The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

I rarely write reviews, but this book deserves more advocacy simply because of its sheer brilliance.

Tomcat Murr originates from a fantastically bizarre premise that could only spring from the mind of E.T.A. Hoffmann. At some point in the 1820's, a cat, Murr, is born, and is rescued as a kitten by Abraham Liscov, a man of many trades. The bibliophile Murr becomes convinced that he is God's literary gift to the world and begins reading every book he can in Abraham's study, all while evading the evil Herr Lothario and his poodle, Ponto–who it turns out is also among the intelligentsia. By the middle of the novel, Murr has involved himself with the feline litterati, and I won't spoil the rest of the hilarious high drama that occurs.

Anyway, as Murr tells us at the beginning, as an old and wizened tomcat he starts writing his autobiography (it's a great struggle to learn to write with paws, but Murr of course manages it) but, struggling to find paper, writes his all-important accounts directly on top of Meister Abraham's carefully-written biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler, inserting his self-aggrandizing episodes directly before and after the most dramatic episodes of Kreisler's life. And thus Hoffmann created the cliffhanger.

Kreisler, himself, is a fascinating character–a mad genius who has to balance his fear that he'll turn into a suicidal lunatic with his love for Julia, the daughter of his employer Madame Benzon. The “court” he works for is a sharp satire on the German society of the day: Prince Irinaeus, unhappy at having his lands taken away from him, purchases an estate in the countryside and tries to play royal for the rest of his life, which is the reason Kreisler and Abraham are employed. Kreisler's hapless encounters with the Prince and various princelings are made more enjoyable by the reality-show-type plot twists that engage his attention for the rest of the novel. (Throughout the book, Murr's account slowly yields in proportion to Kreisler's, somewhat of a sly jab at the cat who thought he had everything to say but couldn't find more than a couple chapters.)

The story itself would make for a decent thriller, but the novel's true value comes from its structure and intertextual references. It's an extremely carefully constructed book, making sure to follow conventional form in terms of development of plot, but at the same time interrupting this smooth development with abrupt viewpoint jumps. In many ways, it's like a Beethoven sonata, if plot were sonata form and viewpoint corresponded to key. Adding to the hilarity are the many references to bad authorship made by Murr, which include excessive flowery language, rampant plagiarism, and a love poem inspired by Ovid's treatise on how to get rid of women.

In short, a mad romp through the absurd world of Hoffmann's mind, a psychedelic hypothesis of literate cats and dancing royals, a rebuke of royalism and bad Romanticism, an anticipation of Borges and Calvino. 5/5.