Booklist 2004
Jungk, Peter Stephan. The Perfect American. Tr. By Michael Hofmann.
June 2004. 192p. Other/Handsel, $18 (0-59051-115-8).
By Carl Hays.
May 15, 2004
Did the man who created Mickey Mouse really have a strong, racist hostility for African Americans or an almost McCarthy-esque hatred of Communism? According to Wilhelm Dantine, narrator of this fictionalized biography of Walt Disney's final years, these and other dark traits fill out the true character of the great cartoonist, making the title The Perfect American an ironic, backhanded slap at Disney's legacy. Yet Dantine, a former Disney studio animator with an admitted dependency on a drug called Walter Elias Disney, is himself a tortured man and on a lifelong mission to avenge his premature firing after he made major contributions to the classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In a scene worth the book's price, Dantine finally confronts Disney with his planned tirade of accusations, and the results completely surprise him. At turns fascinating and comical, Jungk's novel hews so closely to well-researched biographical data that the line between fact and fiction often becomes blurred. An interesting companion piece to existing biographies, one that may start readers searching for the real Walt.
Christian Science Monitor 2004
The mouse and me
By Ron Charles
July 13, 2004
An Austrian-born cartoonist ruins his life pining for Disney's approval - and just a little credit
I've read four novels recently that announce upfront that they're "fictionalized biographies." Such voluntary self-disclosure is meant to alert everyone to the dangers within, like "may cause death" or "you could lose money." But, of course, anybody who lights up a Lucky Strike or plunks down savings in the Internet Vision Fund imagines those warnings don't really apply to him.
That kind of exceptionalism is irresistible when reading one of these hybrid biographical novels. "Yes, yes, I know it's a work of fiction," I mutter, "but most of this is probably true."
"The Perfect American" is a perfect example of this unsettling genre. Everything about it is a house of mirrors: The author, Peter Jungk, is an American-born novelist who lives in Paris and writes in German. His novella has been translated by Michael Hofmann, who was born in Germany, raised in England, and now teaches in Michigan. The story purports to be a confession, written in prison, by Wilhelm Dantine, a fictional Austrian-born cartoonist who worked for several years with Walt Disney, the real filmmaker who sought to create the future in California with fantasies of his past in the Midwest. Every detail in the book is true, except for those which are made up. You may lose money. Could cause death.
The story opens in Marceline, Mo., in 1966, during the final months of Disney's life. The filmmaker has returned to his boyhood hometown to dedicate a new park. In the audience of well-wishers lurks Dantine, who tells us this was the sixth time he'd planned to confront Mr. Disney. In fact, since he was summarily dismissed from the Burbank Studios in 1954, Dantine has abandoned his career and family to study his great idol and enemy, the father of Mickey Mouse.
Sometimes in this fact-packed but endlessly questionable biography, Dantine explains how he acquired bits of personal information by befriending Disney's friends, ingratiating himself to his mistress, collecting thousands of newspaper clippings, and sneaking into parties and meetings. But at other times, he merely speaks with a creepy kind of omniscience, reciting to us, for instance, the egotistical little prayer that Disney repeats each morning in bed: "I am a leader, a pioneer, I am one of the great men of our time. More people in the world know my name than that of Jesus Christ... I have created a universe. My fame will outlast the centuries."
Ultimately, this is a haunting story not so much about the wonderful world of Disney as about the corrosive effects of personal obsession, the porous membrane between adulation and hatred.
The day that Disney hired him was the happiest day of Dantine's life, but it infected him with a need for the man's praise. While Dantine produced thousands of drawings for "Sleeping Beauty," Disney never delivered a kind or encouraging word. What's worse, Dantine saw firsthand how little Disney actually did - no writing, no drawing, no filming, just vague directives to his minions, dismissive criticism, and an absolute insistence that all credit for everything flow exclusively to him. He couldn't even write out his own famous signature.
Dantine has spent his life trying to prove that the king of Disneyland is an emperor with no clothes. But the record he collects is maddeningly ambiguous, no more conclusive than Dantine's hatred, which is so mingled with awe and love.
