Tomboy

Often when one describes books by comparison to other books, it is the absurd rather than the simple comparison that is most telling. While reading Thomas Meinecke's 1998 novel Tomboy, now translated into English by Daniel Bowles, I found myself reminded of A. S. Byatt's Possession. On many levels both superficial and profound the two are nothing alike. Possession is long, with a complicated, expansive, enthralling story and a variety of literary ambitions; Tomboy is short, almost claustrophobically focused on a particular milieu at a particular point in time, and has little in the way of sequential plot or obvious purpose. The number of readers who will enjoy both novels is miniscule. What they share, though, is an interest in the constrained nature of certain academic mindsets, the way in which what is studied can overshadow and define the personal. In Possession, the academics were concerned with writers, but in Tomboy, they are devotees of contemporary literary theory, the totalizing implications of which are seen to induce a kind of not-unpleasant obsessive paralysis.The protagonist, Vivian Atkinson, is a master's candidate at a university in Heidelberg, in the process of constructing a thesis on having, being, and seeming as related to gender and culture. As the breadth of the topic might suggest, she doesn't lack for angles from which to approach it, and much of the book is given over to her and her friends' description, quotation, and discussion of scholarly works and historical anecdotes that might further her analysis. But for Meinecke's characters questions about the meaning of gender, the possibility of redefining and escaping it, are not (forgive the pun) merely academic. These concerns are brought to bear on their own lives, which are marked with distinctly modern versions of collegiate eccentricity. As they listen to music, read newspapers, and otherwise hang out, everything is examined through the lens of various theories, mostly to do with gender and sexuality, but also taking in Jewish and German identity, German history, synthetic chemistry, and fashion.As far as I can ascertain, all or nearly all the scholars, musicians, and historical details mentioned in Tomboy are real, which adds to the verisimilitude of a book that feels, despite what may seem exaggerated quality, accurate to a particular brand of experience. Part of this accuracy is the absence of any plot development. Although various events of significance occur in the lives of the people around Vivian, these changes, and the passions that presumably drive them, remain offstage and opaque. Vivian herself is very much the reserved student, so busy thinking that she never seems to feel anything. Even in the course of an unusual sexual encounter she is thinking only about its symbolic significance and how it might be classified. Seen through her eyes, Tomboy is little more than a catalog of mundane (but striking) occurrences and quietly thoughtful reactions to them.For many readers this book would be a pointless or unpleasant experience. Those so averse to modern literary/political/philosophical theory that even descriptions of it make them itch should certainly not bother. Those looking for a satire on those ideas will also come away disappointed; if there is satire here, it's so deadpan as to obviate itself, though the book could probably sustain a theory-averse reading if you wanted to provide. It can hardly be described as a treatise in novel form, as there isn't really a coherent use of any of the ideas invoked here; they come to the reader as they do to Vivian, fascinating or risible but always without focus. Although they have colorful histories, the characters lack much in the way of personality; or, it might be better to say, their doctrinal concerns ~are~ their personalities. The language-- longish paragraphs separated by white space; sentences that are descriptively simple yet digressive and often grammatically elaborate-- has an oddly compelling quality that compensates for the lack of momentum, but there is no evocation of atmosphere, no sense of telling detail, nothing that would constitute good writing in the familiar senses of the word.And yet I enjoyed it. It hangs together better than it has any right to, the wealth of factually-accurate detail so atypical of the novel form has a pleasing paradoxical absurdity, and the juxtaposition of outre theory with the ordinary activities of students captures something about the simultaneously rich and sterile quality of academic life. Blandness, of prose style and of plot, itself becomes a mimetic literary tactic. This is a fraught approach, and even the colorful facts with which Meinecke alleviates it can only help so much. Those considering Tomboy would be well advised to use Amazon's preview feature to read the opening pages. That's what the entire novel is like, and it's easy enough to dismiss. But readers interested in unusual narrative structures, or the vagaries of the university, should give the novel some consideration; at the very least, they're likely to find it a diverting curiosity.

