Pfitz

by Andrew Crumey

"Crumey has written a fantastic novel about a fantasy. . . . Real and unreal merge, interact, and form a tale that is part quirky amusement and part sly satire." ― The Atlantic Monthly

An eighteenth-century prince, seeking his own immortality, devotes his entire wealth and the energy of his subjects to the creation of Rreinnstadt, a fantastic city that exists only on paper and in the minds of its creators. Among Rreinnstadt's fictional inhabitants is Pfitz, a count's loyal servant who mysteriously disappears on night from a tavern. Enamored of Pfitz's real-life biographer Estrella, one of the city's cartographers sets out on a quest to find Pfitz, hoping he will be rewarded by Estrella's love.

Andrew Crumey's exploration of the rich territory between reality and imagination reveals a genuine affection for the character and the terrain of the human heart.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Literature, Speculative Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Scotland

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Andrew Crumey has a PhD in theoretical physics and is former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. He won the £60,000 Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award - the UK's largest literary prize - in 2006. His novels combine history, science, philosophy and humour, and have been translated into fifteen languages. Music, in a Foreign Language won the Saltire First Book Award; Sputnik Caledonia was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; The Great Chain of Unbeing was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Award. He has also been nominated for the Arthur C Clarke Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pfitz is about virtuality and its relation to reality…
Pfitz is a mystery, romance and an absurdist comedy…

The Author says also that if his story is to resemble the world at all faithfully then he will not attempt to burrow inside the heads of his characters, and attribute to them thoughts and emotions of which he can have no knowledge. Instead, he will report their behaviour and their speech in as honest a manner as he is able. Nor will he clutter his pages with elegant description, since the world is made of things, not words, and to try and capture reality in words is as meaningless as trying to make a butterfly out of sand.

Maps are a virtual representation of the world… Stories are a virtual representation of life… Therefore, to enrich his own intellectual existence, Prince builds a virtual city consisting of meticulous city maps and imaginary biographies of its inhabitants and visitors. And city builders – cartographers and biographers – have their own lives and pursuits which they hope to realise.

There are some who believe that the world itself is no more than a great book, written up above by an unseen hand, and our lives are nothing but the gradual reading of a fate which has existed for an eternity before we are even born. And there are some who believe that our life is only one or several possible books in a great library, and we shall never know which book was that of our own life until we reach the final page.

The dreams we dream, the books we read, the films we see are the virtual part of our life and without our imagination, our world would be impossible.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable playful piece of meta-fiction that borrows ideas liberally from the likes of Borges and Calvino but still manages to create something fresh. The setting is Rreinnstadt, a utopian city which is being created in an extraordinary museum and library by a team of planners, biographers and cartographers working for "a certain Prince".

These workers are each responsible for shaping small detailed elements of the city and its history. Within this Borgesian setting, Crumey weaves an element of mystery and romance in which nothing is certain.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most enjoyable metafictional fable. It reminded me of a cross between Borges (imaginary city being created in incredible detail just via documents) and Calvino (characters aware of being the creation of a Writer)

[Berna Labourdette · Rating 4 out of 5]

La novela de Crumey que creo ha generado todas las comparaciones con Calvino y Borges, ya que nos habla de la creación de ciudades imaginarias (remitiéndonos a la famosa: "Las ciudades invisibles"). En este caso la ciudad invisible se llama Rreinnstadt, creada en un mapa por un príncipe alemán durante el siglo XVIII, en plena Ilustración y que a medida que avanza la trama, se vuelve más real, absorbiendo más recursos de las ciudades existentes en el Reino. Es una construcción que sigue como juego de espejos la idea iluminista de la época de crear una Enciclopedia, donde la enciclopedia es la ciudad y el mapa de la misma, incorporando en el papel todo lo que se supone debería tener una ciudad, siguiendo las directrices de: Memoria, Razón e Imaginación. Es una maravilla de historia y es difícil hacerle justicia, sobre todo por el humor negro y el absurdo que permea toda la novela (Pfitz , que le da nombre al libro, es un sirviente y contador de historias y aparecerá más adelante en otros libros de Crumey). 

[EmBe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lesenswerter spekulativer Roman, der sich in kein Genre richtig einordnen lässt. Lektüre liegt schon einige Zeit zurück. War nicht ohne absurden Humor, der sich aus dem Vorhaben einer Enzyklopädie als Stadt (oder umgekehrt? :-)) ergibt.