The portrait that emerges is not flattering to either man. Disney comes across as maniacally egotistical, unapologetically racist, and embarrassingly immature. But again and again, the artists who toiled away in complete anonymity for decades to create all that we think of as Disney's work tell Dantine that they adored their boss, that his energy and inspiration generated everything they did.
At the center of the story is the day Dantine finally climbs over Disney's fence and confronts him in his own backyard. "You are personally responsible for the fact that nothing in my life has turned out well," Dantine announces while Disney tinkers on his giant train engine. Dantine has fantasized about this encounter for years, choreographed it perfectly to devastate his nemesis, but it's a moment of madness and self-mutilation rather than assault - a comic and grotesque demonstration of obsession.
In the end, Dantine's entire prison testimony fails to expose or ridicule the man as he'd intended because Jungk captures something tragic and moving about old Walt. Whether he's planning to have himself frozen in nitrogen or trying to talk sense into his malfunctioning Abraham Lincoln robot, this Disney is a strangely sympathetic character.
Disneyland, Disney World, EPCOT, and, more recently, the faux town, Celebration, all express their creator's desire to meld an idealized past with a technological future. For millions of people throughout the world, that remains an irresistible dream.
Even without its heavy-handed title, the story obviously means to imply that no one better expressed that essentially American desire to be loved and to dominate. And it makes a strong case. But with poor Dantine, who remains so madly faithful to his "beloved antagonist," the author has captured something essentially European, too. Dantine's mingled disdain and admiration for a man who seems more energy than intellect is a wry emblem of the Continent's complex envy toward the United States and all its galling success.
Proceed with caution into Jungkland. There are some wonderful rides here, and it's often impossible to distinguish the factual from the fantastic, but the insights are true - and troubling.
(c) Copyright 2004. The Christian Science Monitor
Kirkus 2004SECTION: FICTION
The Perfect American March 15, 2004
And, no, there's absolutely no weighted meaning in that title.
While it would be next to impossible to find a subject who came to a book with more symbolic heft attached to him than Walt Disney, as a character the man seems relatively unrepresented in literature and film. Doing quite the fine job of changing that fact is Jungk, who takes on the dream-maker himself in his utterly irascible and unpleasant old age. At the opening hereof a novel whose title is almost as fraught with significance as Disney himself the old man has gone back in 1966 to the tiny town in Missouri where he and his brother Roy were born and from whence came the inspiration for the layout of the Disney theme parks. Roy was the one who was good with the money, not the ideas like Walt. Of course, the great open secret of Walt's life is that he didn't really do much of the concrete work that made his name known in the farthest corners of the world he just hired the best of the best, put them on a short leash, and slapped his name on their product. This is a point driven home again and again by the story's resident neurotic Wilhem Dantine. An Austrian-born cartoonist (and real-life figure), Dantine worked for Walt for many years, getting fired just after the relatively disappointing performance of Sleeping Beauty, which Dantine had worked on. Years later, Dantine is practically a wandering vagrant with not much more to do than follow Walt around in an attempt to confront him (it's a sublime moment when Dantine finally manages to butt heads with Walt in person). More like fictionalized biography than straight fiction, Jungk's book is a fine achievement, making such a remote, brilliant, and rather hateful Walt Disney a flawed and painfully human creation.
Sharp as a razor:
The Perfect American says more about Disney, and the seduction of megalomania, than a stack of biographies.
Los Angeles Times Book Review 2004
FILM ON PAPER
A life reanimated: The Perfect American by Peter Stephan Jungk
Sunday, June 13, 2004
By Richard Schickel, author of "The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney."
Walt Disney died in 1966. He was only 65 years old, but he was already -- not least in his own mind -- a myth. Early in "The Perfect American," Peter Stephan Jungk's historical novel (perhaps we should call it a historical fantasia) about him, Disney murmurs to himself, "I am a leader, a pioneer. I am one of the great men of our time.... More people know my name than that of Jesus Christ. Billions have seen at least one of my films. It's something that never existed before me: an art form, a c...
