Hermes 3000

by William Kotzwinkle

Stated first edition bound in red cloth with black design to the front board and gold spine lettering. A Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Dust jacket art by Joe Servello.

Genres: Novels, Fiction

180 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

William Kotzwinkle is a two-time recipient of the National Magazine Award for Fiction, a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Prix Litteraire des Bouquinistes des Quais de Paris, the PETA Award for Children's Books, and a Book Critics Circle award nominee. His work has been translated into dozens of languages.

Reviews

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hermes 3000 is the first novel by the unjustly unknown William Kotzwinkle (he's perhaps more familiar to children than adults). The book is formed of seven stories told simultaneously, a segment of each told in turn in each of 12 chapters like a Golden Age Hollywood serial. The seven stories are of different times, different places. The lives and deaths of the staff and denizens of the Golden Cafeteria in New York City, including a Chinese cook who was once a Tang Dynasty king. Julius Raker, a retired businessman who now wanders the Metropolitan Museum of Art inhabiting the paintings and sculptures. Lord George Beaverboard who, as WWII approaches, hires an "ornamental hermit" who excavates a subterranean mansion beneath his English estate. Associate Professor Alexander Montrose teaching Tibetan bliss even as he seeks connection with anyone, perhaps a coed. The widower Reverend Demple Cupplewaite who wants no new relationship, but sinks almost comfortably into his own life. Elderly Herman Jorgen who painfully drags alone a wagon full of horse feed on the rural lanes of England as he goes insane. Private Sergei Razamov ordered by Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, to guard a small white blossom in a distant field. All "the myriad Buddha-lands are interpenetrating" as Han Shan said, but there are minimal direct connections between the stories, with just two pair bumping into each other. Kotzwinkle already had his mature style in Hermes 3000: whimsical, mystical, lusty, fabulist. People trapped in their bodies and freed from their bodies. Always intriguing and vaguely humorous with flashes of brilliance. A product of the Sixties, sex (but no drugs or rock'n'roll), frayed remnants of the Beats, and just the slightest whiff of Vonnegut. This was an enterprising beginning to a career that continues to the present. A lost key to the doorway of an exotic world, a forgotten paradigm of possible alternate visions. The Hermes 3000 is in fact a portable typewriter first introduced in June 1958 that maintains a cult following even today. My guess is that this book was typed on a magical one. [4★]

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read, I really enjoy his writing style.

[Suzanne LaPierre]

I will confess that I bought this book because I'm a typewriter geek who has a Hermes 3000 typewriter that was made in 1972, the same year this book was first published. I assume the author wrote the book using a Hermes 3000, although the dust jacket description implies that it has something to do with Hermes being the Greek god of travel. Indeed, the book tells the tales of seven people from different times and places, so the reader does mind-travel between different worlds and worldviews. (I still think it was named after a typewriter.)

Anyway, having bought the book for its typewriter connection and cool 70's cover design, I was pleasantly surprised by its stellar literary quality. As a librarian and avid reader, I can be a bit of snob for good prose, and this author has an undeniable talent for wordsmithing. He also has a gift for crafting eccentric characters such as Beaverbeard, the aristocrat who hires an ornamental hermit for his acreage; Cupplewhite, the widowed pastor pursued by a cake-baking congregant; and Gladys the mean-spirited (and ill-fated) cafeteria gossip.

I love an offbeat story told well, and this definitely checks those boxes. If Holden from Catcher in the Rye had grown up to become an author, he might have written something like this. How had I not heard of this author? I will be checking out more of his books.

Edit - OK, I wrote that review after I read the first 3/4 of the book. Then the book went missing for several months (it had slipped between the bed and the wall)! Upon finding it again, I read the last 1/4- but I didn't like it as much. It's hard to say whether the end of the book wasn't as good, or I just wasn't in the mood for it anymore. Probably the later. I find that certain books have to find you at the right time in your life for you to be able to appreciate them. The last 1/4 of the book left me feeling it was just weird more than anything else - but if weird is your jam, go for it!

(Full disclosure, there are scenes in this book some people may find offensive due to adult situations or disturbing due to stereotypes.)