Tibor FischerRezensionen

A lot of fun. Feels a little of-its-time, but not necessarily dated. Very strong, convincing voice (better than Amis, with whose early work this book (particularly the earlier parts) must often be compared). Curiously inspiring. Get zet.

Rosa , una joven londinense, tasadora de obras de arte en una casa de subastas, sueña con encontrar al hombre ideal. Un día, le encargan que certifique la autenticidad de un cuenco de cerámica que desea comprar Marius , un hombre de negocios poderoso y excéntrico coleccionista. El cuenco ―tan antiguo como la humanidad― posee los cinco sentidos y está dotado de una hilarante capacidad para narrar, entre otras historias, las peripecias que alteran por completo el apartamento de Rosa : la aparición de Nikki , ladrona impenitente y auténtica máquina sexual, a la que protege Balumba , una mujer hercúlea que ha regresado de la muerte para devolverla al buen camino; el desconcierto amoroso de la glotona Lechuga ; varios asesinatos frustrados y un sinfín de aventuras que el cuenco ha vivido a través de los siglos y que no tiene reparos en contar en cuanto Rosa le impone las manos.

Oceane es una joven diseñadora gráfica que vive cómodamente en el sur de Londres tras hacerse rica de manera inesperada, con la creación de un juego de ordenador. Lo tiene todo: desde una casa equipada con el último grito en tecnología hasta una imaginación desbordante. Aunque le encantaba viajar, ahora no le entusiasma salir de casa. En realidad, ha decidido no pisar más la calle y se pasa el día en pijama, disfrutando de su particular paraíso doméstico e, incluso, viajando sin moverse de su piso. En el pasado, Oceane trabajo unos meses como actriz porno en un conocido club nocturno de Barcelona, el Babylon, un microcosmos donde convivió con personajes pintorescos y hasta tuvo un novio, Walter. Ahora, Oceane empieza a recibir cartas misteriosas de Walter, supuestamente muerto, que le prometen revelarle la verdad sobre los extraños acontecimientos que sucedieron en Babylon.

«Intenté ser una persona honrada. Lo intenté durante mucho tiempo..., pero no funcionó», asegura Tyndale Corbett, un agente comercial en paro, cuarentón divorciado y sin dinero que suplanta por unos días a un amigo en una convención de agentes comerciales en Miami. Tras viajar a esta ciudad y salir airoso del encuentro, Tyndale, deslumbrado por los hoteles de lujo, la diversión fácil y unas vagas intuiciones de enriquecimiento rápido, decide acabar con su cochambrosa mediocridad y aspirar alto, muy alto: de hecho, decide ser Dios... o, al menos, tratar de convencer a la ciudad de que lo es. Para ello necesita una parroquia y la encuentra en la Iglesia del Cristo Fuertemente Armado. Pero su apostolado no acaba de cuajar y Tyndale se jugará el todo por el todo con un milagro pasmoso: morirá y resucitará a las pocas horas. Para ello, urde un plan infalible con el empleado de una funeraria; pero ¿acaso existen los planes infalibles?

Estar "bajo el culo del sapo" equivale para los húngaros a nuestro vulgar "estar jodidos". Y jodidos van a estar los húngaros Gyuri y Pataki en vísperas del año 1956. Hasta entonces, las cosas no les habían ido del todo mal. Amigos inseparables desde 1944, cuando, aún jóvenes soldados, se dedicaban a saquear lo que los nazis no se habían llevado, viajan por toda la nación formando parte de un equipo de baloncesto con tres únicos objetivos: los placeres del sexo, la holgazanería y la subversión de las normas del estado comunista. En su desaforada picaresca, conoceremos a una galería de personajes pintorescos, como Ladányo, el jesuita de apetito pantagruélico; el obrero Tamás, que duerme en la fábrica o en casa de sus conquistas; o Makkai, profesor de inglés y su maloliente inquilino. Pero, un buen día, las calles se llenan de gente alborotada: ¿será porque Hungría ha perdido un partido de fútbol o porque los tanques soviéticos van a volver a ocupar la ciudad?

Midlife crisis? Gatwicklungsroman? Picaresque?

Not really sure how to classify this one. There's no real character-development, though there is nostalgia and some peripheral soul-searching. Many things happen, but there is no plot to speak of.

As always, Tibor Fischer's writing is entertaining and engaging, a healthy bit of British wordplay garnishing every page.

The fish-out-of-water story about a Londoner transplanted to Miami quickly settles into an episodic narrative of a guy who has turned out to be surprisingly good at not really doing anything. There's an attempt to create a philosophy out of this: the guy fails when he tries, but succeeds when he doesn't try, and his religious message to the masses is "don't expect a reward".

I feel that more could have done with this, both from a narrative standpoint and from a "what the hell, let's make an anti-Dianetics and see if anyone bites" standpoint. That would have made for a novel easier to recommend, but probably less enjoyable -- and certainly suffering from the hypocrisy that proselytizing the First Church of Slackerdom would entail. A truly do-nothing, expect-nothing ethos could only result in the novel we are given.

