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The Teleportation Accident
HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT
357 pages, Hardcover
First published July 19, 2012
315 people are currently reading
7665 people want to read
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June 4, 2024
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012, this critically lauded tongue-in-cheek comedy stroke historical fiction stroke science fantasy etc. tale didn't really grab me as much as I thought it would. This book tells the story of a set designer and the impact of the 'Teleportation Device' play and alleged invention in Germany and then the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. 5 out of 12, Two Star read.
2013 read
2013 read
August 27, 2015
An Apologia for Lemming
Life is too short. There are too many books that will be amazing reads. They are physically on my shelf, staring at me.
This is not one of them.
I've been on Goodreads for a few years now. Seven, to be exact. In that time, I have not lemmed a book. Not a single one. Oh, I've crawled my way through some real duds. I've persevered through some that started slow and ended strong. I've appreciated some for their fabulous writing, even when I might not fully understand what's happening. And others I've liked for a rip-roaring plot, though the writing was pedestrian.
I am proud that I haven't yet lemmed a book.
Today, I swallow my pride.
Maybe it's because I've been reading some fantastic fiction and non-fiction lately. Maybe it's because I have more writing projects than ever before. Maybe it's because I know that college football season is coming up and I will watch TV again (no, I have not watched one TV show since last football season - I just don't watch much TV) and not have as much time to read. Maybe it's because I have Joyce and Proust and Nabakov waiting for me . . .
. . . but I just could not get into this book. Yes, the writing is good, even brilliant in places. But the characters - I could not even take enough interest in them to be able to differentiate one from another. Besides, their social brand of hedonism left me feeling, well, bored. Many of my Goodreads friends have written reviews praising this work, friends that I hold in high regard and whose advice I've followed with much success and joy in reading.
At this party, though, I am simply sitting in the corner, falling asleep.
It's been a long night, all 40 pages of it.
In the past, I've scoffed at reviews where someone has said in essence, "I didn't finish the book, but I'm giving it a rating anyway". I thought "How can you justify that as a 'review'? You have to have read the book to have reviewed it!" Truth is, I'll probably go on feeling that same way, most of the time.
But not this time.
I'm done with this book. I didn't finish it. And I'm rating it. 40 pages was enough. That's 40 pages I could have been reading, or writing, something much better.
Yes, for this moment, I am swallowing my pride and lemming this book.
I'm feeling pretty good about that. On to better things. Life is too short. There are too many great books out there to tolerate mediocrity. Viva excellence!
Life is too short. There are too many books that will be amazing reads. They are physically on my shelf, staring at me.
This is not one of them.
I've been on Goodreads for a few years now. Seven, to be exact. In that time, I have not lemmed a book. Not a single one. Oh, I've crawled my way through some real duds. I've persevered through some that started slow and ended strong. I've appreciated some for their fabulous writing, even when I might not fully understand what's happening. And others I've liked for a rip-roaring plot, though the writing was pedestrian.
I am proud that I haven't yet lemmed a book.
Today, I swallow my pride.
Maybe it's because I've been reading some fantastic fiction and non-fiction lately. Maybe it's because I have more writing projects than ever before. Maybe it's because I know that college football season is coming up and I will watch TV again (no, I have not watched one TV show since last football season - I just don't watch much TV) and not have as much time to read. Maybe it's because I have Joyce and Proust and Nabakov waiting for me . . .
. . . but I just could not get into this book. Yes, the writing is good, even brilliant in places. But the characters - I could not even take enough interest in them to be able to differentiate one from another. Besides, their social brand of hedonism left me feeling, well, bored. Many of my Goodreads friends have written reviews praising this work, friends that I hold in high regard and whose advice I've followed with much success and joy in reading.
At this party, though, I am simply sitting in the corner, falling asleep.
It's been a long night, all 40 pages of it.
In the past, I've scoffed at reviews where someone has said in essence, "I didn't finish the book, but I'm giving it a rating anyway". I thought "How can you justify that as a 'review'? You have to have read the book to have reviewed it!" Truth is, I'll probably go on feeling that same way, most of the time.
But not this time.
I'm done with this book. I didn't finish it. And I'm rating it. 40 pages was enough. That's 40 pages I could have been reading, or writing, something much better.
Yes, for this moment, I am swallowing my pride and lemming this book.
I'm feeling pretty good about that. On to better things. Life is too short. There are too many great books out there to tolerate mediocrity. Viva excellence!
July 25, 2012
First of all, I really want to mention that whoever wrote the blurb for this book should win an award just for that. A historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it. See? That paragraph makes The Teleportation Accident sound like the best book EVER.
It isn't quite as good as all that, and it isn't as good as Ned Beauman's brilliant debut - Boxer, Beetle - either, but it's still a pretty great read. Starting in 1930s Germany, the story takes in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles across a span of thirty years as it follows Egon Loeser, a dissatisfied young man who flits around the world because of his twin obsessions with a 17th-century set designer, Lavincini - the creator of an infamously disastrous 'teleportation device', about whom Loeser is attempting to write a play - and a beautiful girl, Adele Hitler ('no relation'). The Teleportation Accident is full of the same farcical humour, grotesque characters and surfeit of coincidences that characterised Boxer, Beetle, and again, I was reminded very strongly of Jonathan Coe's signature style, albeit coupled with a historical setting. I loved the fragmented, surreal narrative style used for the section of the story focusing on Bailey, and wished I could have read more of this. The characters didn't engage me as much as those in Beauman's debut, however, and nor did I find the book anywhere near as funny. It's possibly cleverer, though: it is indeed a story about 'how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it', and this element of the plot is handled beautifully, with the historical events one might expect to take centre stage remaining firmly in the background, and seen mainly through the filter of Loeser's selfishness.
My main quibble was - well, my first main quibble was that after the first chapter, I really hated Loeser. I hated him so much, in fact, that it took me a couple of days to even pick the book up again. My antipathy towards him lessened slightly as the story went on, but that was partly because midway through the story - round about the point he stopped reading the letter from Blumstein - I realised you weren't supposed to like him anyway (as if his name practically being 'loser' wasn't enough of a giveaway). After that revelation, my remaining main quibble was that I didn't really understand why Beauman had chosen to focus so much of the narrative on Loeser's preoccupation with Adele and his sexual frustration. Why was Loeser so obsessed with Adele? Okay, she was beautiful, but he travelled the world for years after his brief meeting with her, so surely he'd have found other women to lust after/fall in love with/obsess over? And if he was so desperate to have sex, surely it's impossible that he wouldn't have been able to find anyone whatsoever to sleep with in all those years, in all those different social circles in all those different cities?! Wouldn't he just have gone to a prostitute - since we already know that he's done this before at the start of the book, I don't see why he would have any moral objection to the idea later in life... It all seemed quite flimsy and contrived, and when the whole situation turned out , I felt a litle bit confused. I also didn't really 'get' the final chapter, I'm afraid.
I've noted previously that when you have very high expectations for a new book by an author who has impressed you in the past, it's often inevitable that it will disappoint you (even if only a little). This was one of my most-anticipated books of the year, and I have to admit that it wasn't quite the tour de force I was hoping for. The Teleportation Accident is fantastically written, entertaining and (for the most part) engaging, and the plot is incredibly well-woven together. However, the characters are universally hard to like and, although the plot fizzes with energy and ideas, there's just nothing to really care about (at points I wished the story wouldn't 'ignore history' quite so much, even though I did fully understand what the author was doing, and the significance of this).
As this review goes to press (!), The Teleportation Accident has just been longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize. It's great to see such a young and relatively 'new' author being recognised, but I just wish this had happened for Boxer, Beetle!
It isn't quite as good as all that, and it isn't as good as Ned Beauman's brilliant debut - Boxer, Beetle - either, but it's still a pretty great read. Starting in 1930s Germany, the story takes in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles across a span of thirty years as it follows Egon Loeser, a dissatisfied young man who flits around the world because of his twin obsessions with a 17th-century set designer, Lavincini - the creator of an infamously disastrous 'teleportation device', about whom Loeser is attempting to write a play - and a beautiful girl, Adele Hitler ('no relation'). The Teleportation Accident is full of the same farcical humour, grotesque characters and surfeit of coincidences that characterised Boxer, Beetle, and again, I was reminded very strongly of Jonathan Coe's signature style, albeit coupled with a historical setting. I loved the fragmented, surreal narrative style used for the section of the story focusing on Bailey, and wished I could have read more of this. The characters didn't engage me as much as those in Beauman's debut, however, and nor did I find the book anywhere near as funny. It's possibly cleverer, though: it is indeed a story about 'how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it', and this element of the plot is handled beautifully, with the historical events one might expect to take centre stage remaining firmly in the background, and seen mainly through the filter of Loeser's selfishness.
