From Publishers Weekly
Part literary game, part grotesque coming-of-age tale, this "autobiographical novel" is likely to amuse some readers and put off others. To begin with, Van Der Jagt is a pseudonym; the book's real author is Arnon Grunberg, a prolific young Dutch author whose talent is matched—or possibly exceeded—by his desire to provoke the Dutch literary establishment. Submitted under the false name, the book won the Anton Wachter prize for a debut novel; the honor was revoked when it was discovered that Grunberg, who won the same prize for his bestseller
Blue Mondays, was the author. The book's protagonist is Viennese teenager Marek, a studious type prone to dour remarks. He struggles under the burdens of an overbearing mother, a distant father and a perilously small penis ("three-quarters of a pinky, when viewed charitably and with an open mind"). Despite this, he repeatedly tries his luck with women of chronic low self-esteem. These include a middle-aged accordion player, the less pretty of two tourists from Luxembourg and the neglected mother of a boy in a wheelchair. The translation (done by Sam Garrett, Grunberg's longtime translator, working under a pseudonym) successfully renders the mix of high-brow and low-brow that comprises Marek's voice. Whether readers find the book—and the ploy—amusing will depend on their tolerance for Marek/Grunberg's archly tongue-in-cheek humor.
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Product Description
The ingenious comic novel named one of the "best books of 2004" by The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun.In
The Story of My Baldness, Viennese philosophy student Marek van der Jagt tells the story of his quest for l’amour fou. Van der Jagt introduces a host of unforgettable characters and weaves a web of shameful secrets in this novel that uses Vienna the way Kafka used Prague—as the (strangely familiar) landscape where the narrator’s obsessions are given free rein.
“Van der Jagt’s dysfunctional family may be the most wondrous and most marvelously entertaining in recent memory. . . . He looses the spirit of J.P. Donleavy—and more—once again upon the world. Wonderful.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Marek’s voice . . . is what gives his romantic misadventures (first kiss, deflowering, anxiety about physical endowment) their fun air of droll farce.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Dark, funny and penetrating.”
—The New York Observer
“Archly tongue in cheek.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This whimsical novel, written pseudonymously by a Dutch novelist, masquerades as the confessions of an Austrian philosophy student . . . [who] decides to assert his existence by pursuing l’amour fou.”
—The New Yorker