So why not? Three stars, then.

I read this novel years ago when it was first published. I was hoping it would make more sense this time around...it didn't. The characters are well developed and interesting. However the situations they find themselves in and the stories told by the pottery are far fetched and meaningless.

"I smell a nosebleed."

I'm always a sucker for smart writers doing really elaborate lowbrow kick-in-the-nuts/cheap pun type humor. And, TTG has more adjectiveized verbs than any other book I own.

The second time I flipped this thing over to make sure I wasn't reading some Nick Hornby piece of trash, I quit.

If you love philosophy and have an appreciation for the absurd you will probably enjoy this book. Tibor Fischer has written a novel that I found dependable in producing humor evidenced by my smiles and more often than not outright laughter.

The story demonstrates the sublime absurdity of a middle-aged philosopher who is running from his academic publisher and others; and while doing so finds himself in France about to join with a semi-successful thief (the thief has recently been released from prison) ultimately entering into a series of adventures. Coffin uses a first-person narration (numbered in sections, like a philosophical treatise) that is not terribly mellifluous, but becomes fun through the use of wisecracks about Epictetus and Zeno--as well as Coffin's unexplained fascination with words that begin with the letter Z. The style gets to you (at least it did for this reader). He juxtaposes intellectual metaphysics and juvenile gangster fantasy as evidenced by the line, ``The thing about a gun is, it's like being on the right side of a Socratic dialogue."

The result of the philosophical and adventurous mish-mash is a delightfully wacky book that has echoes of Tristram Shandy and other books of that sort. Read it at your own philosophical risk.½

One of my favourite opening paragraphs from any book I've read.

A madcap romp involving a highly unlikely gang who commits robberies based on the principles of various philosophers. The characters are off-center and engaging and the plot is loopy and fun.

A glorious romp of a book that I polished off in a couple of days. The subject matter - sex clubs and war zones - is well outside my comfort zone, but handled with such humour and humanity that it is not only bearable but engaging. Recommended.

An agoraphobe who pays to have the world brought to her receives a letter from a person she knew in her younger, wilder days when she wasn’t afraid of leaving the house. The only catch is that the person has been dead ten years. As she sets out to find the man—without ever leaving the house, of course—we get glimpses of her life. Great fun and insightful, Fischer has a keen eye for human eccentricities and psychology.

Fischer is at it again, with a protagonist who is at the same time very normal (he is a 40-something guy who lost his job and has seen his life peter out to failure) and hilariously non-normal. As non normal as only Fischer can make him (his solution to his problems? Flee to America and become God).

It's difficult to judge Fischer's books and build a "scale". Is this better than "The Thought Gang"? Or is it more or less the same except that you can't outdo yourself every time, so your first books are always "better" because they weren't already part of a series?

Anyway, pretty funny, as usual, and at the same time tragic and wise. I really love this author even if every time I put down one of his books, I long for "Under The Frog", which was slightly less incredible, and therefore a bit more... human?

This was one of those intriguing books that failed to intrigue me. I gave up on it after a while, because it felt like the absurdity just wasn't going to sustain my interest. Sometimes absurdity is enough, but generally I need at least one other thing to hang my interest on. Characters whose problems I care about tend to do it, but I don't recall being enticed that way.

Still, Fischer seems well regarded, so I'm fine putting the failure down to me or to the circumstances of my reading. However, I doubt that will be enough, given all there is to read, for me to give the author another try. (Not that I don't welcome some encouragement to the contrary.)

E' stata una lettura altalenante tra parti che mi hanno divertito e altre che ho trovato decisamente più pesanti.
Probabilmente (la pesantezza) è anche dovuta al fatto che non mi sono mai affezionata alla filosofia, quindi molte parti del romanzo riflettevano la mia totale ignoranza in materia.

This book sure tries hard to be clever, but only once in awhile was I amused by all the rampant wordplay and puns. The flashbacks are, at times, amusing but don't mean much to the story. The characters are as deep as Bruce Willis in Die Hard (not that there's any correlation between stories... just the first analogy that popped to mind.) As for insight, sure, there's some.

Over-hyped, but entertaining nonetheless.

Life in Hungary under the Communists was like living under the frog, in a shithole, according to Gyuri and his friends. Gyuri's foremost goals are dodging the Army and getting out of Hungary. He is class-x which is a political handicap so things are more difficult for him, but joining the Army's basketball team gave him small privileges, as well as freeing him from becoming cannon fodder. From 1944 when the Germans occupied Hungary, to October 1956 during the Revolution, we get acquainted with the rather banal life of this young man whose preoccupations were centered around his libido, but who seems to be rather less charming than his playing colleagues, failing to make a conquest every time. Between basketball practice and chasing girls, he hatches absurd childish plans of getting out of the country. Slowly, however, he begins to be confronted with reality, and he even gets an idea of how the system works, how the hated secret police operated, not through any effort or interest on his part, but of simply being in the right place at the right time. The book culminates in the heady days of the revolution, and we see Gyuri grow up at last, albeit in a painful way.

