The Feverhead

by Wolfgang Bauer, Malcolm Green (Translator)

Wolfgang Bauer is best known in his native Austria as a playwright and director, and as the author of a single, oft-reprinted The Feverhead, written in 1966.
The Feverhead is written in the form of letters between a couple of not-at-all-bright Austrians. Their correspondence is doomed to failure, nearly every letter crosses in the post and yet they succeed in their the search for a perfect thermometer (and a serial murderer). In fact they both independently discover the secret of the universe in a remote spot thousands of miles from their intended (and different) destinations. Bauer's comedy of errors is enacted by an unusual cast that includes microscopic schoolgirls, ambiguously sexed nuns, incompetent detectives, two ultimately bad poets, living steam engines and a venerable three-eyed sea-captain whose two bodies remain exactly 3.5 metres apart, not to ULF.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, German Literature

109 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1993

About the author

Bauer was born in Graz, Styria. His breakthrough play was Magic Afternoon in 1967, in which he portrays four youths who interrupt their lazy and boring afternoon by unmotivated outbreaks of violence and aggression (Magic Afternoon was adapted for the screen most recently by Catherine Jelski in 2000 as The Young Unknowns). After two more successes, Change (1969) and Gespenster (Ghosts, 1973), Bauer's plays became increasingly surreal and experimental. Bauer though resisted any labelling by academia and critics alike until his death. Most of his plays during 1967 and 1990 were translated into English by Martin Esslin, remembered for coining the term Theatre of the Absurd. In the late 1970's and early 1980's San Francisco's Magic Theatre performed almost each season a play of Bauer, 1993 his play Tadpoletigermosquitos at Mulligan's was premiered at New York's Ohio Theatre. In 2015, Bauer's lost first drama Der Rüssel (The Trunk) was rediscovered and premiered at the Wiener Akademietheater in 2018.

Wolfgang Bauer was a heavy smoker and drinker. After a series of cardiac operations, he died in his native Graz of heart failure.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dear Potential Reader,

This novel starts out as a blithely humorous exchange of missed letters between two idiotic Austrian pen pals but grows increasingly bizarre. The humor wore thin at times, and the extreme proliferation of exclamation points made it feel as if the book were screaming at me, but I liked the absurdity of it all. There are some truly great surreal passages toward the end.

Yours,

Ulf

[🐴 🍖]

nyrb reissue this you cowards

[Black Glove · Rating 4 out of 5]

A droll story of shenanigans told via the short letters of Frank & Heinz, two men who can only be described as quaint, quibbling, and generally off-their-rockers.
It begins quite normally, though when their letters keep crossing, confusion sets in, and the two penpals begin to make crazier and crazier one-upmanship claims as to where they are and what they're up to.
- a city inside a giant head
- a three-eyed seadog captain who has two bodies just 3.5m apart
- transvestite nuns
- microscopic schoolgirls
And the rest.
Recommended to those who enjoy tales of warped imagination and surreal tomfoolery.

[Chris Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second review: even better the second time round, with the absurdity slowly unfolding into something like mania before finally heading into outright bizarre horror. The reviews that liken it to the Third Policeman are about right - it’s very funny, but then suddenly isn’t with the humour replaced by an almost existential panic. It’s an extraordinary book

***

Extraordinary- it starts out as light and silly comedy, gets stranger and stranger and then pelts into an orbit of complete absurdity about half the way through. Surrealist novels are always tricky to read because by nature they tend to believe in the joys of spontaneity, and as such sometimes can feel wildly self indulgent and rely on the author’s eye and ear for image or dialogue. Bauer’s genius is that it feels like he is absolutely making this up as it goes along, but towards the last third of the book there’s a sense of an actual design and structure to the madness. By the time it rattles to the conclusion, the weirdness is becoming decidedly grotesque and nightmarish and we end up with an ending like a Möbius Strip. The ending is genuinely terrifying as wild comedy becomes uncomfortable and then becomes completely bleak, before shuddering into the oldest trick in the twist ending book and a final letter that subverts that and basically brings us back to the beginning. It’s wildly funny, deeply disturbing and astonishingly bizarre. I think it might just be one of my favourite books ever

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Music combos! When Captain Ox who has two bodies that must be always separated by 3.5 meters, but which are controlled by one consciousness only gets one body trapped in a room in a brothel with two prostitutes and the other body kidnapped by monks, the shit really hits the fan. This after giant, hellish thermometers appear in the sky as omens to a ski-party being hosted by a gynocidal maniac, the ocean is full of flour and poets declare, Brazil, socks of the world! Screams do not go unheard in this novel. Nor are they free from Ulf.
This novel is barely such a thing, it's more a picareseque nightmare comedy centered around two correspondents, pen pals who have never met and who can never seem to get letters to each other without them crossing in the mail and Ulf's sinister machinations getting in the way. Skiers are miniaturized, thermometers are abused, and female pilots give birth to globes on New Zealand beaches. Then there's Ulf. And Tom, the feverhead himself, who has to use his fever to melt his way out of his igloo.
I could go on and on. This thing is freakish and absurd and I love it.
Love, Ulf

[Billy Degge]

Hysterically funny and absolutely off the fucking chain, this is an unhinged descent into a cartoon world not too different from our own.