[Ferio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un magnífico ejemplo de cómo el resumen editorial que ha de servir de gancho de un libro no tiene nada que ver con su contenido real. Me da la sensación de que solo se leyeron el primer capítulo que, efectivamente, va de lo que dice el resumen, y al no seguir adelante nunca descubrieron que esa propuesta era solo la excusa para otro tipo de historia. Aunque me dicen mis pajarillos que este libro se estudia en cursos de Doctorado para explicar las construcciones de mundos, ¿seré yo el que no lo ha entendido?

Dejémoslo en tablas: es cierto que el final del libro sí puede tener un poco de eso también; de hecho me parece un final magnífico, aunque entiendo que pueda parecer engolado y pedante. A mí me recuerda al de La Planète des singes (la novela, no la película), mientras que el resto del libro me hace pensar en The Princess Bride y, a ratos, en Little, Big. Pero me parece estirar un poco el chicle intentar venderlo como algo que sólo es al 50% cuando la otra mitad es una novela negra en un entorno espaciotemporal indefinido, con bastante obsesión por la anatomía femenina y algunos efectos cómicos que rozan el patetismo. Para que nos entendamos: si fuese una película, su director sería Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Ahora que lo pienso, ya no sé si retractarme: replanteándome ese final, ya no tengo claro si el McGuffin era la parte de la construcción de mundos o quizá el resto de la historia. Alguien debería sacarme de dudas.

Es una novela corta y que se lee muy bien, ideal para estas aburridas tardes de domingo con lluvia que piden a gritos infusión, gato, mantita y libro.

[Matias P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maravilla de novela. La he devorado con ansiedad pero degustando cada página. Joyita. Me ha dejado con muchas ganas de más Crumey.

Llegué a ella porque se la compara mucho con Borges y Calvino, particularmente por un primer capítulo (que realmente sirve solo de planteamiento del libro, de marco del relato) que remite directamente a la biblioteca del primero y a las ciudades invisibles del segundo (también hay sabores de 'Si una noche de invierno un viajero...').

Esperaba encontrarme un sucedáneo bien resuelto de temas y formas literarias que me gustan mucho, y para nada estaba preparado para algo tan bien armado, tan inteligente y con tanta entidad propia.

Crumey da vueltas sobre las relaciones entre creador y creación, entre creación y realidad, entre crear y desentrañar el mundo, entre la verdad y las verdades de la existencia, entre el destino y lo accidental, y, en suma, sobre la dificultad de aprehender el mundo y la posición de uno mismo dentro de él.

Además, se indaga en lo anterior con una trama que va alimentando más y más un misterio cuasi policíaco, que juguetea con quien lee haciéndolo dirigir la atención hacia donde quiere, que hace uso del humor sabiendo que te tiene en sus manos, que te mete dentro de un juego que en el que es una delicia dejarse llevar.

Ligeramente decepcionante fue el doble cierre (es de esos libros que cuando estás leyendo adviertes lo difícil y delicado que será darles conclusión), con un primer momento en el que todas las puertas abiertas desembocan en un espacio en exceso cerrado y un segundo momento en el que se intenta devolverle el vuelo al relato después de lo anterior.

9/10

[Temucano · Rating 4 out of 5]

La obsesión de un príncipe por crear ciudades imaginarias se transforma en un juego de realidades superpuestas, personajes ficticios, romances furtivos y situaciones donde no se salva ni el creador. Se nota la mente matemática de Crumey en este alternar de dimensiones, matizada con unos cuentos delirantes y otras salidas de olla que me sacaron más de una carcajada.

Quedé con la sensación de que pudo haber sido mejor, pero hay peligro de perderse entre tanto enredo y divagueo existencialista. Claramente no es una fantasía normal, es algo más sutil, mezcla de realidad y palabras. Muy recomendable.

[Lucid_kiwi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the first chapter a lot, it seemed a nice setting for a story (designing imaginary cities fascinated me, all the details were amazing!), but then it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment - maybe it was the way it was told, maybe it was because of the characters (they felt so unreal). I was expecting more, I loved "Music in a foreign language".

