The Quest for Dr. U: Or a Solitary Mirror in Which the Day Reflects

Artmann, born in 1921, is one of the most remarkable experimental writers of his generation. An Austrian, in the 1950s he was the founder of The Vienna Group with Rühm, Bayer, Wiener and Achleitner. The group’s black romanticism allied with a linguistic scepticism partly derived from Wittgenstein had a great influence on German letters. The Quest for Dr. U is like all Artmann’s works: protean, spanning and subverting all genres (detective fiction, romantic novels, heroic poetry, dada related experiment). Its hero pursues the ghastly Dr. Unspeakable, an ultimate villain, across continents, through situations alternately bizarre and commonplace, always enmeshed in ways of writing text. Dr. U remains a mystery, perhaps he is "not I": a wonderful modernist novel, humorous and entertaining to boot.