The Thought Gang [Paperback]

Tibor Fischer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1997

In this wacky philosophical caper, washed-up, middle-aged British philosopher Eddie Coffin flees scandal and ruin at home to find himself destitute in France. There he hooks up with Hubert, a one-armed armed robber recently released from prison, and the "thought gang" is born. Applying philosophy to larceny, this unlikely duo winds its way from Montpellier to Toulon, robbing banks and exploring the meaning of life, in one of the most irreverent and ingenious novels of our time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A black comedy in the grand tradition of word-drunk intellectuals-en-dementia, The Thought Gang follows the larcenous adventures of blackout alcoholic philosopher Eddie Coffin, who, in the wake of scandal, flees his professorship in England to begin the next logical step in his career: robbery. Coffin and his new partner in crime and metaphysics, Hubert the one-armed armed robber, road-trip across the Continent in a spree of crime and epistemology, arguing a cracked history of Western philosophy and plumbing the meaning of life. Fischer was named by Granta as one of the best young British novelists of 1994; his first novel, Under the Frog, was a Booker Prize semifinalist.

From Publishers Weekly

A fat, middle-aged British philosopher turns glutton, slacker, embezzler and thief in Fischer's second novel (after Under the Frog), an infectiously immoral tale about bank robbery in contemporary France. We meet Greek philosophy don Eddie Coffin as he goes on the lam from Cambridge, where, to avoid what he despises above all?work?he has stolen the funds of a Japanese foundation, stashing them in a suitcase. Not far from Lyon, a car accident sends his carefully cached funds up in smoke, leaving him one choice: to rob banks, a trade he learns under the tutelage of crippled thug Hubert. Together, the duo are drunk, lazy and violent, but in such an innocent way that it's hard to begrudge them their subsequent fantastic run of bank-robbing luck. Coffin's stylized first-person narration (numbered in sections, like a philosophical treatise) can be grating, but eventually even wisecracks about Epictetus and Zeno?as well as Coffin's unexplained fascination with words that begin with the letter Z?become part of the fun. The juxtaposition of egghead metaphysics and juvenile gangster fantasy is summed up in the line, "The thing about a gun is, it's like being on the right side of a Socratic dialogue." Often complex in structure, incorporating flashbacks of Coffin's old friends and family to touching effect, this jaunty novel is fundamentally an exercise in wish-fulfillment: shoot guns, get cash, spend it on French food.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction ed edition (May 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684830795
• ISBN-13: 978-0684830797
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Zig-zags with zing and zip, October 18, 2000

By 

Mike Stone - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thought Gang (Paperback)

Ostensibly, this book is about a pair of bank robbers whose robberies are based on various schools of philosophical thought (the positivist view: "I'm positive I want to rob this bank"; also check out the ludicrous Socratic-dialogue scene). That's part of it, yes, but the book is about so much more. It talks about the nature of fate, apocalyptic fears, the downfalls of academia, as well as two or three dozen other things. And it does so in a language that fluctuates between pretentious effusiveness and ironic silliness.

Hubert and Eddie Coffin (the title characters) are a modern day Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (not the Shakespeare but the Stoppard versions). Their brand of illogical logic is the only thing maintaining their existence. They are great characters caught up in a fascinating relationship. Like Ros and Guil, every attempt by one to understand the thoughts of the other comes back empty. That lasts for a while, and then Hube (a man missing more limbs than he's kept) goes and morphs into Tyler Durden. Fischer's style had me perplexed for awhile, but I think I've nailed it down. Think of a movie you know with hip dialogue and at least one torture sequence (my mind skips to 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Fight Club'). Now, imagine that story told to you in the first person by a bookish, lazy, witty, fat, balding, Cambridge-educated philosopher, whose inner dialogues are always terribly funny and exceedingly self-deprecating. Oh, and he has attention deficit disorder. I think that describes it pretty accurately.

My thoughts re all those Z's: coupled with much 'fin de millennium' talk, Fischer appears to be leading us towards some kind of apocalyptic end. Not to worry, for we will be reborn on the other side. Listen to his description of the car wreck that thrusts our narrator towards his bank robbing ways: "...I was ejaculated through the windscreen, reborn from the automotive womb." We have our experiences, he appears to be saying, and they change us (for the better?) when we get to the other side.

This is a good, quick read, punctuated with big ideas (or at least they seem like big ideas -- if the narrator doesn't take them seriously, should I?), and great comic set pieces. It somehow manages to build all this up to a very suspenseful ending, which it pulls off with great panache.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shooting sacred cows for fun, sport and amusement., February 13, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Thought Gang (Paperback)

Eddie Coffin is a second rate professor of philosophy with many troubles--the bottle, authority, remembering his name, and so on. Immersed in a mini sexual scandal, he flees to France, joins fortunes with another interesting social outcast, and begins a life of crime.

Essentially a commentary on social disaffection and anomie, Fischer cleverly shrouds his consideration of general social ills in a skewed, aberrant, yet extremely entertaining veil of philosophical didactics between the partners in crime.

The key here is character development as the plot, such as it is, remains minimal throughout the novel. The characters are fully capable of carrying the day, however.

All in all a very good, if somewhat lightweight (for Fischer, anyway), effort.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cliches are the truths we're bored with...., April 7, 2000

By 

GZA "gza" (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thought Gang (Paperback)

Tibor Fischer is one of the best writers on the planet -consistently hilarious, fiercely inventive and possessed of thatintuitive insight which makes you think - "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

The Thought Gang is a blast - a bald, lazy, dishonest Cambridge Philosophy professor joins forces with a one armed, sociopathic, French armed robber to form the Thought Gang - bank robbers with a philosophical bent who embark on a bank job spree in the south of France. From the ridiculous to the.... well, even more ridiculous really, Fischer draws you into his world where statements such as "I suppose we've all found ourselves running brothels in Amsterdam without the proper training at some time or another" or questions like "Does it help being the clever pig on the way to the abbatoir?" are pretty much the norm. Many zeds and Fischer's penchant for turning nouns into verbs add to the sense of absurd realism, giving the Thought Gang the feel of a Woody Allen movie, but with more philosophy (if that's possible).

Both the Collector Collector and Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid are excellent, while Under the Frog is even better. If you've never read any Tibor Fischer, you are definitely missing out. So treat your brain to some comic philosophy (or is it philosophical comedy?) - read the Thought Gang.