[Bbrown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I sympathize with Andrew Crumey's desire to write a book in the vein of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, as they're two of my favorite writers too, but that goal sets him up for failure due to how far his ambition exceeds his talent. Even if he had the writing chops to do this type of story right, certain decisions that Crumey makes in Pfitz suggests to me that either he has a weak grasp of why the works of Borges and Calvino are so successful, or he was trying to one-up both Borges and Calvino only to fail resoundingly. Most of this review is going to come off as very negative, so I want to make clear that Pfitz isn't a bad book, and Crumey isn't a terrible writer, it's just that this work invites comparisons to masterpieces, which makes it seem that much worse.

It's impossible not to compare Pfitz to the works of Borges and Calvino given the book's very first chapter, wherein a prince spends his time designing fantastical cities. The only way this wouldn't make you think of Calvino's Invisible Cities is if you hadn't read it (which you should, it's one of Calvino's best). The prince tasks larger and larger groups of people to help design this fictional cities, drawing sketches and writing texts to flesh out his vision. This brings several works of Borges to mind, such as Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, as well as another of his short works I’ll discuss below. Is this opening chapter nearly as interesting as the other works I’ve mentioned that it evokes? Nope, and this is the strongest piece of Pfitz.

After this first chapter, the rest of the book is focused on the cartographer Schenck, his relationship with the biographer Estrella, and the fictional author Spontini. All of this is part of the prince’s work of designing Rreinnstadt, the grandest fantastical city yet, with Schenck and Estrella workers employed in this effort and Spontini a creation that is part of this fictional city. Schenck’s attempt to hunt down information on Spontini and other fictional creations reminded me of Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, though when Schenck hits a dead end he takes up a pen himself and writes stories within the fictional universe of Rreinnstadt, meaning that the story gets two or three levels of fiction deep at times. The story eventually touches upon ideas like metafiction, loving the idea of someone versus loving the actual person, and that we’re all self-invented fictional characters in some ways. These concepts are potentially interesting, but Crumey doesn’t do anything compelling with him.

Unlike the prince in Pfitz’s opening chapter, who is not a real character but merely a vehicle for the descriptions of imagined cities, Crumey actually tries to make Schenck and Estrella real characters, and wants you to care about their relationship. This is the part where I’m not sure if Crumey was misunderstanding Borges and Calvino, or trying to surpass them. Borges and Calvino were incredibly creative, wrote with absolutely masterful prose, and could effectively invoke a variety of complex emotions. Neither of them, however, wrote multifaceted characters, at least not based on their published works. Borges’s short stories, when they even contained characters, used them to explore ideas and gave them no depth beyond that. Calvino’s longer works contained characters, but you can write out a full description of any of them in a paragraph or less since none of them are at all complicated, instead they are akin to fairy tale characters that are important in terms of what they represent, not because they are realistic depictions of people.

This lack of complex characters wasn’t a weakness for Borges or Calvino, though, because realistic characters were never the focus of their stories, and in fact they would probably have detracted from the strong central concepts that make their books work so well. Is there, hypothetically, a version of these two authors that used complex characters and their relationships to enhance their stories even more, giving the ideas they contain even greater impact? Sure, hypothetically anything is possible. However, the fact remains that part of what made our imperfect versions of Borges and Calvino so successful is that they didn’t include complex characters in their stories that distracted from their incredibly inventive ideas.

In contrast, the characters of Schenck and Estrella are center stage for the large majority of Pfitz, and I can’t say whether (1) Crumey didn’t realize that his description of a socially awkward guy pining for a pretty redhead was distracting from the interesting idea of thousands of people working together to create a fictional city, or (2) Crumey thought that he could enhance that central idea through the story of Schenck and Estrella and was mistaken. Either way, it means that the first chapter of Pfitz, which best mirrors the works of Borges and Calvino by focusing most intently on the evocative idea, is the book’s strongest point, while the rest of the book puts the spotlight on flat characters and their uninteresting relationship, obscuring the part of the book about a fictional city that is Pfitz’s best hook.

You need to be a rare caliber of author to write a story on the same level as Borges or Calvino, even without trying to add even more complexity on top of it. While reading about the lengths the prince was going to so as to accurately design Rreinnstadt I was reminded of Borges’s story "On Exactitude in Science" which I’d inflated in my memory to a story multiple pages long. It’s not, it’s only a single paragraph. Give it a read. In a single paragraph Borges does more than Crumey does in over 150 pages; compared to Pfitz "On Exactitude in Science" is a diamond.