My main quibble was - well, my first main quibble was that after the first chapter, I really hated Loeser. I hated him so much, in fact, that it took me a couple of days to even pick the book up again. My antipathy towards him lessened slightly as the story went on, but that was partly because midway through the story - round about the point he stopped reading the letter from Blumstein - I realised you weren't supposed to like him anyway (as if his name practically being 'loser' wasn't enough of a giveaway). After that revelation, my remaining main quibble was that I didn't really understand why Beauman had chosen to focus so much of the narrative on Loeser's preoccupation with Adele and his sexual frustration. Why was Loeser so obsessed with Adele? Okay, she was beautiful, but he travelled the world for years after his brief meeting with her, so surely he'd have found other women to lust after/fall in love with/obsess over? And if he was so desperate to have sex, surely it's impossible that he wouldn't have been able to find anyone whatsoever to sleep with in all those years, in all those different social circles in all those different cities?! Wouldn't he just have gone to a prostitute - since we already know that he's done this before at the start of the book, I don't see why he would have any moral objection to the idea later in life... It all seemed quite flimsy and contrived, and when the whole situation turned out , I felt a litle bit confused. I also didn't really 'get' the final chapter, I'm afraid.
I've noted previously that when you have very high expectations for a new book by an author who has impressed you in the past, it's often inevitable that it will disappoint you (even if only a little). This was one of my most-anticipated books of the year, and I have to admit that it wasn't quite the tour de force I was hoping for. The Teleportation Accident is fantastically written, entertaining and (for the most part) engaging, and the plot is incredibly well-woven together. However, the characters are universally hard to like and, although the plot fizzes with energy and ideas, there's just nothing to really care about (at points I wished the story wouldn't 'ignore history' quite so much, even though I did fully understand what the author was doing, and the significance of this).
As this review goes to press (!), The Teleportation Accident has just been longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize. It's great to see such a young and relatively 'new' author being recognised, but I just wish this had happened for Boxer, Beetle!
March 7, 2016
"Accidents allude, but they don't ape."
― Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
"...the two subjects most hostile to his sense of a man's life as an essentially steady, comprehensible and Newtonian mechanical undertaking were accidents and women."
― Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
I bought it for the cover but kept reading it because its prose kicked ass and its narrator was kinda a dick.
Seriously, this novel is messy, uneven, and sometimes irritating, but mostly it is brilliant, funny, fast, seductive, original and twisted. I laughed at nearly every page. There is something to be said for an infinitely quotable novel (I kept stopping to read lines to my wife) that seems more relevant today than when it first came out in 2013. The prospect of Trump haunts me, yet I run to literature instead*. I grasp onto absurdity and fiction to escape the rise of demagogues and the non-stop hammering of current events into almost every orifice.
The novel takes place in three primary locations: 1. Berlin, 2. Paris, 3. Las Angeles. It twists forward and sometimes backwards in time and does a brilliant job of reminding the reader that love, lust, location, locomotion, literature, etc., are all fraught with both peril, or as Rilke would remind us, "beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, awed because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying."
How can you not love a writer who can jump with elan from the lap of Lucretius directly to the claws of Lovecraft? How can you not adore someone who can write, with almost a straight-fiction-face, the line -- “Loeser found it hard to believe that God was forever slapping the face of the universe, like a policeman trying to stop a drunk from falling asleep”? Reading Beauman is like watching some weird, but exceptionally nimble kid trip around in a circle building a fantastic Jenga tower. Bricks balance on bricks, metaphors cantilever over metaphors, but all you see is the sheer stress, the energy, the brilliance, the joyful risks of the weird kid dancing.
The novel seems like some weird, lusty combination of Haruki Murakami (plot), Umberto Eco (arcane details), with bits of China Miéville thrown into the spicy prose sausage. I liked it (enough to order his other novels), but I also imagine this isn't a novel that will work for everyone. Like Pynchon, you have to be in the right zone, with a particular drug-load or BAC, to full enjoy.
* Well, I DID go to a Trump rally, waved my damn signs (Overcomb demagoguery, Don't feed the fascists), got shoved by smelly, old, white men, and ran quickly back to the safety of absurdist literature.
― Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
"...the two subjects most hostile to his sense of a man's life as an essentially steady, comprehensible and Newtonian mechanical undertaking were accidents and women."
― Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
I bought it for the cover but kept reading it because its prose kicked ass and its narrator was kinda a dick.
Seriously, this novel is messy, uneven, and sometimes irritating, but mostly it is brilliant, funny, fast, seductive, original and twisted. I laughed at nearly every page. There is something to be said for an infinitely quotable novel (I kept stopping to read lines to my wife) that seems more relevant today than when it first came out in 2013. The prospect of Trump haunts me, yet I run to literature instead*. I grasp onto absurdity and fiction to escape the rise of demagogues and the non-stop hammering of current events into almost every orifice.
The novel takes place in three primary locations: 1. Berlin, 2. Paris, 3. Las Angeles. It twists forward and sometimes backwards in time and does a brilliant job of reminding the reader that love, lust, location, locomotion, literature, etc., are all fraught with both peril, or as Rilke would remind us, "beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, awed because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying."
How can you not love a writer who can jump with elan from the lap of Lucretius directly to the claws of Lovecraft? How can you not adore someone who can write, with almost a straight-fiction-face, the line -- “Loeser found it hard to believe that God was forever slapping the face of the universe, like a policeman trying to stop a drunk from falling asleep”? Reading Beauman is like watching some weird, but exceptionally nimble kid trip around in a circle building a fantastic Jenga tower. Bricks balance on bricks, metaphors cantilever over metaphors, but all you see is the sheer stress, the energy, the brilliance, the joyful risks of the weird kid dancing.
The novel seems like some weird, lusty combination of Haruki Murakami (plot), Umberto Eco (arcane details), with bits of China Miéville thrown into the spicy prose sausage. I liked it (enough to order his other novels), but I also imagine this isn't a novel that will work for everyone. Like Pynchon, you have to be in the right zone, with a particular drug-load or BAC, to full enjoy.
* Well, I DID go to a Trump rally, waved my damn signs (Overcomb demagoguery, Don't feed the fascists), got shoved by smelly, old, white men, and ran quickly back to the safety of absurdist literature.
August 2, 2014
I seldom take the trouble to actually write a review on a book (considering how many there are on this page, I doubt anyone will read this) - but this book is just so unspeakingly bad that I have to vent my anger at having been fooled into buying it. Please, should you consider buying this book: I advise you to read very, very carefully through the 1-star reviews. They are utterly revealing. I quote a few lines:
"I can't understand how this got published, nor how the writer appears to have won several prizes for fiction"
"I can think of few books more pretentious than this one. I would list them by name, but you probably haven't heard of them."
"I hated this book: its shallow yet pedantic theme, its contemptible even-to-me characters, and, worst of all, the Scooby-Doo plotting."
"I feel bad to say that I didn't like it as I have given up on this one!
Ned Beauman writes with a dictionary permanently open and pages flying, it seems! Some of his narrative is so widely stuffed that it took any smattering of joy out of the story. "
"How anyone can make a time and setting which was so hedonistic so dull is really amazing"
"Why in the world is this getting so many fawning reviews in different places?"
"I bought this book on the recommendation of a review in Entertainment Weekly. This is one of the worst books I have ever read"
"I felt like the book was written by a too-smart-for-his-own-good juvenile boy who was obsessed with sex"
"What a load of complete shite."
This pretty much sums it up. DO NOT BUY.
"I can't understand how this got published, nor how the writer appears to have won several prizes for fiction"
"I can think of few books more pretentious than this one. I would list them by name, but you probably haven't heard of them."
"I hated this book: its shallow yet pedantic theme, its contemptible even-to-me characters, and, worst of all, the Scooby-Doo plotting."
"I feel bad to say that I didn't like it as I have given up on this one!
Ned Beauman writes with a dictionary permanently open and pages flying, it seems! Some of his narrative is so widely stuffed that it took any smattering of joy out of the story. "
"How anyone can make a time and setting which was so hedonistic so dull is really amazing"
"Why in the world is this getting so many fawning reviews in different places?"
"I bought this book on the recommendation of a review in Entertainment Weekly. This is one of the worst books I have ever read"
"I felt like the book was written by a too-smart-for-his-own-good juvenile boy who was obsessed with sex"
"What a load of complete shite."
This pretty much sums it up. DO NOT BUY.
