausibility. It's part fairytale, part tall tale. The Baron is a figure of pure imagination (loosely based on a real person), a Quixotic figure. Do not confuse this book with a biography or history! Clearly the purpose of the book is to entertain and delight, which it does. The writing displays a superb creativity and imagination, combined with brilliant storytelling of the highest level. Just as you would not read Journey to the West seeking information on beauracratic procedures of ancient China, or Don Quixote de la Mancha seeking knowledge about Spanish funerary customs, you should not read this book looking to learn about the Munchausen family's history or current state. You should read it for the pure thrill of reading a good tale.

Rating:
Summary: Surprising indeed
Review: This collection of anecdotes, adventures, and travelogues pretends to describe the life of the famous Baron Munchausen of Bodenweder in and around the turn of the 19th century, but it doesn't take long to realize what ridiculous fancies have been subducted throughout the text. Rather than seeking to preserve the facts, Munchausen's biographer has delved into the wildest of tall tales, ranging from the situationally bizarre to physically impossible to geographically untrue. Perhaps these stories, when they were first told to an uninformed public or to children, may have been treated with respect, but it takes a very unlearned person in today's age to believe more than a sentence of Raspe's fiction. In one narrative, the Baron rides his horse around on a dining room table. In another, he travels to Russia.

Perhaps the most telling aspect in the Baron's reputed travels is his repeated refutation of exaggeration and lie. The very introduction of this book is prefaced by a notice claiming complete ignorance of the absurdities filling his stories. Munchausen then vindicates the biography's factuality with affidavits allegedly sworn at the Mansion House in London. Who, however, supports his claims? In a testament to arrogant lying, Munchausen here is backed by none other than Gulliver, Sinbad, and Aladdin - three literary figures of equally unbelievable travel myths, none of whom were alive to sign such statements, and the former of which bearing a well-known and specific author attached to his conceptualization. Munchausen is not only making a mockery of his readers sensibilities, but fouling the reputation of notary officers in the royal British government.

What absurdities haven't been attributed to this hardly historical character? What does this say about the living Munchausen family but that they are unparalleled liars and scoundrels - should we continue such slander to such an established German name? Please leave this in the dustbin of low English storytelling.