You might think that I’ve put Borges and Calvino on a pedestal that no modern author can hope to reach, but that’s not the case. Pfitz reminded me of a much worse version of The Golden Age by contemporary author Michal Ajvaz, a writer whose works can go toe-to-toe with Borges and Calvino in my opinion. It’s just that Crumey is no Ajvaz. The gap in talent between Crumey and the authors he’s aping is vast, and because the imitation is so in-your-face I don’t think it’s appropriate to judge Pfitz in a vacuum. Rather, I think you have to judge it against Invisible Cities, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and similar stories by Borges. I find Pfitz very wanting by comparison. Thus, while I’d rate Pfitz a 3/5 in a vacuum, in context I have to rate it lower. 2.5/5, rounding down for now.

[Cinabru · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deloc rau acest scriitor scotian, autorul lui Pfitz, roman (sau mai curand nuvela ?) ce m-a surprins placut. Dar nu neaparat ca replica tarzie data lui Diderot. Publicata in original in 1995, Pfitz este o poveste ce imbina elementele picaresti cu romanul politist si atmosfera distopica. Este un 1984 in cheie comica, fara tragismul sumbru si lipsa de speranta din Orwell, avand ceva din perfectiunea visata a coloniei penitenciare kafkiene. Exista reguli, exista standarde, totul se petrece – macar vizibil – asa cum trebuie, si asta este bine. Povestea, cu accente sensibile si trimiteri la Calvino si Eco in faza sa medievista, este relativ originala : candva, cu doua secole in urma (mai mult sau mai putin), un print puternic si bogat capata o noua pasiune – construirea oraselor imaginare. Paralela cu scrierea omonima a lui Calvino este valabila pana la un punct. - See more at: http://cinabru.blogspot.ro/2007/12/an...

[Albireo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr: Simply Phantastic! Challenging and unusual. Like a book written by Rene Magritte... Among my alltime top favorites
Mrs: -

[Dallas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horribly pretentious.

[Jeroen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short but interesting read. Totally different from anything else I read. I liked some of the writing better than other parts but that's what you get with a book in a book.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange, puzzling book! Crumey throws more philosophy at you than anyone else I've read, except perhaps Ada Palmer. Heraclitus and Zeno from the pre-Socratics are here, along with Derrida and Wittgenstein from the post-moderns. He riffs off the end of Goethe's Faust, and throws in some Heisenberg, Schroedinger, and set theory for luck. And no doubt much more that I missed.

Pfitz poses a number of questions, none of which are really answerable--like Schroedinger's Cat, which is both alive and dead. Who is writing your story? There's no single author; there's a committee of authors, who don't necessarily agree. The stories of the "imaginary" characters drive the stories of the "real" characters, but the stories of the "imaginary" characters are likewise imagined and written by the "real" characters. And of course, the "real" characters are fictional, so this is really the ultimate set of barbershop mirrors, where the image recedes into the infinite background. There's no single backstory, no single "truth", especially about the "imaginary" character Spontini--whose name hints at spontaneity, but who is entirely scripted by his authors. There are two versions of Spontini's single book ("Aphorisms"); they disagree with each other, and they drive different overlapping stories in the so-called "real" world. Can anyone differentiate between these truths? That's a problem for Schroedinger and his cat.

So, does this all work, or is it just a jumble of erudition? I don't know. Ask the cat.

[Poiq Wuy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libre ligero y divertido, muy posmoderno. Se acerca a [[Italo Calvino]] en algunos aspectos —el gusto por el laberinto orgánico y la ligereza, los personajes como clichés fáciles de disponer sobre el tablero que transmite una sensación agradable de casa de muñecas—, comparación que le afea porque no se acerca a la maravilla estilística que es el italiano. Pone mucho peso en el juego de intercalar niveles diegéticos, en como los mapas afectan a la realidad, la realidad a los mapas, lo narrado a quien narra, etc., pero siempre desde el juego. Hay elementos que recuerdan a [[Laurence Sterne]] —como las complicaciones narrativas difiriendo el nudo en la historia que cuenta Pfitz— o a [[Jorge Luis Borges]] —toda la reflexión metafísica-metanarrativa—. Al usar lugares comunes como contrafuertes de la trama (para personajes, giros, eventos, relaciones, ambientes), la narración avanza a gran velocidad y el autor se puede permitir centrarse en sus juegos interdiegéticos, que es lo que le interesa.