Read
November 5, 2013******THE PAPERBACK PUB DATE IS TODAY! ONLY $16 LIST PRICE!******
And worth every dime of it.
New Review! I give 4.8 happy stars of five to THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT by Ned Beauman. Bloomsbury Walker publishes the paper edition this coming Tuesday. It's a must-buy holiday self-gift!
This novel was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, and I see why. Beauman's linguistic playfulness and inventive use of tropes in ways both satirical and satisfying to trope fans is amazing when one considers his revolting youth. (He is under thirty, which I consider an affront to God. No one born after Man left the Moon for the final time to date should understand the world Beauman builds with deft and dextrous motions. Ain't natural.)
Read the review at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud, since I won't add value to a capriciously censored site as a matter of principle.
And worth every dime of it.
New Review! I give 4.8 happy stars of five to THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT by Ned Beauman. Bloomsbury Walker publishes the paper edition this coming Tuesday. It's a must-buy holiday self-gift!
This novel was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, and I see why. Beauman's linguistic playfulness and inventive use of tropes in ways both satirical and satisfying to trope fans is amazing when one considers his revolting youth. (He is under thirty, which I consider an affront to God. No one born after Man left the Moon for the final time to date should understand the world Beauman builds with deft and dextrous motions. Ain't natural.)
Read the review at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud, since I won't add value to a capriciously censored site as a matter of principle.
April 4, 2013
Always hate to say "one of my favorite books ever" in the afterglow of reading it, but ... this was one of my favorite books ever.
Deplorable characters. Breath-taking storytelling acrobatics. And probably the most laugh-out-loud moments I've ever had reading a book. Physics and magic and hard-boiled noir, Nazis and pornography, experimental theater and Lovecraft and punch-drunk sexual desire. What else could you want? Unclassifiable. Read it.
Deplorable characters. Breath-taking storytelling acrobatics. And probably the most laugh-out-loud moments I've ever had reading a book. Physics and magic and hard-boiled noir, Nazis and pornography, experimental theater and Lovecraft and punch-drunk sexual desire. What else could you want? Unclassifiable. Read it.
March 4, 2013
Pre-read: Is it shallow that I want to have babies with this cover?
***
Poor Egon Loeser.
At the beginning of Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident, he's just broken up with his girlfriend (a wild ride in the sack, even if she is rather difficult to get off), there's no good coke to be had in all of 1931 Berlin and the girl he wants to sleep with has gone off with a man he could have sworn was gay.
Oh, what's that? Nazis in Berlin? No, he doesn't read the news - it's too depressing.
After a somewhat slow beginning, where there's much lamenting the lack of cocaine in Berlin and a further lack of any good girls to take to bed, as well as a kind-of-but-not-really teleportation accident (which Loeser will end up seriously regretting before long), The Teleportation Accident really hits its stride once Egon leaves Berlin for Paris to track down Adele Hitler (no, not related) and then eventually makes his way to the States.
If he can just get Adele into his bed, he knows that things will pick up for him. The play he's working on will be finished, his life will get better in every possible way, and he'll no longer have to worry about the fact that his right bicep is [ahem] a full half inch larger than his left.
The Teleportation Accident is a spy novel, a not-really-a love story, a story of longing and desire, the tale of one man's search for that book of Parisian porn that may or may not have been stolen by customs agents, but most of all The Teleportation Accident is a highly comedic novel that probably won't work for a lot of people. There's swearing on every page, a ton of talk about sex, the possibility of a Great Old One in 17th century Paris - but it was PERFECT for me - because there's swearing on every page, a ton of talk about sex and um...the possibility of a Great Old One in 17th century Paris.
I loved it, but I'm not going to try to tell all of you that you'll love it, too. I'm definitely going to be re-reading it before too long, and it may go on my favourites shelf when that happens. For now, a solid four stars.
Oh, and even if you pick it up and hate it - at least that sexy cover will look amazing on your bookshelves, amirite?
Originally posted here.
***
Poor Egon Loeser.
At the beginning of Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident, he's just broken up with his girlfriend (a wild ride in the sack, even if she is rather difficult to get off), there's no good coke to be had in all of 1931 Berlin and the girl he wants to sleep with has gone off with a man he could have sworn was gay.
Oh, what's that? Nazis in Berlin? No, he doesn't read the news - it's too depressing.
After a somewhat slow beginning, where there's much lamenting the lack of cocaine in Berlin and a further lack of any good girls to take to bed, as well as a kind-of-but-not-really teleportation accident (which Loeser will end up seriously regretting before long), The Teleportation Accident really hits its stride once Egon leaves Berlin for Paris to track down Adele Hitler (no, not related) and then eventually makes his way to the States.
If he can just get Adele into his bed, he knows that things will pick up for him. The play he's working on will be finished, his life will get better in every possible way, and he'll no longer have to worry about the fact that his right bicep is [ahem] a full half inch larger than his left.
The Teleportation Accident is a spy novel, a not-really-a love story, a story of longing and desire, the tale of one man's search for that book of Parisian porn that may or may not have been stolen by customs agents, but most of all The Teleportation Accident is a highly comedic novel that probably won't work for a lot of people. There's swearing on every page, a ton of talk about sex, the possibility of a Great Old One in 17th century Paris - but it was PERFECT for me - because there's swearing on every page, a ton of talk about sex and um...the possibility of a Great Old One in 17th century Paris.
I loved it, but I'm not going to try to tell all of you that you'll love it, too. I'm definitely going to be re-reading it before too long, and it may go on my favourites shelf when that happens. For now, a solid four stars.
If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.
Oh, and even if you pick it up and hate it - at least that sexy cover will look amazing on your bookshelves, amirite?
Originally posted here.
March 30, 2013
Oh, this book. I had to give up on highlighting it because I was basically highlighting the whole damned thing. It is so inappropriately funny and deliciously thick with its own mythos. I love every one of the awful, wretched characters in this book, and their stubborn refusal to acknowledge the insanity of the world around them, largely of their own making. Nazis and Lovecraft and iguanas and made-up logical fallacies and Midnight at the Nursing Academy--I love it all.
March 27, 2013
What can I say about this...it goes nowhere, very slowly and leaves you there. This book reminded me of a person at a party that loves to talk about themselves and then places you in a comatose state by telling you a very long-winded and pointless story.
However, this is my opinion; it is still well written and obviously liked by others, just not me. Shame, I was looking forward to this too.
However, this is my opinion; it is still well written and obviously liked by others, just not me. Shame, I was looking forward to this too.
October 10, 2012
Woooow. Jazda bez trzymanki, as we'd say in Poland. Full speed with clear mind. Amazing turn of phrase, fabulous, incredible sense of humour, ironic distance to reality, wonderfully miserable main character. Yet - too much of a form, playing with it for the sake of the writer's, not reader's pleasure. The story's so complicated I lost the point in the middle. Not that I couldn't follow it - that was alright. Just couldn't understand why it is so necessary for me to follow it. Loved it, read it to the end, didn't like the end btw (as much as I loved the beginning - got me into grips straight away), but more for the sake of the puns and language than the plot.
January 18, 2019
‘’Why on earth would anyone voluntarily take horse tranquilliser?
Because they can’t get good coke any more?’’
This book is about this horny ass dude with a time machine that wants to get laid.
Shit is wack. Not sure if I liked it or not. Ignore the fact that it took me like a month+ to finish it. I’m a lazy whore.
Because they can’t get good coke any more?’’
This book is about this horny ass dude with a time machine that wants to get laid.
Shit is wack. Not sure if I liked it or not. Ignore the fact that it took me like a month+ to finish it. I’m a lazy whore.
November 16, 2012
Egon Loeser is an avant garde theatre set designer on a quest to recreate the perfect stage trick. A trick the great Lavacini’s called the Almost Instantaneous Transport of Persons from Place to Place or to the masses, the Teleportation Device. Aside from his obsessive quest, there are his very dull friends and over course there is the girl who he is equally obsessed with. This is a hard book to sum up in one paragraph so I think I’ll borrow the blurb on the back of the book;
A historical novel that doesn’t know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can’t remember what ‘isotope’ means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
Let’s face it; Egon Loeser is a complete obsessed prick who you are probably going to hate; you’ll most likely hate his friends as well. They are all obsessed with sex and feel like they are sex staved and spend most of them time talking about getting laid. Something most guys often do but something I’ve never really seen done to this degree in a book set in the 1930’s. I’m kind of reminded of the Picture of Dorian Gray; Lord Wotton in particular. They are extremely witty, but they are lustful, egotistical pricks.
