Die Jagd nach Dr. U. oder Ein einsamer Spiegel, in dem sich der Tag reflektiert.

by Unknown

Unusual book

Genres: German Literature, Fiction

Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Unknown" when the author or editor (as applicable) is not known and cannot be discovered. If at all possible, list at least one actual author or editor for a book instead of using "Unknown".

Books whose authorship is purposefully withheld should be attributed instead to Anonymous.

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason I bought this book was because it was put out by Atlas Press, publishers of marginal surrealist related stuff, an area of deep and abiding interest to me; but it sat on one or another of my bookshelves (most recently being relegated to the closet I turned into a bookcase, which is one remove from being further relegated to the shelves in my basement) for over ten years. I think the picture on the cover of the author pinching his monocle annoyed me. Austrians in monocles vex me.

But I overcame my vexation and now I've read it.

A back blurb describes it as "a late flowering of the Austrian baroque..." which does not mean that much to me, though now I would like to know more.

My take is that the premise of the book - a globe-hopping search for the mysterious Dr. U. - was an excuse for Artmann to write whatever struck his in-the-moment fancy, including concise and subtly outrageous take-offs on adventure novels, spy novels, horror novels, fairy tales, etc. Each given its own rather short chapter, with each chapter ending in a quote from another book. This structure gave me the impression of a spontaneous compositional process in which he first pulled books off his shelf, found a passage that interested him, then freely riffed on that passage.

The end result is a grab-bag of elaborate descriptions and eclectic styles, and a devil-may-care well read cosmopolitanism, but through it all there's a sincere interest in marginal art and literature in evidence, a kind of mad scientist cultural archaeology, along with a wild imagination delighting in itself while remaining always in control, monocle firmly in place, adroitly eluding convention and necessitous meaning. Just another untethered imagination delighting in itself... something I can never get enough of.

I'd like to find out more about this Hans Carl Artmann of the monocle, and read more of his books. In the meantime I'll move this book to one of my more prominent shelves, slipped between kindred books - a book's best home.

[lisa_emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in Cambridge (UK) during a bitterly cold December, but there was no snow, unlike the previous year. It was one of those strange impulse finds, I was compelled to read it after knowing very little about it. the Quest... is a experimental novel in the late-modernist, non-linear style, but it works due to its short chapters and lovely poetic prose. Short chapters are essential for non-linear writing because the writer demands the reader to follow along in the writer’s madcap journey into the illogical. Short chapters allow the reader to stop at a natural stopping point and gather her wits and to decide whether she has the courage to sally forth.

Reading non-linear narratives are not conducive to the travelling experience. When I travel, I like having a parallel reality to run alongside the already fragmented and disrupted existence of travelling. I feel delightfully jostled out of my day to day habits and comforts, my mind runs ahead in keeping loosely together the pre-planned and the spontaneous. Reading the Quest for Dr. U was a challenging read under this life of living moment to moment, absorbing the unexpected. But, yet it worked, and it was fun!

The story, if one is so brave to call it that, itself is a journey, a fleeing, a pursuit. It starts with a train ride, with the unnamed narrator faced with the mysterious Dr. U- a grotesque chameleon, a shapeshifter. I was never certain who was pursuing who, and why. Although to speak of characters in this book is folly, The book reads as though it was built from excerpts torn from other old pulp and genre fictions- they are strung together in a puzzle from which the reader is to decipher the meaning. This feeling is solidified by the short italicized fragments from other works that ends each chapter. I researched some of the writers attributed and found that all the ones I had looked up where pulp writers long forgotten by the masses, writers like Sax Rohmer, a British adventure writer from the ‘10s-’30s and Gustave Le Rouge, a French Sci-f- writer from early part of the 19th Century. And in fact, one of fragments is from a book written by Artmann himself.

And here, I suspect, is the key to the whole book. If one where looking for a literary project, one would read all the books form which the fragments are taken from and embed it into the meaning of this book. It would take awhile, it might even be fun, maybe I’ll do it someday. Or perhaps The Quest... is an homage to past and forgotten writers of the early part of the 19th C. - showing how these sorts of narratives are timeless or at least enjoyable in the now.

[Black Glove · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shadow-boxing
The last sentence on the back cover reads: "Its hero pursues an ultimate villain, the volatile Dr Unspeakable, through a bizarre labyrinth of situation and genre." - That summarizes H. C. Artmann's unusual creation fairly well, although I wouldn't define Dr U (who drifts in and out of proceedings) as an "ultimate" villain.

The book (which isn't a novel) consists of thirty-plus vignettes written in an elaborate and often enchanting style. Each snapshot ends with a short quote lifted from various sources which seem only vaguely relevant.

The shape-shifting Dr Unspeakable appears to be the author's alter ego or shadow or doppelganger or demon-on-the-shoulder or vardøger (good word!) - I might be wrong about this, but that's the impression I got.

Overall, an entertaining albeit uneven read, the kind of book which could potentially be re-visited many times because of the hidden meanings and a sense of clever depth contained within each sketch.
However, as a whole, it doesn't quite hang together in a convincing way: its teleporting randomness may annoy some readers. That said, this is an enigmatic book, and is perhaps one for the inquisitive reader drawn to discover more than initially meets the eye.

[Quinn Slobodian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weirdly reminiscent of the new Pynchon book in parts, Artmann wrote this in the Austrian 1960s, channeling Fantomas, Victorian Gothic, Dumas and Lovecraft. The unnamed protagonist, who moves restlessly through different time periods and settings, is being chased by a shape-shifting man who may be a ghost, the narrator's psychic inverse double or the elusive embodiment of evil. I found the book too deliberately wacky in parts (see the author photo on the cover for an indication of his style); the short disjointed chapters filled with long quotations came off more as a stylistic crutch than effective pastiche. The whole thing was almost worth it though for the image of a pack of hunters gathered around a werewolf who they've just shot at dawn, watching him as he slowly transforms back into a man they recognize from the village. Belles Lettres Scooby-Doo.