''Pfitz'' is a 1997 novel by Scottishphysicist and authorAndrew Crumey. It concerns an 18th-century Germanprince who dedicates his life to the construction of imaginary cities. The name Pfitz is taken from an inhabitant of one of the prince's fanciful cities, Rreinnstadt.
In 1997, the book was named a notable book of the year by '' The New York Times''. In that newspaper Andrew Miller said it, "makes for rewarding reading -- cerebral, adroit, not afraid to take chances but never allowing itself to be seduced by theory, by mere cleverness."
It was published in Germany as ''Die Geliebte des Kartographen'' ("The Cartographer's Lover") and was the subject of a prize-winning television feature by Eva Severini.
In 2013 the Scottish Book Trust selected it as one of the 50 best Scottish books of the last 50 years.
Critical analysis
Mark C. Taylor Mark Taylor may refer to:
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related the multiple "authors" in ''Pfitz'' to complexity theory. "''Pfitz'' is not just ''about'' emergent complexity but is a brilliant enactment of it. One of the strategies Crumey and his coauthors use to generate complexity is to create multiple self-reflexive loops by folding authors and readers into each other until the line separating them becomes obscure."
Stephen J. Burn sees ''Pfitz'', Tom McCarthy's ''Men in Space'' and David Mitchell's '' Number9dream'' as examples of a subgenre he terms "multiple drafts" novels, with ''Pfitz'' being "the earliest—and arguably the most representative—example of this form." Burn's term "multiple drafts" is borrowed from Daniel Dennett'smodel of consciousness. Burn writes that ''Pfitz'' shows "evident familiarity with Daniel Dennett's work" and says it "might be considered to provide the hidden internal blueprint for different levels of the novel's action."
Toon Staes sees ''Pfitz'' as a "
systems novel
Systems novel is a literary genre named by Tom LeClair in his 1987 book ''In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel'', and explored further in LeClair's 1989 book, ''The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction''.LeClair, Tom' ...
", a term coined by Tom LeClair who applied it to writers including Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and Ursula Le Guin. In Staes' usage, "systems novels feature multiple nonlinear and fragmented narrative strands that gradually fix the reader's attention on a network of relationships," with ''Pfitz'' being "an interesting test case."
Colin Manlove described ''Pfitz'' as a "' postmodernist' fantasy" with "a vision of a universal machine of wheels and cogs that churns out infinite textual universes, each of which has no 'reality' as we commonly know it."
References
{{reflist, refs=
{{cite web
, url = https://lccn.loc.gov/97015517
, title = Pfitz / Andrew Crumey
, website = catalog.loc.gov
, publisher = Library of Congress Catalog
, access-date = 2024-03-27
{{cite web , first=Andrew , last=Miller , date=1997-10-19 , title=Castles in the Air , work=The New York Times , url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/19/reviews/971019.19millert.html , accessdate=2011-01-07 {{cite web , title=Pfitz, a novel , publisher=MacMillan , url=http://us.macmillan.com/pfitz , accessdate=2011-01-07 {{cite web , title=Notable Books of the Year 1997 , date=December 7, 1997 , work=The New York Times , url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/07/reviews/notable-fiction.html , accessdate=2011-01-07