Me and Kaminski [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

Daniel Kehlmann (Author), Nicolas Coster (Reader), Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2009

International bestseller Daniel Kehlmann offers an unflinching look at two brilliant and unpredictable men -- one an artist and the other a journalist. This provocative and wildly funny book celebrates the passion and desperation of Sebastian Zollner in his pursuit of Manuel Kaminski -- an elusive, but legendary painter. Together, they will embark on an unexpected adventure with uproarious results.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

German literary wunderkind Kehlmann follows up Measuring the World (2006) with this curious and lesser novel. Self-conscious and yet completely un–self-aware, journalist Sebastian Zollner attempts to outdo his art critic rival by writing the biography of reclusive painter Manuel Kaminski. Sebastian is amusingly sad, if one-note: he lives in denial that his live-in girlfriend broke up with him months ago; after an offhand comment by a transit worker, he becomes obsessed with his receding hairline; and he detests in others everything he so blithely ignores about himself. He weasels himself into Kaminski's household, snoops through the artist's private files, discovers a series of unfinished paintings and attempts to up the drama by reuniting Kaminski with his ex-wife, long thought dead. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Kaminski is manipulating pathetic Sebastian, and Sebastian's plans are thwarted in favor of the master's own. There are entertaining and lightly satirical moments, but for the most part the story feels rushed, with everyone except Sebastian getting short shrift. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The best-selling author of Measuring the World (2006) returns with this road novel, featuring a pair of unlikely buddies in self-absorbed journalist Sebastian Zollner and reclusive painter Manuel Kaminski. Sebastian believes that his proposed biography of the legendary blind painter will save both his career and his deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend. Convinced that the only way to bring his work alive is to spend time with the ailing artist, he makes the arduous trek to Kaminski’s remote mountain retreat, insinuates himself into the household, rifles through the artist’s personal possessions, and, finally, spirits Kaminski out of the house and into a car for an antic road trip to find the great love of the painter’s life, a woman he has long believed to be dead. As the painter systematically disabuses Sebastian of his ill-informed opinions on art and tricks him into paying for the entire trip, Sebastian gradually begins to let go of his life’s ambition and to appreciate the old painter’s blunt wisdom. In this delightfully comic novel, Kehlmann wittily poses questions about the nature of celebrity and the value of art. --Joanne Wilkinson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Phoenix Books; Abridged edition (January 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597772275
• ISBN-13: 978-1597772273
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,073,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars this book is supposed to be wickedly funny . . . it wasn't, May 22, 2010

By 

R. A. Frauenglas "Brooklyn Bum" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Me and Kaminski (Vintage) (Paperback)

"Me and Kaminski", by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway (204 pgs., 2003, 2008). According to the dust jacket blurbs, this is supposed to be a "wickedly funny . . . firecracker of a novel."
On the back cover, one German reviewer wrote that he hadn't "Laughed so hard reading a new German novel for a long time . . . "
A book reviewer for THE WASHINGTON POST'S BOOK WORLD mentioned that Kehlmann wrote in a "lightly surreal style . . . with flashes of magical realism . . ."
I don't know what book those people were reading. I didn't laugh. Not even once. I guess German humor is very deep. It is so deep I couldn't find it. Was this a decent novel? Yes. It strikes at the pretentiousness of false pride, focusing on pretensions in the art world & how truth is bent by scoop seeking journalists.
In this book, conniving art journalists are being out-connived by the conniving artists they are seeking to scoop. Is that humorous? Perhaps. Yet, the writing is more deadly serious than sarcastically humorous. In the end, it's the reader who gets totally fooled by a great O'Henryesque finale.
If allowed, this book would be receiving 2.5 stars instead of 3. But, half-stars are not allowed.
Perhaps, in the hand of a deft director this would make a good comic movie?

12 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Through A Glass Darkly", March 15, 2009

By 

Stanley H. Nemeth (Garden Grove, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Me and Kaminski: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a brilliant satirical novel, the bare events of its plot further enriched by the presence of both a poetic and a philosophical subtext. Its protagonist is a snoopy, narcissistic journalist, Sebastian Zollner, eager to make his "important" career in the art world by writing the biography of a once famous painter, Manuel Kaminski, now a recluse whose chief works were a series of mirror-image paintings called "Reflections.". The title, adroitly putting "Me" before "Kaminski" as it does, is the perfectly chosen open sesame into the self-absorbed character of Sebastian. Especially winning is the later tying together of Kaminski's art and Zollner's life, for author Kehlmann has Sebastian in a key moment look into a mirror and see only a stranger. Seeking the truth about his subject's life pure and simple, Sebastian in frustration discovers the persons he interviews about Kaminski contradict one another, and he is led to realize in a way the wisdom in Wilde's quip about seeing into others, that "the truth is never pure and rarely simple."

This novel bears a resemblance to Henry James' "Aspern Papers," a work featuring a similarly prying journalist who is brought at length to see, though from a less overtly philosophical perspective, his own emptiness. Zollner realizes after his fruitless quest for ownership of Kaminski's life an undeniable similarity to the experience of the follower of an Eastern sage mentioned earlier in the novel, the discovery that he finally has "nothing" and should even give that "nothing" up.

"Me and Kaminski" is a novel that has been carefully "written;" nothing in its series of interviews and madcap adventures is by chance. As such, it is a tale whose events are radiant with meaning, and, consequently, one which merits rereading.

3 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Waste Your Time Reading This Book, January 10, 2009

By 

Malcolm Black - See all my reviews

This review is from: Me and Kaminski: A Novel (Hardcover)

I only managed to get half way through this book, I simply couldn't stand reading any further. The lead character ("Me") is a vile and shallow journalist, which leads to a couple of mildly amusing incidents in the first few pages. But he really starts to wear one down after a very short while, and the humour gets very laboured very quickly. The other characters are equally unenlightening, and the whole book starts to drag.

You get a hint that Kaminski might have some redeeming qualities, but he disappears early on, and we get a horrendously kludgy sequence of interviews between "me" and Kaminski's vile acquaintances. So you get a one dimensional portrait of several uninteresting characters going on for page-after-page. That's when I gave up.

The language of the novel matches the characters -- boring and vapid. Maybe the translator is at fault, though she can be forgiven. It must have been boring translating the "adventures" of such a banal character.

The author completed a doctorate on Kant and the sublime, so you might have expected "me" to react in some way to the sublime in art. But all you get is "me" treating art analysis like an exercise in the lowest form of hack journalism. Which I guess is showing you the opposite of the sublime. But you don't get any hint of what the sublime in art might really be about. Maybe that's covered in the second half of the novel, but the total lack of sublimity in the first half made this seem unlikely to me. So I bailed.