But hating the characters is actually part of the enjoyment of this book; I wanted to rage so many times but that just added to the experience. You can’t help but feel invested in the story when you want to slap some sense into the main protagonist. I don’t know what was so special about Adele Hitler, sure she was beautiful but Loeser was really obsessed with sleeping with her.
This is not just a novel about lust and time travel; this is more a novel about the disconnection between imagination and reality. Part of the beauty with in the book is the way Ned Beauman takes you in one direction and then unexpectedly you find yourself somewhere else; reading historical fiction turns into realism, science fiction and some other genres.
This is a book you can’t really predict and this is why I didn’t focus on the plot too much. You are taken on a journey of the unexpected and I don’t want to ruin that trip for any of the people planning on reading this book. You will hate this book and you will adore this book; it will leave you with very mixed emotions but there is a certain elegance and beauty within this book that will stay with you well after you’ve finished hating the characters.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2012/...
A historical novel that doesn’t know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can’t remember what ‘isotope’ means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
Let’s face it; Egon Loeser is a complete obsessed prick who you are probably going to hate; you’ll most likely hate his friends as well. They are all obsessed with sex and feel like they are sex staved and spend most of them time talking about getting laid. Something most guys often do but something I’ve never really seen done to this degree in a book set in the 1930’s. I’m kind of reminded of the Picture of Dorian Gray; Lord Wotton in particular. They are extremely witty, but they are lustful, egotistical pricks.
But hating the characters is actually part of the enjoyment of this book; I wanted to rage so many times but that just added to the experience. You can’t help but feel invested in the story when you want to slap some sense into the main protagonist. I don’t know what was so special about Adele Hitler, sure she was beautiful but Loeser was really obsessed with sleeping with her.
This is not just a novel about lust and time travel; this is more a novel about the disconnection between imagination and reality. Part of the beauty with in the book is the way Ned Beauman takes you in one direction and then unexpectedly you find yourself somewhere else; reading historical fiction turns into realism, science fiction and some other genres.
This is a book you can’t really predict and this is why I didn’t focus on the plot too much. You are taken on a journey of the unexpected and I don’t want to ruin that trip for any of the people planning on reading this book. You will hate this book and you will adore this book; it will leave you with very mixed emotions but there is a certain elegance and beauty within this book that will stay with you well after you’ve finished hating the characters.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2012/...
February 23, 2013
I'll declare from the outset: I couldn't get more than a few pages in. Neither could my husband, who is more tolerant of difficult beginnings than I am. But I can't understand how this got published, nor how the writer appears to have won several prizes for fiction. Normally I wouldn't think it fair to review under such circumstances, but it's the prizes that tipped me over the brink.
It begins with a meandering account of a man who's building a teleportation machine, inspired by a similar machine that was built some centuries earlier. Our hero has a name that rhymes with 'Loser', which probably demonstrates how he's a SYMBOL in thin disguise. 'Symbol in thin disguise' is one of this book's problems - the writer doesn't care one iota about his characters as people, and doesn't want us to make the mistake of being curious about them as anything more than puppets for his ideas. And they're not terribly interesting ideas either - two people making daft devices, but somehow narrated in a style that lacks all warmth and humanity.
Which brings me to the writing style. You could forgive a lot (especially of a prizewinning author) if his prose was beguiling. Beauman's is unpleasantly smug, haranguing his characters for not being as clever as he is (and enjoying the fact).
But as I said, I read only the beginning. It could be that once you get past this stinker of an opening, you find a clever, rewarding book. I couldn't get there; but if you did, do tell me why it was worthwhile.
It begins with a meandering account of a man who's building a teleportation machine, inspired by a similar machine that was built some centuries earlier. Our hero has a name that rhymes with 'Loser', which probably demonstrates how he's a SYMBOL in thin disguise. 'Symbol in thin disguise' is one of this book's problems - the writer doesn't care one iota about his characters as people, and doesn't want us to make the mistake of being curious about them as anything more than puppets for his ideas. And they're not terribly interesting ideas either - two people making daft devices, but somehow narrated in a style that lacks all warmth and humanity.
Which brings me to the writing style. You could forgive a lot (especially of a prizewinning author) if his prose was beguiling. Beauman's is unpleasantly smug, haranguing his characters for not being as clever as he is (and enjoying the fact).
But as I said, I read only the beginning. It could be that once you get past this stinker of an opening, you find a clever, rewarding book. I couldn't get there; but if you did, do tell me why it was worthwhile.
December 10, 2013
This is a funny book, and not at all what I expected. One of the central characters, Loeser, willfully ignores everything happening in Berlin in the 1930s, where he is from, because there are more important issues at stake - he hasn't had sex in FAR TOO LONG.
My favorite character is Gorge, who suffers from ontological agnosia, which had some of the funniest moments in the novel. The ending is very spinny and I feel I should start again with what I know now.
My favorite character is Gorge, who suffers from ontological agnosia, which had some of the funniest moments in the novel. The ending is very spinny and I feel I should start again with what I know now.
August 24, 2017
Beauman’s second novel is pure madcap ridiculousness – very much in the vein of Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker, and more ambitious than his debut, Boxer, Beetle. Though it still doesn’t quite all hang together, it’s a pretty darn impressive attempt.
Our main character is the symbolically named “Egon Loeser”: though he’s egotistical, he’s also a loser (for instance, he’s been celibate, not by choice, for more than five years). I most enjoyed the made-up examples of pulp fiction: Stent Mutton’s novels, one of which saves Loeser from death by boredom on a train; con man Scramsfield’s slang-rich guide to seduction, Dames! And how to Lay them, and his forged last Fitzgerald novel; and the pornographic photo album Loeser loses and tries desperately to find again. My favorite preposterous incident was when Loeser and Scramsfield pretend to be doctors and glue peeled lychees (“monkey glands”) onto a mother and daughter. Excellent slapstick comedy.
Things get perhaps a bit too wacky in the last part, where examples of time-shifting are most notable: readers get a glimpse of the Venice of the distant future, inhabited only by Mordechai the iguana and a teleported serial murderer. But Beauman is deliberately playful in his approach to historical fiction; he is surely answering criticism about his audacity in approaching World War II in both his novels even though he was only 27 years old as of this second publication: “I’ve never seen the point of historical drama. Or historical fiction for that matter. I once thought about writing a novel of that kind, but then I began to wonder, what possible patience could the public have for a young man arrogant enough to believe he has anything new to say about an epoch with which his only acquaintance is flipping listlessly through history books on train journeys? So I stick to the present day. I really think it’s the present day that needs our attention.”
I’ve now read all three of Beauman’s novels (Glow released in May 2014), and this is by far his finest work.
Our main character is the symbolically named “Egon Loeser”: though he’s egotistical, he’s also a loser (for instance, he’s been celibate, not by choice, for more than five years). I most enjoyed the made-up examples of pulp fiction: Stent Mutton’s novels, one of which saves Loeser from death by boredom on a train; con man Scramsfield’s slang-rich guide to seduction, Dames! And how to Lay them, and his forged last Fitzgerald novel; and the pornographic photo album Loeser loses and tries desperately to find again. My favorite preposterous incident was when Loeser and Scramsfield pretend to be doctors and glue peeled lychees (“monkey glands”) onto a mother and daughter. Excellent slapstick comedy.
Things get perhaps a bit too wacky in the last part, where examples of time-shifting are most notable: readers get a glimpse of the Venice of the distant future, inhabited only by Mordechai the iguana and a teleported serial murderer. But Beauman is deliberately playful in his approach to historical fiction; he is surely answering criticism about his audacity in approaching World War II in both his novels even though he was only 27 years old as of this second publication: “I’ve never seen the point of historical drama. Or historical fiction for that matter. I once thought about writing a novel of that kind, but then I began to wonder, what possible patience could the public have for a young man arrogant enough to believe he has anything new to say about an epoch with which his only acquaintance is flipping listlessly through history books on train journeys? So I stick to the present day. I really think it’s the present day that needs our attention.”
I’ve now read all three of Beauman’s novels (Glow released in May 2014), and this is by far his finest work.
April 15, 2017
Ich kann nur ahnen, wie dieser Titel es auf die Long List des Man Booker Prizes gebracht hat. Das ist schon eine interessante, kunstvolle Art Sätze zu bauen; das ist bisweilen auch auf schräge Art amüsant; und nicht zuletzt steckt dann eine Menge Recherche drin (das Haus Vaterland in Berlin, die Cafés in Paris).
Aber das reicht einfach nicht. Vor allem nicht für gute 400 Seiten. Die Charaktere bleiben leere Hüllen, was sicher, zumindest teilweise, auch so beabsichtigt ist, aber so viel Zeit möchte ich mit ihnen nicht verbringen.
