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5.0 out of 5 stars
"If life is a joke, I wanted to resign.", November 4, 2004
This review is from: The Story of My Baldness (Hardcover)
Marek van der Jagt is a pen name for iconoclastic Dutch novelist Arnon Grunberg, whose novel Blue Mondays won the Netherlands' 1994 Anton Wachter Prize for a Debut Novel. After publishing additional successful novels, Grunberg created a literary controversy when he invented "Marek van der Jagt," an author who was supposedly a Viennese philosopher, and with whom Grunberg engaged in a bitter "rivalry," heavily covered in the European press. When The Story of My Baldness, "van der Jagt's" first novel, unexpectedly won the 2000 prize for Best First Novel, a prize Grunberg had already won, the true identity of "van der Jagt" was discovered and the prize withdrawn. Young, irreverent, and gifted with the ability to see real life as the joke it sometimes is, Marek van der Jagt/Arnon Grunberg writes earthy, beautifully observed prose, breathing life into every aspect of this hilarious and ribald coming-of-age story. The "author" is a fourteen-year-old philosophy student as the novel opens, deciding he will devote his life to "l'amour fou," or mad, passionate love. The son of a Viennese insurance salesman and a woman for whom unrestrained "l'amour fou" is life's primary occupation, Marek has little family guidance about the facts of life, but he eventually finds two tourists, Milena and Andrea, to teach him. Marek's farcical reactions to "l'amour fou," his inappropriate comments, his clumsy approaches, and his undisguised fascination with his older brother's prowess make Marek's first attempt at seduction one of the least romantic (and most amusing) seductions ever recorded. For Marek, however, this is an ironically life-changing experience: Milena's pointed comments about his naked body cause him to seriously question whether he might really be a dwarf, one who is a little taller than usual. The remainder of the novel deals with Marek's attempts to cope with his feelings of inferiority as he becomes an adult. Throughout his farcical search for l'amour fou, Marek makes grand pronouncements and "profound" comments about life and love, often relating his experiences to those of philosophers and creating satiric epigrams ("If you drink enough vodka, you understand everything."). When he is making love, he thinks of Camus, ponders the French Surrealists, fantasizes about being "the Rimbaud of Vienna," and dreams of being a successful poet with a volume entitled The Dwarf and Other Poems. His comic observations about the human foibles of his larger-than-life family and friends show them to be ludicrous, while his own naïve, Don Quixote-like search for "l'amour fou" is both touching and laugh-out-loud funny. Ironic, satiric, and ultimately thoughtful, the novel teaches that one "should not live as if a masterpiece is on its way." Mary Whipple
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Touching and Comical Masterpiece from an Underrated Dutch Author, December 31, 2008
This review is from: The Story of My Baldness (Hardcover)
With The Story of My Baldness, Marek van der Jagt proves that he's an outstanding debut novelist, not once, but twice. Having won the Anton Wachter Prize in 1994 for Blue Mondays, he won it again for The Story of Baldness in 2000, the second of which was taken away after it was learned that Marek van der Jagt was the heteronym of Arnon Grunberg. Given that, however, does not take away from the story's near perfection, made of equal parts laughter, tragedy, and a whole lot of heart. Set in Austria, The Story of My Baldness follows Marek van der Jagt, a fictional character, as he grows up in a dysfunctional family of a carefree dad who works in insurance, a brother who continually faints for attention, another brother who works in banking after leaving music as a prodigy, and a mother who habitually cheats on her husband. The narrator swears that he tells only the story of how he goes bald at such a young age, but that part only takes a up a few pages at the end of a story about a boy trying to find love and acceptance in a cold world that stigmatizes him for his small member and a mother who's barely there. It is a quest to find what he calls "l'amour fou" and a story of his mis-steps and tragedies as he embarks on this quest. Throughout the entire journey, readers will find Marek both relatable as well as outlandish, yet either way he is full of quirky observations, both of his world and of himself. Superbly written, the novel reads flawlessly even through Marek's most uncomfortable moments, for example, a visit to a plastic surgeon in regards to changing sex. Perfect in every way, it leaves me wondering why van der Jagt or the man behind him are so underrated in the States.
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