Mr. Mee

Rating:
Summary: Please do not buy this book
Review: Amazon recommended this book for me, but I don't know what I did to anger them. Some of this story is told from the perspective of a 90 plus year old, Mr. Mee, who speaks with complete ignorance about the world wide web, and a woman a jogger he meets on the street who he is afraid is injuring herself because her breasts move so violently as she runs. Maybe the character is having a good time, but I can't imagine any reader could be. Buy this book only if you are incapable of getting annoyed.

Rating:
Summary: Apparently not for everyone
Review: I just finished this book, and was curious how it was reviewed by others. I don't think I've ever seen a book with so wild a divergence of opinion, (1 star, 3 stars and 5 stars).

I thought the book was clever and fun. Mr. Crumey had me laughing out loud many times at the inventive activity of the fairly well developed characters. I look forward to checking out his other offerings

Rating:
Summary: Apparently not for everyone
Review: I just finished this book, and was curious how it was reviewed by others. I don't think I've ever seen a book with so wild a divergence of opinion, (1 star, 3 stars and 5 stars).

I thought the book was clever and fun. Mr. Crumey had me laughing out loud many times at the inventive activity of the fairly well developed characters. I look forward to checking out his other offerings

Rating:
Summary: Please do not buy this book
Review: I set about reading Andrew Crumey's new book with the highest of expectations. I absolutely loved his Pfitz,. Alas, this was a big mistake and fatally doomed any possible enjoyment of Mr. Mee for me from the start. This book is not at all as good as Pfitz , and not close to being in Calvino's class. My major complaint would be that Crumey doesn't really decide which genre his novel should inhabit. As a result, Mr. Mee wanders back and forth between fabulous history, incredible happenstance, quantum physics, literary criticism, sexual frustration, and just plain exhaustion. If you like Proust (I don't), you won't like Mr. Mee, but you will learn something interesting things (maybe) about poor Proust (and others). But to what end? The book is fairly clever, well-written, an easy read, moderately funny, but generally pretty thin stuff. It won't stretch your mind too much or engage your sense of wonder, as Pfitz might. Then again, it's not Pfitz (or Calvino).

Rating:
Summary: Internet Porn and Enightenment Philosophers
Review: Mr. Mee is very much a novel of ideas, and much of the 'action' of the novel comes in the form of Crumey's playful tweaking of intellectual and literary history and his insistent investigation into philosophical questions of reality, fantasy, and imagination. Through a prolonged examination of the legacies of Rousseau, Proust, and'to a lesser extent'Flaubert, Crumey creates a novel in which fact is inextricably conjoined with fiction, and the line between reality and fantasy becomes very problematic indeed.

The novel is distinguished by a complex intertextuality in which three separate narratives weave in and out of each other, connecting, confirming, contradicting. The first is the epistolary record of Mr. Mee, an elderly antiquarian in search of the elusive and possibly apocryphal Rosier's Encyclopedia. The second (and finest) of the three narratives chronicles the adventures of Ferrand and Minard, two bumbling characters who are forced to flee Paris after a commission to copy the Encyclopedia involves them in murder and conspiracy. The third concerns a literature professor's preoccupations with issues of memory and imagination as he contemplates seducing one of his students.

Although there are some distracting philosophical asides and some forced humor, Crumey manages to create a playfully inventive fiction that examines the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment in light of information theory and quantum mechanics. If that sounds interesting to you, by all means proceed. If not, you'll be better off looking elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Internet Porn and Enightenment Philosophers
Review: Mr. Mee is very much a novel of ideas, and much of the �action� of the novel comes in the form of Crumey�s playful tweaking of intellectual and literary history and his insistent investigation into philosophical questions of reality, fantasy, and imagination. Through a prolonged examination of the legacies of Rousseau, Proust, and�to a lesser extent�Flaubert, Crumey creates a novel in which fact is inextricably conjoined with fiction, and the line between reality and fantasy becomes very problematic indeed.

The novel is distinguished by a complex intertextuality in which three separate narratives weave in and out of each other, connecting, confirming, contradicting. The first is the epistolary record of Mr. Mee, an elderly antiquarian in search of the elusive and possibly apocryphal Rosier�s Encyclopedia. The second (and finest) of the three narratives chronicles the adventures of Ferrand and Minard, two bumbling characters who are forced to flee Paris after a commission to copy the Encyclopedia involves them in murder and conspiracy. The third concerns a literature professor's preoccupations with issues of memory and imagination as he contemplates seducing one of his students.

Although there are some distracting philosophical asides and some forced humor, Crumey manages to create a playfully inventive fiction that examines the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment in light of information theory and quantum mechanics. If that sounds interesting to you, by all means proceed. If not, you'll be better off looking elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Another wonderful playful novel from Crumey
Review: This novel deals with big questions. What exactly is the link between Rousseau, the internet, and Jimmy Shand (a well known Scottish accordion player)? And is fire a lifeform?

Andrew Crumey is one of a new type of British writers, more interested in a tradition exemplified by Borges, Calvino, Barthelme, and Kundera, than another suburban study of the humdrum lives of humdrum people. (Dan Rhodes is another writing in this way) In reviews elsewhere on these pages I have made reference to his place within this seam of writing, the novel of ideas.

Crumey is an exemplary model in this regard. His previous novels include Music in a foreign language (a Calvinoesque look at fiction and love); Pfitz; and D'Alembert's Principle (the latter two books in a loosely related triptych on memory, reason, and imagination concluded by this novel). In this novel there are echoes of these earlier works throughout, and their themes, and some of the characters and ideas, permeate this new novel. And like those previous works this novel is a Chinese box. This time there are three interlinking narratives - Mr Mee's own introduction to the internet and Rosier's Encyclopaedia; the story of two copyists that disturb Jean Jacques Rousseau's peaceful retreat (Ferrand and Minard, two characters referred to fleetingly in Rousseau's Confessions, that have something of man of Porlock of them); and the confession of an academic studying eighteenth century French fiction. The strands come together wonderfully.

Crumey's fiction taps the rich source of eighteenth century French philosophical thinking (as well as modern variants). However, to refer to this gives a misleading impression of the novel. His work is clever, but his intellect is worn lightly. The novels set you thinking. But, most importantly, Andrew Crumey is very funny. Like his previous novels this is witty and charming.

Andrew Crumey gets better and better. I very much look forward to his next work.