Fool On the Hill [Mass Market Paperback]

Matt Ruff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1989

As adventurous as the quests of J.R.R. Tolkien and as contemporary as the zany entertainment of Tom Robbins, "Fool on the Hill" is certain to bring laughs and be remembered for a long time to come. The hero is S.T. George, a young writer-in-residence at Cornell, who is looking for love and dragons to slay. Soon George is caught up in an epic struggle of life and death, good and evil, magic and love .

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This exuberant first novel unfolds at Cornell University, the alma mater of its 22-year-old author, who has re-imagined his school as the center of a violent and funny modern-day fairy tale. Stephen Titus George is a young writer longing for true love and a great story to tell. With the mysterious appearance of Calliope, a sorceress who can transform herself into anyone's vision of female perfection, both of his dreams begin to come true. Ruff shapes an adventure for his protagonist that includes everything from poisoned apples to winged dragons, all set on a campus where there isn't a professor in sight and where the actions of dogs, cats and invisible sprites are as meaningful as those of the students. On its way to a certain happy ending, the story falls short of its own ambitionsit's vastly overpopulated with extraneous characters (human and otherwise), and packed with self-conscious, punning references to everyone from Beckett to A. A. Milne. Too many of Ruff's narrative devices exist only to spotlight the author's cleverness, but at its best, his debut brims iwth good humor and imagination.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this comic fantasy a young writer-in-residence at Cornell University searches for true love and combats the forces of evil. Ruff uses the stock motifs of fairy tale and myth, but his treatment is remarkably inventive. Inspired by the mysterious Calliope, Ruff's hero learns to write without paper and thus, by the force of his imagination, to revise the mundane scenario of life in Ithaca. Aptly named S.T. George, he vanquishes a green canvas dragon and thereby foils the malignant plot of Rasferret the Grub. The multi-layered plot also includes animals who communicate by telepathy and tiny sprites with Shakespearean names. Ruff's exuberant tale will appeal strongly to readers with a taste for the fabulous. Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (December 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446357723
• ISBN-13: 978-0446357722
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,882,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intricately spun fairy tale., June 8, 2001

By 

Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fool on the Hill: A Novel (Paperback)

"You GOTTA read this book," a friend and soon-to-be fellow-Cornellian said with some urgency when he learned that I had enrolled at Cornell University a couple of years ago. Devouring the book almost in one piece once I had started to read it, I soon understood what he meant.

As others have pointed out, this is not a book "about" Cornell - it just uses the campus and its own magic as a setting (although I confess there is a certain nostalgia to reading about the Arts Squad, McGraw Tower and The Hill - everyone who has walked up to the campus at least once knows why this noun deserves capitalization - and not only being able to visualize the scenery but also to drift off into your own memories of the place). This book is a fast-pace, hilarious tour de force interweaving fairy tales of modern-day humans, animals communicating by telepathy, ancient sprites and elfs and, of course, dragons - even if you're just using Cornell as your setting, there's gotta be a dragon in there somewhere.

Borrowing from virtually every writer from Shakespeare and Tolkien to the late 20th-century humorists, Ruff nevertheless manages to forge a style of his own and, in the process, conjures up a cast of funny, tragic and always highly unique and memorable characters - from Mr. Sunshine, the Greek Original who oversees and occasionally meddles with the development of the story, to Luther, the lovable, tragicomic canine hero in search of heaven, the Bohemian students, who enter the story with a bang in small-town Pennsylvania, and of course S.T. (St.) George, the hero and would-be dragon-slayer. - Two-dimensional characters? Predictable ending? Maybe, but who cares? This is, above all, a fairy tale and a farce, not a political satire or a high-brow tale on morals. Yes, Luther discovers that there are purebreds and non-purebreds and as a mongrel, he is not welcome in purebred society. Yes, there is the image of the monkeys in Mr. Sunshine's library whose random and meaningless meddling with life's stories creates chaos in everything they touch (and thus, invokes questions of fate, destiny and the meaning of life). But these are merely pieces of a mosaic; it doesn't do the book justice to reduce it to these details alone and then deplore that they are not fully developed, or that there is a lot of black-and-white painting going on. Have you ever seen a fairy tale where that's not the case?

So, let the book's magic touch you and let its elfs and sprites enchant you, join Luther and his tailless Manx friend Blackjack on their journey from New York City to heaven (or its closest approximation in Ithaca, NY), root for the Bohemians in their dispute with the Rat Frat, and watch George withstand Mr. Sunshine's meddling in his conquest of Aurora Borealis.

If it is true that Matt Ruff in later years disavowed this book, it would appear that Mr. Sunshine has done a bit of meddling here, too - ever since becoming an underground hit shortly after its publication, "Fool on the Hill" has developed an extremely loyal audience and a life of its own, and there's an obvious reason for this. For once, Mr. Sunshine's meddling was actually for the good... and I sincerely wish he's going to leave it at that. This book deserves all the success it has had and more!

Also recommended:
The Hobbit
A Midsummer Night's Dream (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)
Cornell Then & Now

41 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wild ride of fun and fantasy!, December 23, 1999

By 

Karen Bierman Hirsh (Greenwich, CT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fool on the Hill: A Novel (Paperback)

I wrote a review of this book last year and I just re-read it again and wanted to remind people how fabulous this book is.

I discovered this book just after it was published and just before I got into Cornell and I have read it at least ten times since (I am just four years out of good 'ole Cornell). It it one of my favorite books as it combines true life in Ithaca with a world that you always hoped existed somewhere. It has something for everyone - as it combines several full lentgh stories, which could easily be read independently of one another, into an exciting and fun adventure. The Fool On The Hill was Ruff's senior thesis (if I am to believe a professor of his that supposedly helped get it published) - I felt that his book was so fabulous I went out and signed up for a course with his mentor.

If you buy this book, I guarantee that you will loan it out and have to re-purchase it as I know that I have gone through about 7 or 8 copies already. This book will touch the child in all of you.

The book focuses on S.T. George, a writer who finds his muse and loses her, a group of bohemian college students with some magic up their sleeves and a cat and dog on a journey to find "heaven" and rid the animal world of castes (pure-breds vs. mutts) and you kind kind-of get the idea behind Fool.... but it is really SO much more.

I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone that likes to daydream!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wild Fairy Tale Ride, March 12, 2002

By 

Elizabeth Bronzino "Sensa" (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fool on the Hill: A Novel (Paperback)

Fool on the Hill is one of the most inventive novels I've read in ages, and I very much enjoyed the comedic aspect of it. I think I actually laughed out loud once or twice. (High praise from me indeed. I haven't said that about any novel since Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore.)

I was afraid that Matt Ruff wasn't going to land his plane (err, kite) very well at the end because of the incredibly wild ride that we'd been on so far, but even there he pleasantly surprised me.

I highly recommend this book. Good characters, good scenery, inventive story (from sprites to evil ice birds to groups of animals having philosophical discussions to true love) -- all with a well-paced writing style and light-hearted sense of humor.