Nach 157 von 415 Seiten abgebrochen.
Aber das reicht einfach nicht. Vor allem nicht für gute 400 Seiten. Die Charaktere bleiben leere Hüllen, was sicher, zumindest teilweise, auch so beabsichtigt ist, aber so viel Zeit möchte ich mit ihnen nicht verbringen.
Nach 157 von 415 Seiten abgebrochen.
Read
September 14, 2022Glad I picked it back up.
It was decent. There were several mistakes and I think the ability to tell this story was a little beyond Beauman when he was writing it.
Still an A for effort but in the end it's not that it could have been better it's that it should have been better.
Where a good editor when you need him?
It was decent. There were several mistakes and I think the ability to tell this story was a little beyond Beauman when he was writing it.
Still an A for effort but in the end it's not that it could have been better it's that it should have been better.
Where a good editor when you need him?
July 23, 2014
INTRODUCTION: When the 2012 Man Booker longlist was announced, three novels from it were talked about as being sffnal and as mentioned in my post on the topic, I decided I would take a look at them when I have a chance. With the wonderful cover above, the intriguing blurb below and an opening paragraph I will quote shortly and which will surely make the planned follow up post to my original "Some Memorable First Lines" from 2009, The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman was the clear choice to start.
HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.
From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Warning: do not read The Teleportation Accident when eating or drinking as you risk choking from laughter!
"When you knock a bowl of sugar on to your host’s carpet, it is a parody of the avalanche that killed his mother and father, just as the duck’s beak that your new girlfriend’s lips form when she attempts a seductive pout is a quotation of the quacking noise your last girlfriend made during sex.
And so it starts, while the follow-up lines that introduce our hero, Egon Loeser, a stage designer in Berlin 1931, all around "loser" but like the picaresque heroes of yore, gliding through all, are as hilarious and clever as the previous ones and they are quite tame compared with what follows. After a few introductory pages, his quest to bed Adele Hitler ("no relation"), his former fat teen pupil turned "femme fatale" in the Europe of the 1930's becomes the consuming obsession of his life and we follow him from Berlin, to Paris and finally to Los Angeles.
"When the telephone rings in the night because a stranger has given a wrong extension to the operator, it is a homage to the inadvertent substitution of telegrams that terminated your adulterous cousin’s marriage, just as the resonant alcove between the counterpoised struts of your new girlfriend’s clavicle is a rebuttal to the apparent beauty of your last girlfriend’s fleshier décolletage. Or this is how it seemed to Egon Loeser, anyway, because the two subjects most hostile to his sense of a man’s life as an essentially steady, comprehensible and Newtonian-mechanical undertaking were accidents and women."
The Teleportation Accident is divided into three main parts and to top it all, it finishes with a "four endings" final part, that brings the novel full circle in a definite sense, while adding a clear sfnality to it. The Berlin, Paris and the first Los Angeles chapters are just full riot and I have not laughed as hard reading a novel in a long time.
Full of quotable lines and with characters that are one zanier than another, there is a clear hint of the darker undertones of the era but it generally follows the traditional picaresque structure, with Egon cluelessly facing various dangers or embarrassments and getting out of them mostly by the workings of chance.
From his gay best friend Achleitner, to the English would be novelist Rupert Rackenham who later turns out to be both Egon's nemesis in the ways of love, but also his savior in the ways of the world and then to the American crook in Paris Scramfield, who recruits Egon to play the part of a Russian society doctor and to Egon's literary idol, American noir writer Stent Mutton or Los Angeles magnate, the cognitively impaired Colonel Gorge, the characters are just memorable and larger than life.
And then there is the 17th century connection with genius set designer Lavicini (another obvious play on names), his patron de Gorge (no coincidence), or the sfnal connection with Troodonians, Lovecraftian creatures, secret Army projects involving a "phasmatometer" and of course the various Teleportation Devices, theater props or would be real ones...
Here is Achleitner, introducing Egon to Rupert, while later correcting his misunderstanding about Rupert's relationships with women:
‘I’d love to introduce the two of you,’ said Achleitner, nodding at the Englishman, ‘but I’m afraid on this napkin next to your telephone number I seem just to have written “London, blond, incomparable ***”.
‘As everyone knows, all those English public-school boys are Gillette blades. They cut both ways"
In the third part, The Teleportation Accident becomes considerably darker and more serious, the picaresque starts morphing into true drama and danger, serial killers and spies appear and Egon starts developing a backbone. The transition from levity to the stark reality of the era is handled very well and while the laugh-out riot becomes real suspense, the book only gains from that.
Overall, The Teleportation Accident is an extraordinary novel that is witty, funny and inventive, but also dark and serious when it counts. A top 25 novel of mine and while I still would love seeing Tan Twan Eng winning the Booker as unlikely as that probably is, I would not mind if this one wins either!
HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can't, just once in a while, get himself laid.
From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what 'isotope' means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Warning: do not read The Teleportation Accident when eating or drinking as you risk choking from laughter!
"When you knock a bowl of sugar on to your host’s carpet, it is a parody of the avalanche that killed his mother and father, just as the duck’s beak that your new girlfriend’s lips form when she attempts a seductive pout is a quotation of the quacking noise your last girlfriend made during sex.
And so it starts, while the follow-up lines that introduce our hero, Egon Loeser, a stage designer in Berlin 1931, all around "loser" but like the picaresque heroes of yore, gliding through all, are as hilarious and clever as the previous ones and they are quite tame compared with what follows. After a few introductory pages, his quest to bed Adele Hitler ("no relation"), his former fat teen pupil turned "femme fatale" in the Europe of the 1930's becomes the consuming obsession of his life and we follow him from Berlin, to Paris and finally to Los Angeles.
"When the telephone rings in the night because a stranger has given a wrong extension to the operator, it is a homage to the inadvertent substitution of telegrams that terminated your adulterous cousin’s marriage, just as the resonant alcove between the counterpoised struts of your new girlfriend’s clavicle is a rebuttal to the apparent beauty of your last girlfriend’s fleshier décolletage. Or this is how it seemed to Egon Loeser, anyway, because the two subjects most hostile to his sense of a man’s life as an essentially steady, comprehensible and Newtonian-mechanical undertaking were accidents and women."
The Teleportation Accident is divided into three main parts and to top it all, it finishes with a "four endings" final part, that brings the novel full circle in a definite sense, while adding a clear sfnality to it. The Berlin, Paris and the first Los Angeles chapters are just full riot and I have not laughed as hard reading a novel in a long time.
Full of quotable lines and with characters that are one zanier than another, there is a clear hint of the darker undertones of the era but it generally follows the traditional picaresque structure, with Egon cluelessly facing various dangers or embarrassments and getting out of them mostly by the workings of chance.
From his gay best friend Achleitner, to the English would be novelist Rupert Rackenham who later turns out to be both Egon's nemesis in the ways of love, but also his savior in the ways of the world and then to the American crook in Paris Scramfield, who recruits Egon to play the part of a Russian society doctor and to Egon's literary idol, American noir writer Stent Mutton or Los Angeles magnate, the cognitively impaired Colonel Gorge, the characters are just memorable and larger than life.
And then there is the 17th century connection with genius set designer Lavicini (another obvious play on names), his patron de Gorge (no coincidence), or the sfnal connection with Troodonians, Lovecraftian creatures, secret Army projects involving a "phasmatometer" and of course the various Teleportation Devices, theater props or would be real ones...
Here is Achleitner, introducing Egon to Rupert, while later correcting his misunderstanding about Rupert's relationships with women:
‘I’d love to introduce the two of you,’ said Achleitner, nodding at the Englishman, ‘but I’m afraid on this napkin next to your telephone number I seem just to have written “London, blond, incomparable ***”.
‘As everyone knows, all those English public-school boys are Gillette blades. They cut both ways"
In the third part, The Teleportation Accident becomes considerably darker and more serious, the picaresque starts morphing into true drama and danger, serial killers and spies appear and Egon starts developing a backbone. The transition from levity to the stark reality of the era is handled very well and while the laugh-out riot becomes real suspense, the book only gains from that.
Overall, The Teleportation Accident is an extraordinary novel that is witty, funny and inventive, but also dark and serious when it counts. A top 25 novel of mine and while I still would love seeing Tan Twan Eng winning the Booker as unlikely as that probably is, I would not mind if this one wins either!
October 4, 2012
I'm really giving this book 4+ stars because I think it's freakin' brilliant and just downright funny.
