Rating: 
Summary: A real slam shutter
Review: A real shame,this looks to be an interesting fun ride but each and every paragraph contains a landmine of nauseating overcleverness which quickly turns the story into a frustrating wreck.Try again in 10 years.
Rating: 
Summary: Shooting sacred cows for fun, sport and amusement.
Review: Eddie Coffin is a second rate professor of philosophy with many troubles--the bottle, authority, remembering his name, and so on. Immersed in a mini sexual scandal, he flees to France, joins fortunes with another interesting social outcast, and begins a life of crime.Essentially a commentary on social disaffection and anomie, Fischer cleverly shrouds his consideration of general social ills in a skewed, aberrant, yet extremely entertaining veil of philosophical didactics between the partners in crime. The key here is character development as the plot, such as it is, remains minimal throughout the novel. The characters are fully capable of carrying the day, however. All in all a very good, if somewhat lightweight (for Fischer, anyway), effort.
Rating:
Summary: Get the zet.
Review: Get the zet. Actually if you don't "get the zet," don't read this book. Littered with obscure philosophical references and amusing anecdotes about the Ionians, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. I knew I was in trouble when I had to look up the definitions for two different words in a 6 word sentence.
Rating: 
Summary: Filosofía a mano armada
Review: He leído este libro en español y francamente pienso que resulta sumamente atrayente porque nos da cuenta perfecta de sus personajes envueltos en una maraña deliciosa de citas y desencuentros.
Rating:
Summary: Fischer at his best
Review: My favorite work by Fischer. I can't say anything about this that hasn't been stated already- I just wanted to add my two cents. I love this novel. I've read it four times since I first picked it up in '99. It is whimsical, hilarious, poignant, original and (best of all) a completely dead on send up of academic philosophy/ers. Experience in point: as an (philo)undergrad, I lent my copy to all my favorite philo profs. Only one of them thanked me. And he didn't return it. Even if you don't dig on the love 'o wisdom bag- you will laugh out loud at this book. And his other novels as well (though I will say, if you are a female- you may like Under The Frog or The Collector Collector, better- I've noticed a trend that way, with my female friends who ask for good reads).
Rating:
Summary: Zig-zags with zing and zip
Review: Ostensibly, this book is about a pair of bank robbers whose robberies are based on various schools of philosophical thought (the positivist view: "I'm positive I want to rob this bank"; also check out the ludicrous Socratic-dialogue scene). That's part of it, yes, but the book is about so much more. It talks about the nature of fate, apocalyptic fears, the downfalls of academia, as well as two or three dozen other things. And it does so in a language that fluctuates between pretentious effusiveness and ironic silliness. Hubert and Eddie Coffin (the title characters) are a modern day Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (not the Shakespeare but the Stoppard versions). Their brand of illogical logic is the only thing maintaining their existence. They are great characters caught up in a fascinating relationship. Like Ros and Guil, every attempt by one to understand the thoughts of the other comes back empty. That lasts for a while, and then Hube (a man missing more limbs than he's kept) goes and morphs into Tyler Durden. Fischer's style had me perplexed for awhile, but I think I've nailed it down. Think of a movie you know with hip dialogue and at least one torture sequence (my mind skips to 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Fight Club'). Now, imagine that story told to you in the first person by a bookish, lazy, witty, fat, balding, Cambridge-educated philosopher, whose inner dialogues are always terribly funny and exceedingly self-deprecating. Oh, and he has attention deficit disorder. I think that describes it pretty accurately. My thoughts re all those Z's: coupled with much 'fin de millennium' talk, Fischer appears to be leading us towards some kind of apocalyptic end. Not to worry, for we will be reborn on the other side. Listen to his description of the car wreck that thrusts our narrator towards his bank robbing ways: "...I was ejaculated through the windscreen, reborn from the automotive womb." We have our experiences, he appears to be saying, and they change us (for the better?) when we get to the other side. This is a good, quick read, punctuated with big ideas (or at least they seem like big ideas -- if the narrator doesn't take them seriously, should I?), and great comic set pieces. It somehow manages to build all this up to a very suspenseful ending, which it pulls off with great panache.
