Kramberger with Monkey

A rollicking satirical, experimental novel about assassination, serialized in the online publication The Collidescope, featuring taboo-trouncing, grimly ravenous characters, a melange of lyrical and journalistic styles. Superbly literary, lasciviously hilarious, Rabelaisian, and a gravitas-inducing addition to Rick Harsch's vastly underappreciated body of work. Read all of his novels.

Voice and wit unmatched in recent 'American' fiction, solid research in service of belligerent political lampoons, endearing and terrifying characters, a surprise or twenty on every page - these are what I have come to expect from this author.

The Warlock of Istria is back to weirden the desert of the real. This book is a killer drone coming to drop a laser-guided barrel of laffs on your village wedding. It's a lone gunman with his scope askew, about to place a neat hole between the eyes of the world you think you know. It's your friendly neighbourhood demagogue, monkey-rabies coursing through his veins, delivering the populist stump speech that's gonna ignite the next Balkan war/party (turn to p. 111 and find out which!).

It's a romp, a romp I say, a sicarial bagatelle. You think you know Ivan Kramberger? You don't know Ivan Kramberger. (You don't think you know Ivan Kramberger? Well ... fine, okay.) Grasp the hand of conspiracist ingenue Todd Fullmer, take the Kramberger show more pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Just don't end up 'ssassinated, or, worse, in Minsk. show less

79. Kramberger with Monkey by Rick Harsch
date unknown, maybe 100 pages?
read Nov 18 to Dec 10

Rick is an LT personality who I know well enough, in our virtual world, to make it about impossible to properly review his book. [Kramberger with Monkey] was published in Slovenia, in Slovenian, but was never published in English until Rick begin posting it on his blog in October - here.

Ivan Kramberger, an inventor with a self-made rags to riches story, ran for president of Slovenia in 1990 without any prior political experience. He got about 18% of the vote. He was shot and killed on June 7, 1992, although no one really knows by who or why. He also had a pet monkey. I'm pretty sure this is true. There is a wikipedia page dedicated to him, show more although it does not mention his monkey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kramberger ).

As for the book, it’s a wild ride of a farce that is not a farce, actually there is a true story behind it of a maybe pointless assassination in 1992 of what may or may not have been a nice, interesting guy, who was also something of special creator. Anyway, he’s dead so who cares.

It’s maybe this attitude of “who cares?” combined with a much more honest and yet unspoken sense that we all do really care, but in ways that are very hard to express that kind of drives this book and its elusive suite of narrators. At few points in the book does the reader get the sense of an actual narration, much less a narrator. It’s like he’s running away from us, hiding even as he speaks to us. We look and there is something of a story that comes out, but voice has moved along and we are not quite sure where it came from. It’s hard to explain. And just then, just as it all begins to come together for the reader - the monkeys revolt and take over the text and the reader…well this one anyway, takes a confused while to figure this out.

This was fun and there is a clear sense that our author had fun writing. The writing struggle isn’t apparent, it’s playful and fully managed throughout it’s wild ride. And it’s a quick read for those interested — well, unless you try to make sense of the monkey parts.

2015
https://www.librarything.com/topic/197329#5386528 show less