How to describe this book is a really tough undertaking. The novel literally transports the reader through space and time in cutting bursts of movement, through a dizzying slew of ideas and a wide range of topics, all with the central proposition of the Teleportation Device. It may sound a little like anarchy, but for the most part it's all really quite carefully controlled by the author's ability to take these ideas and his characters and bring them together in artfully-constructed, cleverly-crafted chapters that take on their own momentum as the book speeds toward its four (!!) separate endings. I took copious notes here and now, in reviewing them, I'm actually able to see just how truly clever this author is. I really can't say why without giving away much of the show, but trust me on this one.
Even providing a synopsis of this novel is challenging. The book opens in 1931 in Weimar Berlin, and begins by introducing its main character Egon Loeser as he's at work at the Little Allien Theater on a project called "Lavicini." He is a stage set designer, and his current work involves building a Teleportation Device for the play that will recreate the one built by the play's namesake, Adriano Lavicini, in the 17th century at a Paris theater. A terrible accident happened with Lavicini's original Teleportation Device, destroying a theater and killing several people in the aftermath, an event that Loeser becomes determined to understand. Loeser also believes that "politics is pigshit," and manages to remain staunchly apolitical despite what's going on all around him. As an example, one night he passes by a university where a book burning is going on, and he thinks its an act of performance art and joins in. Loeser fears "being at the bottom," achieving nothing and having only scorn for those who "could make peace with failure." He has a great disdain for all things American, except for a writer whose work he discovered by accident on a train to Cologne, Stent Mutton. In fact, Loeser "yearned" to be Stent Mutton's unnamed narrator -- who
"seemed to find everyone and everything in the world pretty tiresome, and although he rarely bothered to dodge the women who threw themselves at him, the only true passion to which he was ever aroused was his ferocious loathing for the rich and those deferential to the rich."
But most of all, Loeser liked the fact that Mutton's character "always, always, always knew what do. No dithering, no procrastination, no self-consciousness: just action."
Since the breakup with his girlfriend Marlene, he hasn't had sex, relying instead on his Parisian photo album called Midnight At the Nursing Academy. At a party one night, where Berthold Brecht is supposed to make an appearance, Egon sees a beautiful young woman, who turns out to be a former poetry pupil of his, Adele Hitler ("no relation"). Ultimately, and ironically, this particular Hitler will drive Egon out of Germany, as he realizes that he has to have sex with her, believing that if he could just be with her once, "then everything would be all right." She becomes his obsession, sleeping with everyone but him, but within a few years she disappears from Berlin. The rest of the novel follows Loeser as he follows Adele's trail to Paris then makes his way to Los Angeles, paralleling in a bizarre sort of way the flight from Nazi Germany by other intellectuals, whom Heinrich Mann once called "the best of Germany." In Beauman's hands, however, the émigré experience becomes anything but typical. Throughout his travels, Loeser becomes unwittingly involved with an American con artist in Paris, Communist spies, a ghost (or not) who leaves him little gifts, a rich man who made his fortune in car wax who also suffers from a bizarre condition, a truly mad scientist and other delights. Add in a few unsolved murders and a connection between HP Lovecraft and the US State Department, and you end up with a rich, funny and definitely unforgettable reading experience. And at the center of it all is the Teleportation Device, which Loeser seems to encounter in some form everywhere he goes.
Part of the beauty of this novel is that Mr. Beauman does not confine himself to any one genre, taking aim at the conventions of literary realism and historical fiction while combining elements of both with sci-fi and horror throughout the book to come out with something very different -- a book that, as reviewer Simon Hammond says in August's issue of Literary Review (one of the online periodicals I subscribe to), manages to "keep all the plates spinning, as the story dashes between years and continents with a large supporting cast." While it's easy to dislike Loeser for being so blind, unfeeling and selfish, you can't help but laugh at the stupid predicaments he finds himself in. This book is absolutely hysterical, sadly, even when it probably shouldn't be. But the real delight here is really in how the author brings it all together -- although, of course, not in any sort of conventional way. With the Teleportation Device always taking center stage, ideas, people, themes and events crop up cunningly throughout each and every shift in time and place and continue on well into the future. The downside, from the casual reader perspective, is that there are just so many literary and philosophical references, probably many I didn't get, so once again, I have to leave the deeper meanings and the book's literary pedigree to the many readers much more so inclined than myself and to the professional reviewers. But having said that, I loved this novel and highly, highly recommend it.
How to describe this book is a really tough undertaking. The novel literally transports the reader through space and time in cutting bursts of movement, through a dizzying slew of ideas and a wide range of topics, all with the central proposition of the Teleportation Device. It may sound a little like anarchy, but for the most part it's all really quite carefully controlled by the author's ability to take these ideas and his characters and bring them together in artfully-constructed, cleverly-crafted chapters that take on their own momentum as the book speeds toward its four (!!) separate endings. I took copious notes here and now, in reviewing them, I'm actually able to see just how truly clever this author is. I really can't say why without giving away much of the show, but trust me on this one.
Even providing a synopsis of this novel is challenging. The book opens in 1931 in Weimar Berlin, and begins by introducing its main character Egon Loeser as he's at work at the Little Allien Theater on a project called "Lavicini." He is a stage set designer, and his current work involves building a Teleportation Device for the play that will recreate the one built by the play's namesake, Adriano Lavicini, in the 17th century at a Paris theater. A terrible accident happened with Lavicini's original Teleportation Device, destroying a theater and killing several people in the aftermath, an event that Loeser becomes determined to understand. Loeser also believes that "politics is pigshit," and manages to remain staunchly apolitical despite what's going on all around him. As an example, one night he passes by a university where a book burning is going on, and he thinks its an act of performance art and joins in. Loeser fears "being at the bottom," achieving nothing and having only scorn for those who "could make peace with failure." He has a great disdain for all things American, except for a writer whose work he discovered by accident on a train to Cologne, Stent Mutton. In fact, Loeser "yearned" to be Stent Mutton's unnamed narrator -- who
"seemed to find everyone and everything in the world pretty tiresome, and although he rarely bothered to dodge the women who threw themselves at him, the only true passion to which he was ever aroused was his ferocious loathing for the rich and those deferential to the rich."
But most of all, Loeser liked the fact that Mutton's character "always, always, always knew what do. No dithering, no procrastination, no self-consciousness: just action."
Since the breakup with his girlfriend Marlene, he hasn't had sex, relying instead on his Parisian photo album called Midnight At the Nursing Academy. At a party one night, where Berthold Brecht is supposed to make an appearance, Egon sees a beautiful young woman, who turns out to be a former poetry pupil of his, Adele Hitler ("no relation"). Ultimately, and ironically, this particular Hitler will drive Egon out of Germany, as he realizes that he has to have sex with her, believing that if he could just be with her once, "then everything would be all right." She becomes his obsession, sleeping with everyone but him, but within a few years she disappears from Berlin. The rest of the novel follows Loeser as he follows Adele's trail to Paris then makes his way to Los Angeles, paralleling in a bizarre sort of way the flight from Nazi Germany by other intellectuals, whom Heinrich Mann once called "the best of Germany." In Beauman's hands, however, the émigré experience becomes anything but typical. Throughout his travels, Loeser becomes unwittingly involved with an American con artist in Paris, Communist spies, a ghost (or not) who leaves him little gifts, a rich man who made his fortune in car wax who also suffers from a bizarre condition, a truly mad scientist and other delights. Add in a few unsolved murders and a connection between HP Lovecraft and the US State Department, and you end up with a rich, funny and definitely unforgettable reading experience. And at the center of it all is the Teleportation Device, which Loeser seems to encounter in some form everywhere he goes.
Part of the beauty of this novel is that Mr. Beauman does not confine himself to any one genre, taking aim at the conventions of literary realism and historical fiction while combining elements of both with sci-fi and horror throughout the book to come out with something very different -- a book that, as reviewer Simon Hammond says in August's issue of Literary Review (one of the online periodicals I subscribe to), manages to "keep all the plates spinning, as the story dashes between years and continents with a large supporting cast." While it's easy to dislike Loeser for being so blind, unfeeling and selfish, you can't help but laugh at the stupid predicaments he finds himself in. This book is absolutely hysterical, sadly, even when it probably shouldn't be. But the real delight here is really in how the author brings it all together -- although, of course, not in any sort of conventional way. With the Teleportation Device always taking center stage, ideas, people, themes and events crop up cunningly throughout each and every shift in time and place and continue on well into the future. The downside, from the casual reader perspective, is that there are just so many literary and philosophical references, probably many I didn't get, so once again, I have to leave the deeper meanings and the book's literary pedigree to the many readers much more so inclined than myself and to the professional reviewers. But having said that, I loved this novel and highly, highly recommend it.
December 7, 2018
This is one of the most oddly enjoyable books I've come across, and it was not even close to what I expected.
