Mr. Mee (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Musing on Rousseau, the French encyclopedists and the vagaries of chance and identity, Crumey (Pfitz; D'Alembert's Principle) has written another novel of ideas in the grand tradition of Calvino, Borges and Kundera. This delightful romp around the knottiest concerns raised by Enlightenment philosophers and postmodernists alike centers on the long-vanished Rosier's Encyclopaedia, a 200-year-old French text that may challenge the existence of the universe. Setting out to track down Rosier's work, dotty old Mr. Mee, a reclusive British book collector, embarks on a quest that introduces him to the Internet in all its seamy variety (he finds an unclad woman reading a Rosier-related text on one site) and brings on the attentions of a "life scientist" named Catriona, who introduces him to the pleasures of the flesh. Mee's narrative alternates with that of a Dr. Petrie, a professor of French literature desperately in love with one of his students, and Ferrand and Minard, the bumbling 18th-century French copyists charged with reproducing Rosier's original manuscript. Mee may be the most endearing narrator, and Ferrand and Minard the most haplessly slapstick, but Petrie proves the most perceptive, lacing his lovelorn lamentations with reflections on Proust and Flaubert. Crumey also provides tantalizing glimpses of the Encyclopaedia itself, its treatises all absurdly outdated and yet provocatively applicable to modern-day computer science and physics. The novel isn't perfect--its philosophical asides can be hard going, and it's easy to lose patience with the exaggerated ineptitude of all its narrators--but Crumey's light treatment of hefty material should win the minds, if not the hearts, of his readers. (Mar.)Forecast: Crumey has yet to achieve the name recognition of Umberto Eco or even Arturo P‚rez-Reverte, but this strong effort and the many glowing reviews it's bound to receive should attract a few more readers to him.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In what has become his trademark narrative style, British novelist Crumey (Pfitz, D'Alembert's Principle) offers readers three ongoing stories loosely intertwined on a philosophical spool. The title character is an elderly and incredibly sheltered scholar who, in the course of the volume, learns about both computers and the female anatomy. The other two tales involve a pair of ne'er-do-well 18th-century French copyists who come a cropper of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as a contemporary philosophy professor with a penchant for a young female student. While each of these stories is moderately clever, none of the male characters is sympathetic, and the female characters have frustratingly brief walk-ons that promise more intellectual stimulation than they are allowed to deliver. The three tales are drawn together in a messy denouement that is neither engaging nor insightful. While there are a few standout passages along the wayAincluding the scene in which Mr. Mee describes his initial introduction to the InternetAthere is little to recommend this to any audience.AFrancisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA; 1st Picador USA ed edition (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312268033
• ISBN-13: 978-0312268039
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,862,821 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another wonderful playful novel from Crumey, December 15, 2000

By	"scottish_lawyer" (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This novel deals with big questions. What exactly is the link between Rousseau, the internet, and Jimmy Shand (a well known Scottish accordion player)? And is fire a lifeform?

Andrew Crumey is one of a new type of British writers, more interested in a tradition exemplified by Borges, Calvino, Barthelme, and Kundera, than another suburban study of the humdrum lives of humdrum people. (Dan Rhodes is another writing in this way) In reviews elsewhere on these pages I have made reference to his place within this seam of writing, the novel of ideas.

Crumey is an exemplary model in this regard. His previous novels include Music in a foreign language (a Calvinoesque look at fiction and love); Pfitz; and D'Alembert's Principle (the latter two books in a loosely related triptych on memory, reason, and imagination concluded by this novel). In this novel there are echoes of these earlier works throughout, and their themes, and some of the characters and ideas, permeate this new novel. And like those previous works this novel is a Chinese box. This time there are three interlinking narratives - Mr Mee's own introduction to the internet and Rosier's Encyclopaedia; the story of two copyists that disturb Jean Jacques Rousseau's peaceful retreat (Ferrand and Minard, two characters referred to fleetingly in Rousseau's Confessions, that have something of man of Porlock of them); and the confession of an academic studying eighteenth century French fiction. The strands come together wonderfully.

Crumey's fiction taps the rich source of eighteenth century French philosophical thinking (as well as modern variants). However, to refer to this gives a misleading impression of the novel. His work is clever, but his intellect is worn lightly. The novels set you thinking. But, most importantly, Andrew Crumey is very funny. Like his previous novels this is witty and charming.

Andrew Crumey gets better and better. I very much look forward to his next work.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Internet Porn and Enightenment Philosophers, June 11, 2002

By	Jeff Topham "jtopham" (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Mr. Mee: A Novel (Paperback)

Mr. Mee is very much a novel of ideas, and much of the action of the novel comes in the form of Crumeys playful tweaking of intellectual and literary history and his insistent investigation into philosophical questions of reality, fantasy, and imagination. Through a prolonged examination of the legacies of Rousseau, Proust, andto a lesser extentFlaubert, Crumey creates a novel in which fact is inextricably conjoined with fiction, and the line between reality and fantasy becomes very problematic indeed.

The novel is distinguished by a complex intertextuality in which three separate narratives weave in and out of each other, connecting, confirming, contradicting. The first is the epistolary record of Mr. Mee, an elderly antiquarian in search of the elusive and possibly apocryphal Rosiers Encyclopedia. The second (and finest) of the three narratives chronicles the adventures of Ferrand and Minard, two bumbling characters who are forced to flee Paris after a commission to copy the Encyclopedia involves them in murder and conspiracy. The third concerns a literature professor's preoccupations with issues of memory and imagination as he contemplates seducing one of his students.

Although there are some distracting philosophical asides and some forced humor, Crumey manages to create a playfully inventive fiction that examines the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment in light of information theory and quantum mechanics. If that sounds interesting to you, by all means proceed. If not, you'll be better off looking elsewhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting little book, May 27, 2006

By	Jay R. Chase (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Mr. Mee: A Novel (Paperback)

Mr. Crumey has brought together so many ideas and themes that it makes my head spin trying to keep up. At the end of the day, what I felt was sad....so sad that after all the great ideas and stories, we came down to the old fella sitting in the room with the sad girl. If you end up reading the book, I would wish you the same feeling - there is a bit more to wrap up the plot line, but... overall, I think Mr. Crumey thinks us a sad lot.... either that or he has been reading to much Moliere :)) Worth a look at, but be warned, there is some graphical descriptions... my fourteen year old is going to have to wait a while...

Interesting thing about this book is that I am not sure what to do with it now. One would have to be pretty "into" philosophy and some of the old writers to even have a chance of keeping up with the flow. Rousseau and internet pornography....Most folks that find one interesting, won't have a thing to do with the other! interesting match (thus the wildly divergent reviews)!!

All the best,

Jay