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24 04 30

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating utopian style novel about a Prince who seeks immortality by creating a perfect city. However, in the light of the reality that this perfect city was not achievable, the Prince withdraws into a dream world, continuing to bankrupt the treasury by enlisting designs to create further perfect cities, that exist only on paper and in the mind of its creators.

Rreinnstadt is the fourth city to be created and the one in which a thrilling story unfolds about the entanglement of the lives of two of the city's creators and a fictional inhabitant: "Pfitz" who disappears one night from a tavern in Rreinnstadt. In discovering what has happened to Pfitz, the reader is challenged regarding where the line between reality and fiction lies and even regarding the very existence of such a line.

[Liliana · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Crumey e un fizician fitos, care s-a convertit la roman pentru a-si lasa imaginatia sa exploreze toate posibilitatile a ceea ce de obicei numim improbabil, daca nu chiar imposibil. V-ati intors in timp cu doua secole. Ati patruns intr-un oras ai carui locuitori construiesc pe hartie pana la cele mai mici detalii un oras virtual, populat de oameni virtuali care sfarsesc prin a-i absorbi pe creatorii lor.... Un roman al probabilitatilor tratate cu suficient umor incat sa nu cadem in fandacsie."

[Thomas Gizbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I was just feeling too impatient to love this one. The Spontini stuff was just too impenetrable for me, though some of the layers were really interesting. I wanted to know more about Rreinstadt!

Interesting to see Pavic namedropped in the blurb. Overall I was reminded most highly of Michel Ajvaz, whose work I’d recommend above this one. Nevertheless I’ll keep reading Crumey to see if the others jibe better than this one.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books within books, realities bleeding into one another, which is more real and how do we judge that anyway? We've definitely been here before (*coughCalvino*) but this was a very enjoyable story with a definite plot - part love story, part murder mystery - rather than a simple philosophical work-out or show-off form breaking. Ripped through it in a couple of sittings. 3.5 if I could.

[Zara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A weirdest thing that I ever read... A literature about a literature. Art dedicated to art. An illusion that attempts to describe the phenomenon of itself.

Just let it be your next favorite book ^^

[Acy Varlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

a book within a book

nuvelă jucăușă despre un prinţ care construiește orașe detaliate pe hârtii, într-unul din ele fiind un personaj care scrie o carte pentru alt personaj pe care îl iubește și unde toţi pot fi uciși cu radiera

[Sandy Maguire · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It's an interesting read that encourages one to think about the nature of identity and narrative, and is perhaps the best-motivated reason to bring up post-modernism that I have ever read. That said, the execution falls short and I found myself not really caring.

[Cecilia Cañedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dos libros dentro de un libro sobre una ciudad y las personas que la crean; la complejidad de la existencia y su filosofía. Un libro que pareciera enrevesado, pero que es, en realidad, bastante fácil de leer.

[keith koenigsberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent multi-layered experiment in storytelling, including meta-stories, authors writing about characters writing about authors, while considering who might be writing them, etc. Fun and confusing. Points off for copycatting Calvino.

[BookAmbler · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and very different premise, which was definitely strange but also strangely compelling to keep reading.

[Will Garner · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Pierre_menard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense with ideas, though the metafictional characters are more interesting and more fleshed out that the plain-fictional characters. Very much in the shadow of Calvino.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d never heard of Andrew Crumey before but came across his book listed in the Scottish Book Trust’s list of the best Scottish fiction of the last 50 years. This type of writing took me quite by surprise – many of my recent reads from Scottish authors have been great but grim. This book has a real European feel and transports you to other lands at different levels of ‘fictionality’ – stories within stories.

I thought it was great – there were short sections that were a bit of a struggle but they didn’t detract from the whole. It’s quite short but if it was twice as long it would be half as good. From the very start I was gripped, desperate to find out the answers to the mysteries of these strange worlds. Characters were real – I cared what happened to them. And beyond the basic story there were parallels to the lives and works of so many of us. It’s great stuff!

[Ian Cann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very curious read, engrossing in a way which toys with the fourth wall between character, writer and reader like a cheeky wombat in a jauntily askew hat. The novel just about avoids collapsing under its own cleverness, and the ending comes as a slight 'oh' but the world in which the novel about a novel and the creation of the world in which that novel is set is enough to hold you until the end in a oft thought provoking manner. Not as good as the later Crumey I've read, but still worth your time.