The first thing to say is that Ned Beauman is a brilliant stylist. He's the kind of author whose metaphors and similes make many sentences worth reading all by themselves, and whose "look it up" vocabulary is never offputting.
Secondly, in Egon Loesser (and almost every name has a punnish meaning), he has managed to create an entertaining protagonist and narrator who is almost irredeemably selfish, shallow and dislikable, and yet somehow his character works.
Then there's the genre popcorn machine Bauman uses to combine historical fiction, mystery, science fiction and the theater of the absurd.
The book begins in the the early 30s in Berlin, where Loesser is a spectacularly unsuccessful stage designer who is trying to recreate his version of a historic teleportation device that will switch actors from one spot on the stage to another. In his first trial run, he dislocates the shoulders of his friend, who repays him by eventually taking up with Loesser's girfriend.
Loesser than becomes smitten by a dark haired former pupil, Adele Hitler (I know, I know) and ends up following her to Paris and then to Los Angeles, where most of the action takes place.
When he lands in southern California, he draws the attention of the one American author he likes to read, Stent Mutton (I know, I know) and his smashing wife, Dolores; finds other former Berlin compatriots have joined him there (everyone assumes that he, like most of them, is an escaping Jew, when in fact Loesser ranges from willfully ignorant to uncaring toward the plight of German Jews), and gets taken under the wing of a wealthy but increasingly deranged millionaire (named, of course, Gorge).
At nearby Cal Tech is a scientist who is doing his own research on a real teleportation device, and before we're done, there are dead bodies, a kidnapping, a surreal time warp sequence with the scientist, news clippings, a future scene involving races that succeed humans, and a postscript.
Sounds like a horrible mess, doesn't it? And yet somehow it works. I'd love to know others' reactions.
The first thing to say is that Ned Beauman is a brilliant stylist. He's the kind of author whose metaphors and similes make many sentences worth reading all by themselves, and whose "look it up" vocabulary is never offputting.
Secondly, in Egon Loesser (and almost every name has a punnish meaning), he has managed to create an entertaining protagonist and narrator who is almost irredeemably selfish, shallow and dislikable, and yet somehow his character works.
Then there's the genre popcorn machine Bauman uses to combine historical fiction, mystery, science fiction and the theater of the absurd.
The book begins in the the early 30s in Berlin, where Loesser is a spectacularly unsuccessful stage designer who is trying to recreate his version of a historic teleportation device that will switch actors from one spot on the stage to another. In his first trial run, he dislocates the shoulders of his friend, who repays him by eventually taking up with Loesser's girfriend.
Loesser than becomes smitten by a dark haired former pupil, Adele Hitler (I know, I know) and ends up following her to Paris and then to Los Angeles, where most of the action takes place.
When he lands in southern California, he draws the attention of the one American author he likes to read, Stent Mutton (I know, I know) and his smashing wife, Dolores; finds other former Berlin compatriots have joined him there (everyone assumes that he, like most of them, is an escaping Jew, when in fact Loesser ranges from willfully ignorant to uncaring toward the plight of German Jews), and gets taken under the wing of a wealthy but increasingly deranged millionaire (named, of course, Gorge).
At nearby Cal Tech is a scientist who is doing his own research on a real teleportation device, and before we're done, there are dead bodies, a kidnapping, a surreal time warp sequence with the scientist, news clippings, a future scene involving races that succeed humans, and a postscript.
Sounds like a horrible mess, doesn't it? And yet somehow it works. I'd love to know others' reactions.
April 17, 2013
OK, here's a new one. A book that after I finished it, I'm genuinely not sure if I liked it or not.
When I started, I thought "what a load of old codswallop". Pretentious, overdone story about a guy stressing about a theatrical accident a century before, while simultaneously lamenting his inability to get shagged. Been better done before, by less clumsy hands. Long, unwieldy paragraphs, separated by commas, so that whoever records the audiobook of this is going to need an oxygen cylinder on hand. An unexplained and would-be-clever device whereas the year in which the story is set seems to skip forward, while the action carries on from, supposedly, the night before.
What I normally do with such works is simply junk them. But, bizarrely, that didn't happen. I kept on reading, enjoying Beauman's dialogue and imagery, finding myself giving a wry smile at his jokes and metaphors, delighting in the sheer madness of it all.
Beauman's anti-hero, the aptly named "Loeser", travels around decadent, 1930s Caberet style Berlin, Paris and the United States, in pursuit of a girl he used to tutor, and who has now blossomed into a gorgeous nymphomaniac, the teasingly beautiful Adele Hitler (Yes, really!). Adele prefers to sleep with famous luminaries like Brecht, or even, in fact, anyone but Loeser. In fact everything the poor man tries ends in disaster. One finds oneself cringing, as he lurches from disaster to disaster, making a total idiot of himself.
Yes, such stories have all been done before, many times. There was nothing really new here. But somehow, Beauman's style and plot differed just enough from other such works to make it interesting and readable.
How does it end. Well, you'll have to make your own mind up on that. You'll see what I mean when you get there.
When I started, I thought "what a load of old codswallop". Pretentious, overdone story about a guy stressing about a theatrical accident a century before, while simultaneously lamenting his inability to get shagged. Been better done before, by less clumsy hands. Long, unwieldy paragraphs, separated by commas, so that whoever records the audiobook of this is going to need an oxygen cylinder on hand. An unexplained and would-be-clever device whereas the year in which the story is set seems to skip forward, while the action carries on from, supposedly, the night before.
What I normally do with such works is simply junk them. But, bizarrely, that didn't happen. I kept on reading, enjoying Beauman's dialogue and imagery, finding myself giving a wry smile at his jokes and metaphors, delighting in the sheer madness of it all.
Beauman's anti-hero, the aptly named "Loeser", travels around decadent, 1930s Caberet style Berlin, Paris and the United States, in pursuit of a girl he used to tutor, and who has now blossomed into a gorgeous nymphomaniac, the teasingly beautiful Adele Hitler (Yes, really!). Adele prefers to sleep with famous luminaries like Brecht, or even, in fact, anyone but Loeser. In fact everything the poor man tries ends in disaster. One finds oneself cringing, as he lurches from disaster to disaster, making a total idiot of himself.
Yes, such stories have all been done before, many times. There was nothing really new here. But somehow, Beauman's style and plot differed just enough from other such works to make it interesting and readable.
How does it end. Well, you'll have to make your own mind up on that. You'll see what I mean when you get there.
February 3, 2017
Me ha parecido genial. La mezcla, el juego, la imposibilidad, la ironía y la repetición en el cambio.
http://entremontonesdelibros.blogspot...
http://entremontonesdelibros.blogspot...
July 31, 2012
If I hadn't been treated to so many outstanding books this year, I think this might have been a five star read. As it is, there are just a couple of minor let downs in this crazy yet fantastic book, making it a four star instead.
Starting in 1931 Berlin, we meet the hilarious Egon Loeser who is a set designer of an unperformed play and who really isn't interested in politics or really in the world around him at all - unless that world is about to provide him sex or drugs, preferably both. We follow him through time as he follows his true love across the globe, we follow him as he blunders through his life and we follow him as he consistently fails to have sex. Loeser proves that life carries on even if you steadfastly refuse to engage with it and that, sometimes, it really does save your bacon if you are less than perceptive to the world around you. With language that is at times almost impenetrable and at others beautifully elegant, this is a great and complicated read. Watching the sets move around the stage to come together in the final (four) endings is simply a joy.
Oh, and the book itself is a work of art too!
Starting in 1931 Berlin, we meet the hilarious Egon Loeser who is a set designer of an unperformed play and who really isn't interested in politics or really in the world around him at all - unless that world is about to provide him sex or drugs, preferably both. We follow him through time as he follows his true love across the globe, we follow him as he blunders through his life and we follow him as he consistently fails to have sex. Loeser proves that life carries on even if you steadfastly refuse to engage with it and that, sometimes, it really does save your bacon if you are less than perceptive to the world around you. With language that is at times almost impenetrable and at others beautifully elegant, this is a great and complicated read. Watching the sets move around the stage to come together in the final (four) endings is simply a joy.
Oh, and the book itself is a work of art too!
February 19, 2021
This is one of those books that had been sitting on my shelves for a long time and which I had bought because the cover is beautiful (I judge books by their cover, sue me) and because it sounded intriguing. And it is, but it is also too pretentious and trying to be too smart for its own sake and for my taste. Advertised as a noir-ish historical novel with a sci-fi angle, I think this is also what killed the book for me; that, and the fact that I just couldn't relate to the characters on any level, even though (or maybe because) they were all caricatures. I finished it, but never have I been so bored or less invested on the last few pages than with this book. It still gets 2-2.5* for good writing, but that's about it.