Rating:
Summary: Where are the good ol' days when we could burn books?
Review: Quite frankly, this book is wasted on a culture that celebrates Oprah, "Friends," and everything Bruckheimer. It's too good of a book to be put in the same strip malls that cough up today's entertainment and it knows it. The dialogue is fierce, the characters are sharp, and the narration is spot on. Oh, and it's funny as hell. That explains, of course, why you've never heard of it. Were there any justice, this book would be required reading. It could serve as the litmus test for some sort of bare-minimum competency test where if you dare said "I don't get it" more than twice, or didn't laugh at least once per page, they would strip you of voting rights, citizenship, and dignity. But, no. Instead those are the people who head corporations, reguarly attend focus groups, and wind up featured in the latest edition of People. Oh well. It's a good book.
Rating:
Summary: A positive review of a brilliantly written book
Review: Tibor Fischer can be expected to produce great works in the future, if he remains at all consistent with the ability he has demonstrated in The Thought Gang. The novel is a darkly sarcastic comedy that proffers insight into the mind of an Oxford Professor of Philosophy and his less than brilliant, thieving acquaintances. The book is written concisely, but does not lend itself the impression of a journalistic work. It is rich in detail, as well as in character development. Basically, the story is of a middle - aged, alcoholic genius who vacations from University life and goes to the south of France, where he is promptly mugged in his hotel room. He convinces the robber to stay, and the two of them go on a spree of robbing small French provincial banks with both chivalry and class. The plot is twisting, yet simple and the story itself is inspiring in its creativity. I would suggest this book to people who enjoy comedy, yet serious thought, as well as inspiring, but careless characters
Rating: 
Summary: Begins well, but ultimately too smug
Review: Tibor Fischer is a very fine writer. His Under the Frog was rightly nominated for the Booker Prize, the top literary award in the Commonwealth nations. And his Collector Collector is also excellent and overlooked. The Thought Gang starts wonderfully. The puns, the hilarious one-liners, the continual dropping of obscure words beginning with Z... It carried me through the first 60 or so pages at enormous speed and with great satisfaction... But then, like overindulging on candy, it becomes too much. The jokes begin to seem repetitious, or at best variations on jokes we've already read on page 38 and 57. It actually becomes slightly irritating in its over-reaching cleverness. The plot is wild, almost Helleresque in places, almost Monty Python in others. But the word-fetishism begins to grate, I'm afraid. Imagine all the best sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus put on a perpetual loop. You'd soon get over-familiar, you'd soon get weary. That, I'm afraid, was the effect of Tibor Fischer's Thought Gang on me. So, in summary, the first 60 pages: one of the funniest, laugh out loud novels ever written. The rest: an over-clever drag. Still, I'll award it three stars for its magnificent opening and because Fischer is usually wonderful. ORGANICPRANKSTER
Rating:
Summary: Cliches are the truths we're bored with....
Review: Tibor Fischer is one of the best writers on the planet -consistently hilarious, fiercely inventive and possessed of thatintuitive insight which makes you think - "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" The Thought Gang is a blast - a bald, lazy, dishonest Cambridge Philosophy professor joins forces with a one armed, sociopathic, French armed robber to form the Thought Gang - bank robbers with a philosophical bent who embark on a bank job spree in the south of France. From the ridiculous to the.... well, even more ridiculous really, Fischer draws you into his world where statements such as "I suppose we've all found ourselves running brothels in Amsterdam without the proper training at some time or another" or questions like "Does it help being the clever pig on the way to the abbatoir?" are pretty much the norm. Many zeds and Fischer's penchant for turning nouns into verbs add to the sense of absurd realism, giving the Thought Gang the feel of a Woody Allen movie, but with more philosophy (if that's possible). Both the Collector Collector and Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid are excellent, while Under the Frog is even better. If you've never read any Tibor Fischer, you are definitely missing out. So treat your brain to some comic philosophy (or is it philosophical comedy?) - read the Thought Gang.
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