The central character in Thomas Meinecke's Tomboy is Vivian Atkinson, a twenty-four-year-old student in Germany who is writing her master's thesis on gender studies. She is somewhat of a tomboy, in contrast to the sissiness of Hans/Hansi Mühlenkamm, a self avowed feminist, or Angela/Angelo Guida, the consort of PhD candidate Frauke St'ver, who is writing her thesis on the foreskin of Jesus Christ. For the fence sitters, there is Korinna Kohn, a Tennis Player, whose drug dealer husband gets carted off to prison leaving her pregnant. Vivian is an Army Brat whose father was stationed in Germany, and who has to some extent gone native. She is very absorbed in her thesis, and each time her research uncovers another piece of the puzzle she can barely wait to pound it into the liquid crystal of her Texas Instrument. Meinecke almost seems to be parodying the students, all but winking at the reader and implying that all of their high fallutin' theories may be nothing more than a tempest in a teapot, but perhaps the titular Tomboy is on to something.Meinecke weaves quite a tapestry of words, as he quotes freely from Vivian's research material, almost like a DJ sampling music in a megamix medley of hits from Monique Wittig, Judith Butler, Thomas Mann, Willa Cather, Otto Weininger, the Feminist Epistemology of Jacques Lacan, the S.C.U.M. Manifesto of Valerie Solanas, Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, and the rantings of Richard Wagner. To power her studies tomboy Vivian likes to pound her Texas Instrument to the beat of Sleater-Kinney and Cat Power, although Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen and Lola versus Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, Part One by The Kinks, also merit a mention.Though the impressive vocabulary of Thomas Meinecke would have provided an excellent opportunity to increase my word power, I chose to just power through without looking up every unfamiliar word in the dictionary, just enjoying the German words and country side. News reports would filter through, giving the novel a feel of a certain time and place. Versace and Lady Diana were two events that pinned the story into a particular time like a butterfly in a specimen box. Along with the tour of gender studies you also got one of the Army Base, Plastic Companies, and Rock Quarries of Germany, and insight into just how West Germany managed to recover so quickly after the war by focusing on innovations in plastic manufacturing.Still, though "real life" of the students was vividly described, you got the feeling that they were so absorbed by the academic world and their studies that they were only faintly aware of their surroundings. I myself found their earnest pondering kind of cute, but couldn't fully engage myself in their theoretical exercises either. I was reminded of the old joke about the Philosophers going on strike, and how that brought the kingdom to a standstill (NOT!) but then perhaps the author made that joke explicit rather than implicit at some point, he said vaguely, so as not to spoil the ending.The Bottom Line is that I enjoyed this novel once I gave up trying to follow the theoretical arguments, and even the narrative, and just enjoyed the ride. On the autobahn, there is no speed limit! Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology (Transformations) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction  by Michel Foucault and Robert Hurley Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)  by Judith Butler Across the Acheron  by Monique Wittig Sexes and Geneologies: Sexes and Genealogies  by Luce Irigaray and Gillian C. Gill Sex and Character  by Otto Weininger Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex  by Sigmund Freud Triumph of the Will & Olympia - 2 DVD Special Embossed Tin!  by Leni Riefenstahl I Shot Andy Warhol Paris Is Burning  Starring Carmen and Brooke, Avis Pendavis, Pepper LaBeija, Octavia Extravaganza, et al.

