| The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr Revised Edition Contributor(s): Hoffmann, E. T. a. (Author), Bell, Anthea (Translator), Bell, Anthea (Notes by) |
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ISBN: 0140446311 ISBN-13: 9780140446319 Publisher: Penguin Group OUR PRICE: $17.10 Product Type: Paperback Published: November 1999 Annotation: A story writer with dazzling gifts of innovation and imagination, Hoffmann's influence spread to such famous literary successors as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Poe, Kafka, Baudelaire, and Garcia Marquez. Hoffmann was a follower of Cervantes and Sterne, a pioneering "magic realist, " fascinated by Gothic horror, extreme mental states, and supernatural events occurring within sharply (and sometimes satirically) rendered social settings. A talented composer and painter, he portrayed himself in the guise of Johannes Kreisler -- a hypochondriac, antisocial, and moody but brilliant musician. In this astonishing book a vain and very bourgeois tomcat sets out to write his memoirs, using a biography of Kreisler as a blotting pad. By a printer's error, the two lives get spliced together into a bizarre double narrative. A supreme example of literary bravado, Tomcat Murr is also shot through with the warmth, humanity, and almost uncanny ability to captivate his readers that make Hoffmann the greatest of German storytellers. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics - Fiction | Humorous - General - Fiction | Historical - General |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 00693441 |
| Series: Penguin Classics |
| Physical Information: 0.94" H x 5.42" W x 7.64" (0.69 lbs) 384 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler. In his exuberant and bizarre novel, Hoffmann brilliantly evokes the fantastic, the ridiculous and the sublime within the humdrum bustle of daily life, making The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820-22) one of the funniest and strangest novels of the nineteenth century. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. |