The book is meant to be funny and serious at the same time, and there are a number of laugh out loud scenes, especially concerning the antics of the basketball buddies who behaved like young men everywhere. This recipe, however, quickly becomes monotonous -- there is nothing so offputting as young men in their mid to late-20s still behaving as if they were 13. The number of words that this book drove me to consult the dictionary was staggering for the number of pages it has. It was interesting to encounter words unfamiliar to me the first few times, but this kept on until the very last line. I found this rather brattish display by the author, not unlike the story's main character, quite irritating. To have cassandraing, sesquipedalian, collops, aposiopesis appear within 4 pages of each other was too much acrobatics, in my opinion. The story starts on a high note, drops significantly for most of the narrative, then picks up again when the revolution begins. It's a feeble attempt, however, at a comic approach to the subject of growing up in a Communist East Europe. It all seems to ring a false note. The book reminded me of Joseph Sckvorecky's The Swell Season which, however, is a far worthwhile read, the author's own experience lending it authenticity and pathos.

A mad romp with a serious message, Under the Frog is the story of the education, in one way or another, of young Hungarian basketballer Gyuri in the years between the end of the Second World War and the 1956 Uprising.
One of my top five desert island books, this is funny and clever but wears its intellegence lightly. The characters are engaging and read like young men anywhere, which makes it all the more brutal when the state intrudes into their lives. Fischer handles the climate of paranoia deftly without the overwhelming seriousness that might kill the narrative, and handles love, learning and employment for the main focus characters with a skill that he has struggled to reproduce since.

A marvellous read; full of witty remarks and asides, a fast paced tale of Hungary 1944-1956 and one young man, Gyuri and his friends. This is an intelligent and well thought through novel; it made me laugh out loud and then sob. Because of the subject matter the humour is often black and involve awful situations, but Tibor Fischer writes sympathetically about Hungary and so is not offensive.½

Zeno, Zeami, Zapffe, Zalta, Zabarella, Zeller, Zermelo, Zhai, Zizek, Zaborowski, Zacuto, Zafarani, Zaremba...

English Philosophy Professor at Cambridge Eddie Coffin, an anti-hero that reminds one of the cop's cynicism in Irvine Welsh's Filth combined with the literacy of an Arsene Lupin, runs amok and flees to France, guilty of embezzlement of funds from various educational institutions, loses all his loot in an unlucky car accident and ends up broke in Montpellier. He's an uncured alcoholic and obsessed with the letter Z.

...Zhiyi, Znaniecki, Zongmi, Zubiri, Zarathustra, Zallinger, Zigliara, Zariski, Zelmanov, Zeuthen, Zimmermann...

A petty thief, a cripple raised in an orphanage who spends most of his time in prison becomes his partner in a series of spectacular and eccentric bank robberies that put the local police in a state of panic. The duo educates one another on philosophy and weaponry, on logic and escapism and become a highly effective criminal organization, nicknamed "The Thought Gang" quoting Diogenes Laertius while relieving a bank's treasury and discussing about Thales of Miletus while eyeing their next targets.

...Zizler, Zolotarev, Zuckermann, Zygalski, Zielinski, Zafra, Zaide, Zinn, Zitelmann, Zelazny, Zola, Zemlinsky

Tarantino meets Monty Pythons meets the Ionian School of Thought. Zuberb!

O livro conta a história do jovem húngaro Gyuri Fischer, dos 14 aos 25 anos. Como pano de fundo, a Hungria pós Segunda Guerra Mundial, um país pobre que se tornou comunista depois que a extinta União Soviética o libertou dos nazistas alemães. Gyuri é um rapaz como qualquer outro - cheio de amigos, fã dos esportes e ansioso pela primeira experiência sexual. Aos 20 anos, não consegue entender por que é tão difícil arrumar uma namorada, já que a população tornou-se predominantemente feminina depois da aniquilação do Segundo Exército Húngaro, em 1944. Ele leva uma vida pacata como jogador de basquete e ferroviário, procurando não pensar no aterrador cenário político e econômico em que está inserido. Mas a burocracia estatal, o paternalismo soviético, a censura, a ineficiência dos serviços públicos, o clima de terror e até os cadáveres dos soldados fazem parte de sua rotina, a ponto de tornarem-se banais.

Narrat en primera persona per un filòsof i vividor que es dedica al robatori de banks amb un company expresiadiari, que coneix per circumstàncies de la vida.
Els dos lladres, considerats com a la banda dels filòsofs, porten de bòlit a la polícia a la qual ridiculitzen constantment.
La història és surrealista, com es pot un suposar per les característiques, però entretinguda i enginyosa. La caracterització dels dos personatges principals és genial.½

Brilliant!