Tomboy is a self-indulgent, smug exercise in faux-intellectual writing that is all method and no content. Meinecke claims to be "sampling words and texts the way a disc jockey samples music", but that has no value unless it creates something worthwhile. Sadly, in Tomboy style is an end in itself. And it's not done very well.Considering Meinecke's high intellectual purpose, his style is crude and unsophisticated. The only weapon in his writing armoury is the subordinate clause, in which nearly every sentence, insofar as he writes sentences, contains, rather like the sentence you are reading now, several diversions commenting on the content of the sentence - ideally with brief, unclear cultural or intellectual references - such that, by the end of the sentence, if you ever get to the end, and by this point you're probably wondering whether you should bother, you realise that the writer hasn't moved forward but instead, rather like a freshman trying too hard to impress his tutor with his first essay - and who hasn't done that? - simply gone round in circles.At times Tomboy reads like a parody of 60s and 70s books that wore their intellectual references on their sleeves, or of cheap pulp fiction where inept writers tried to give readers essential information in asides and afterthoughts. Dan Brown does this in The Da Vinci Code, where Langdon drives around Paris thinking to himself about what the landmarks are and how they are relevant to the story.If you want intellectual references,  Umberto Eco  does it better. If you want literary sampling, "spinning seemingly disparate tunes into a single, glowing melody" (as the blurb says), try  David Peace . Umberto EcoDavid Peace

OK only about 50 pages into the book and have to say I'm really enjoying it. But I might be an unusual reader because I've done a Masters in cultural studies and can recognize the way the characters are thinking. And the way the author is writing and the way the translator is translating. It's all very playful as well as maybe profound. There are word-games (excellent translation here) and narrative games going on. Many passages make me smile.I don't know about the mash-up style of the writing, if it's anything to do with the author being a DJ at all. As a literary style it goes back a long way at least to James Joyce (1882-1941)I have no idea where the story's going or even if there is a "story". But I'm enjoying the journey. Obviously not targeted at the general reader, as is clear from other reviewers' comments.But if you think you know your Foucault and your Butler give it a go.[PAUSE]OK now finished it. My initial impression (above) still stands. There's a twist at the end that might make you want you to go back and see if you should have spotted it coming. I couldn't be bothered, but just put the book down with a smile on my face. It was enough. And the twist was probably a misdirection, a red herring, a way to end the book. Will mainly appeal to readers who already know the philosophical stuff the characters are reading and struggling with - questions and theories of Identity and how to live one's life and be oneself. The questions, of course, are never answered. But it's sort of fun following these earnest protagonists.But I agree totally with anyone who finds Tomboy obscure and pretentious. It is. But I enjoyed it.

No less than half a dozen times, I have tried to start reading this book. Each time, I have failed miserably.I'm used to reading both philosophy and alternative literature. I've read German in the native, and translations, and have done the same for a number of other languages. I found the premise of Tomboy intriguing, hence giving it 2 stars and not 1. Buried underneath some of the most insanely convoluted clauses you are ever likely to see in a book written by somebody sober, there is possibly a plot. But this isn't gripping writing, and having to re-read sentences over and over again in a vain attempt to see where something is heading is not my idea of literary joy. There is no way I could strain myself for long enough to get through this. Foucalt? No problem. Meinecke? Well I might buy it in the German and see if it's all down to the delivery of the translation.But somehow, I doubt it.

'Tomboy' is a translation of a german novel from 1998 and is more of a post-modern work of art than an actual novel. There are lots of words on the page, seemingly arranged in sentences and paragraphs, but after reading a few pages you realise that the author's intention of looking at gender and sex is overwhelmed by an increasingly distracting verbiage. Meinecke is also in a band and works as a DJ and, as the blurb informs us, he uses the DJ technique of mixing in his literary works. It might work for music but, for me, it doesn't work for words (at least not here). One of the more well known proponents of mixing / cutting up words is  William S. Burroughs , but, at least, with Burroughs his writing is still entertaining and has its own coherency.Overall unless you are extremely keen on post-modern texts I would give this novel a miss. William S. Burroughs

I have not managed to finish this book as I am not sufficiently educated, nor interested enough, in gender matters to research the field in order to understand what the heck the author is on about. Since I like to think that I have a wide awareness in many fields, just from general interest, it is difficult to imagine anyone but a student of gender - probably lesbian or bisexual - who would have the knowledge and motivation to get into this book.Although my initial reaction was to blame myself for my ignorance in this field, in retrospect I really feel that the author is aiming at a very narrow potential readership.