February 4, 2015
Much more enjoyable than his first book "Boxer Beetle"
Beauman has a huge talent for metaphor and simile, and at times makes you howl out loud and then really messes with your mind.
Highly Recommended
Beauman has a huge talent for metaphor and simile, and at times makes you howl out loud and then really messes with your mind.
Highly Recommended
July 2, 2020
Not my kind of fiction.
English: https://elifthereader.com/books/the-t...
Türkçe: http://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/is...
English: https://elifthereader.com/books/the-t...
Türkçe: http://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/is...
December 30, 2022
The Teleportation Accident was an average book, leaning slightly to the good. But the main protagonist is a hideous pompous ass. He is so into his own brain he does not notice, surprised even, when a friend does not agree with him or his world view. Mr. Loeser is oblivious to the rise of NAZIs in his beloved Berlin. Mr. Loeser is a philosophy student that quit to create theater sets. He is one of those obnoxious philosophers that he dumped his girlfriend simply because she cross a line he had not even bothered to tell her existed. He is one of those that if I met him at University even I would want to punch him.
The book is an extended story of Mr. Loeser’s downfall caused by his complete uncaring and failure to notice what is happening around him. It is just one disaster after another as the world pokes holes in this mans view of the world. It is a glorious downfall and the only reason I managed to finish a book with such an unlikable main character.
This is a serious two star book not bad but not totally good either. The saving grace are the three short stories at the back of the book. Those stories are genius and clever and well written. Understanding the stories probably requires reading the rest of the book. But these last few pages ups my rating of the book to a solid 3 stars. In addition, this book is not cyberpunk in any way nor form even with Mr. Gibson's blessing as such.
The book is an extended story of Mr. Loeser’s downfall caused by his complete uncaring and failure to notice what is happening around him. It is just one disaster after another as the world pokes holes in this mans view of the world. It is a glorious downfall and the only reason I managed to finish a book with such an unlikable main character.
This is a serious two star book not bad but not totally good either. The saving grace are the three short stories at the back of the book. Those stories are genius and clever and well written. Understanding the stories probably requires reading the rest of the book. But these last few pages ups my rating of the book to a solid 3 stars. In addition, this book is not cyberpunk in any way nor form even with Mr. Gibson's blessing as such.
April 3, 2013
The back-cover blurb on this book says that The Teleportation Accident was "Longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize," which somehow doesn't sound as impressive as it might... I think if you scroll down far enough, I'm long-listed for the Booker prize (and I'm not even eligible!). But you shouldn't be fooled by that sort of hyperbole, anyway. You only have to read a paragraph or so to realize that this is a marvelously complex novel, sly and stylish, that revels in its own use of language in a way that would be unseemly were it not so self-assured. It does gets a little confusing towards the end, and I don't think Ned Bauman ties all his threads together quite as well as he could have, but those are small quibbles in the face of what is overall a very impressive achievement.
It begins and ends with Egon Loeser, who at the start is a designer of stage effects for experimental theatre in Weimar Republic-era Berlin. So this is an historical novel, right? Mayyy-be. There are certainly historic events occurring around Loeser, although he seems oblivious—even impervious—to them. That's because Egon Loeser's primary concern is nothing other than the love life of Egon Loeser. He's narcissistic to a point that even his fellow artists find remarkable, yet somehow he still manages to be likeable. Perhaps it's the self-loathing that counterbalances Loeser's hubris and keeps him from being an utterly irredeemable individual.
Loeser's obsession with getting laid, however generally unsuccessful, certainly leads to some well-timed decisions... he escapes from Berlin to Paris, and from there to Los Angeles, always moving for his own selfish reasons but also, always, at least one step ahead of the Nazis. He appears more clever than he is, does our Egon, and he's certainly luckier than he ought to be. Like that fellow who watched Brian's gleefully improbable rescue from the centurion in Monty Python's Life of Brian (if you've seen it, you know the scene; if not, I don't want to spoil it for you), all I could do was marvel "you lucky bastard!" at the way Loeser skates through his life evading creditors, the Nazis, Communists and other menaces.
And Loeser is only one richly-drawn character in a book that's full of them. Unlike Egon himself, Ned Bauman has a keen eye for the things that make people unique and interesting. From Adriano Lavicini, "the greatest stage designer of the seventeenth century" (p.4) and inventor of the original (and disastrous) Teleportation Device, to the enigmatic beauty Adele Hitler (no relation), to the car wax tycoon Colonel Wilbur Gorge, with his bizarre yet perfectly plausible cognitive disorder, Bauman creates people who may not exist in history but should.
In the end, I can do no better than the anonymous writer of the jacket-flap copy, who calls The Teleportation Accident
My own experience with this book was overwhelmingly positive, although there's no doubt that The Teleportation Accident is having far too much fun to be considered for serious literary awards—it lacks the required gravitas. No, strike that... I don't know the Man Booker committee's criteria. It's entirely possible that they appreciated this book as much as I did—it was on their list, after all... but in any case, and in whatever genre this novel finally falls, this is the kind of thing I'd like to see much more often.
It begins and ends with Egon Loeser, who at the start is a designer of stage effects for experimental theatre in Weimar Republic-era Berlin. So this is an historical novel, right? Mayyy-be. There are certainly historic events occurring around Loeser, although he seems oblivious—even impervious—to them. That's because Egon Loeser's primary concern is nothing other than the love life of Egon Loeser. He's narcissistic to a point that even his fellow artists find remarkable, yet somehow he still manages to be likeable. Perhaps it's the self-loathing that counterbalances Loeser's hubris and keeps him from being an utterly irredeemable individual.
When Loeser awoke he realised at once that a mistake had been made: he had been sent the wrong hangover. Somewhere in northern Rhodesia there was a bull elephant who had got drunk on fermented marula fruit, rampaged through a nearby village, and fallen asleep in a ditch, and was now pleasantly surprised to find itself greeting the day with only the mild headache that follows a couple of bottles of good red wine from the Fraunhofens' cellar.
—From the opening of Chapter 2, p.46
Loeser's obsession with getting laid, however generally unsuccessful, certainly leads to some well-timed decisions... he escapes from Berlin to Paris, and from there to Los Angeles, always moving for his own selfish reasons but also, always, at least one step ahead of the Nazis. He appears more clever than he is, does our Egon, and he's certainly luckier than he ought to be. Like that fellow who watched Brian's gleefully improbable rescue from the centurion in Monty Python's Life of Brian (if you've seen it, you know the scene; if not, I don't want to spoil it for you), all I could do was marvel "you lucky bastard!" at the way Loeser skates through his life evading creditors, the Nazis, Communists and other menaces.
And Loeser is only one richly-drawn character in a book that's full of them. Unlike Egon himself, Ned Bauman has a keen eye for the things that make people unique and interesting. From Adriano Lavicini, "the greatest stage designer of the seventeenth century" (p.4) and inventor of the original (and disastrous) Teleportation Device, to the enigmatic beauty Adele Hitler (no relation), to the car wax tycoon Colonel Wilbur Gorge, with his bizarre yet perfectly plausible cognitive disorder, Bauman creates people who may not exist in history but should.
In the end, I can do no better than the anonymous writer of the jacket-flap copy, who calls The Teleportation Accident
{...}a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can't remember what "isotope" means; a {...} (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
My own experience with this book was overwhelmingly positive, although there's no doubt that The Teleportation Accident is having far too much fun to be considered for serious literary awards—it lacks the required gravitas. No, strike that... I don't know the Man Booker committee's criteria. It's entirely possible that they appreciated this book as much as I did—it was on their list, after all... but in any case, and in whatever genre this novel finally falls, this is the kind of thing I'd like to see much more often.
dnf
July 5, 2017Originally started Feb 2017 for the YLTO Survey Challenge. Got to page 24 when I bailed.
I think this book takes the prize for the most confusing first sentence ever...
"When you knock a bowl of sugar on to our host's carpet, it is a parody of the avalanche that killed his mother and father, just as the duck's beak that your new girlfriend's lips form when she attempts a seductive pout is a quotation of the quacking noise your last girlfriend made during sex."
There's just not enough time to bother to sort that out.
I think this book takes the prize for the most confusing first sentence ever...
"When you knock a bowl of sugar on to our host's carpet, it is a parody of the avalanche that killed his mother and father, just as the duck's beak that your new girlfriend's lips form when she attempts a seductive pout is a quotation of the quacking noise your last girlfriend made during sex."
There's just not enough time to bother to sort that out.
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