[Timothy McGregor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the only novel Bauer wrote and he is known as a playwright. This novel explains and illustrates Bauer's technique of using doubled characters -- doppelgangers --to bring the characters into greater relief. The novel is a story of a writer creating a world and that world comes back into him at the end of the novel. It is an allegory of the writing process and succeeds in that vein. If you are looking for an entertaining read I don't recommend it but as a study of the writing process it is very exciting. To see this doppelganger technique in action, read his play Change which is very exciting for the student of theater and literature.

[Nemanja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wolfgang Bauers „Der Fieberkopf“ folgt den außergewöhnlichen Abenteuern zweier Brieffreunde, die mit weiterfolgendem Briefwechsel immer wahnsinniger, verwirrender, absurder und surrealer werden. Alles beginnt damit, dass einer der Freunde entscheidet, sein kaputtes Thermometer dem anderen zu schicken, damit es repariert werden kann, und das unterwegs verloren geht; während die Tochter des anderen Burschen, die ihren Winterurlaub im Hotel eines renommierten Blaubarts verbringt, zusammen mit dem Detektiv verschwindet, der angestellt wurde um sie zu retten. Daher entschließen sich die beiden Protagonisten sich auf den Weg zu machen, das kaputte Thermomether und die wollüstige Tochter zurückzuholen, während sie, die Hilfe von anderen Thermometerherstellern und Detektiven suchend, die seltsamsten Dinge erleben, wie das Verschwinden der Häuser in der Nacht sowie die Himmelserscheinung des Thermometers; sie begegnen eine schwangere Frau, die das Flugzeug mit ihren Bauch steuert und einen Globus zur Welt bringt und ein seltsamer Mann, der in einem Iglu in Neuseeland lebt und interagieren mit den lebenden Karten von Wintersportorten und den geschrumpften Menschen darin.
All dies verflochten mit extravaganten Charakteren mit ähnlichen und verwirrenden Namen, Pseudonymen, Wortspielen und Humor und einem gewissen mysteriösen Ulf, der die Verwirrung noch verstärkt, indem er ihren Austausch abfängt was dem Leser das Gefühl gibt, in einem Fiebertraum gefangen zu sein.

Wolfgang Bauer’s “Der Fieberkopf” follows extraordinary adventures of two pen pals, that become progressively maniacal, confusing, absurd and surreal as their exchange of letters progresses. It all begins when one of the friends decides to send his broken thermometer to the other, so that it could be fixed, that gets lost along the way, all the while the daughter of the other chap who is spending her winter vacation at the hotel of a infamous Bluebeard disappears together with the detective hired to rescue her. This sets the two protagonists on their way to retrieve their broken thermometer and prodigal daughter, seeking help from fellow thermometer makers and detectives while experiencing the weirdest things like floating thermometers in the sky, location changing hotels, a pregnant woman piloting the plane with her belly and giving birth to a globe, a strange man living in an igloo in New Zealand, living maps of winter resorts with people with which you can interact.
All that intertwined with extravagant characters with similar and confusing names, pseudonyms, wordplay, humor, and a certain mysterious Ulf that adds to the confusion by intersecting their exchange providing for a reader to feel as if he stuck in a fever dream.

[HansBlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deutsche Rezension aus HansBlog.de:

Der Briefroman ist auf mehreren Ebenen irre:
- Ständig überkreuzen sich Briefe und Telegramme
- die Sprache hat etwas Besessenes, übertrieben Biederes, aufdringlich Banales, ohne je platt zu blöken oder kalauern
- die Handlung wird immer rasender, die spießigen Akteure verwickeln sich in immer seltsamere Geschichten bis ins Fantastische hinein; lauter Fieberköpfe
Und darum bin ich nach der Hälfte ausgestiegen. Wolfgang Bauer (1941 – 2005) schreibt vergnüglich einerseits, aber auch völlig verwirrend und, wenn man etwas versteht, doch implausibel. Unentwegt trifft man Protagonisten wie "Ulpian Hemmelberger, einen entfernten Verwandten Hubert Fabian Kulterers!" Ja, das zergeht auf der Zunge, aber es wirkt auf Dauer zu sehr nur noch sinnfrei. Das weitere Überkreuzen der Briefe bemerkt man im allgemeinen Chaos der Ereignisse und Charaktere gar nicht mehr.
Das Fischer-Taschenbuch zitiert am Ende eine SZ-Rezension von Benjamin Henrichs: "Man kapiert, daß man gar nichts kapieren soll". Sowas kann lustig sein, und sprachlich ist es das hier auch. Aber trotzdem auf Dauer nix für mich.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a tenuous grasp on what this book was about; the second to last letter almost explained what was going on, and then the final letter left me completely baffled again. I have no idea if I've enjoyed myself. I spent the last half of the book saying over and over, "I have no idea what's going on." So ... Take from that what you will.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is one i'd really like to read again.