An immediate entry into my top ten!
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Definately a contender for best fiction I've read. This is two books in one: one is by the Tomcat Murr and the other is by his master. The intelligent cat writes on his master's papers so we have both stories interrupting each other! The cat's story is amusing and simple - in many ways it is a coming of age parody. The other story - the master's - is an excellent one and my advise is to be careful when reading it. The master's story does takes a while to pick up but by the end when everything comes together you realise that you should have paid more attention rather than skim reading it to get back to the cat's recollections! The fact that the stories interrupt each other is another reason why this book is hard to put down. I certainly was unable to! This is a massively original book that is very well written. I am astonished that it is not well known and that it took me this long to come across it. Enjoy!
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Very enjoyable, but a bit odd
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The final book of Hoffmann's life is also one of the strangest of the nineteenth century. 'Tomcat Murr' is the autobiography of a self-educated cat, charting his growth and education as he tries to find his place in the world. We are told that Murr wrote his story on waste paper on which the story of a man, Johannes Kreisler, had been written, and that the printers to which Murr's story was sent had become confused and printed both stories. Consequently, 'Tomcat Murr' is actually two stories - those of Murr and Kreisler - told in large interspersed segments. There is no real overlap between the stories, although Murr and his owner appear in both. They are, nevertheless, both very enjoyable.
Murr's story focuses on his attempts to educate himself, both academically and socially. He attempts to master poetry and foreign languages, as well as social interactions and the pursuit of the opposite sex. All of his refinements are coloured by the fact that he is still, at heart, a cat, and Hoffmann derives a lot of humour from Murr's struggles against his own animal nature. Murr's attempt to save his mother from starvation by bringing her a fish head, for example, is ruined because halfway in his journey to her, he eats it himself. Murr's justification is that he is a cat, and he was hungry. Murr's story therefore addresses issues such as the effects of nature and nurture, and the breaking of social boundaries.
The other story follows Johannes Kreisler, a musician and artist who joins the court of Prince Iraneus. Kreisler is the epitome of the artistic soul, finding beauty in art and ignoring the niceties of court life. He is something of an eccentric, evidenced by his friendship with the mystical Master Abraham and his unorthodox involvement with the ladies of the court. Kreisler's story finds him central to court intrigues, but the fragmentary nature of the manuscript means we never really get to the bottom of what is going on. Hoffmann is playing with his readers throughout Kreisler's story, building up scenarios before abruptly cutting back to Murr, and leaving intriguing gaps in Kreisler's story that are never filled.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading 'Tomcat Murr', but I must confess that the reason for Hoffmann's juxtaposition of the two stories left me bemused. I couldn't really see the point in the book's unusual structure, but in a strange way, it seems to work. Despite not really having a clue what Hoffmann was trying to achieve, I found 'Tomcat Murr' to be a surprisingly enjoyable and easy read. It was very unusual and very odd, and well worth a look for all these reasons.
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