Where has this book been all my life? Gombrowicz might be a 20th century version of Swift. It's all fart jokes and nose-picking until you realize it's actually one of the smartest books you've ever read. But be warned: if you come looking only for the fart jokes and nose-picking, you could easily be disappointed. Many reviewers, perhaps misled by Susan Sontag's introduction, and Gombrowicz's own much later statements, suggest that this is a book in praise of immaturity and damnation of adults. Certainly adults are damned, but not because they're mature. Also, like Swift, what could look like anal expulsiveness is nothing of the sort.

Taking the expulsiveness issue first, Ferdydurke is almost overly structured. The narrator wanders around, yes, but his wanderings have very distinct waypoints: first, a fight between schoolboys, over whether schoolboys should be noble or, well, expulsive; second, a fight between parents, their daughter, and two men who lust after said daughter; third, a fight between the narrator's 'aristocratic' family members, one of their peasants, and the narrator's friend. Our man leaves all of these fights still in progress, and we're given to believe they remain in progress till the end of time. There are also two short stories inserted into the novel, involving fights between professors, on the one hand, and the high bourgeoisie, on the other. You get the point.

As for the immaturity point: you could certainly read the novel as an attack on maturity, if you were so inclined, but the self-consciously immature come off just as badly, as do those who are infantilized, and those who do the infantilizing. No doubt Gombrowicz would have been horrified to hear me put it in these terms, but what we have here is basically a dialectical book. The stupidities of the mature/noble/aristocratic cause stupidity of an immature/base/slumming kind. The more someone insists, falsely, that so and so *is* mature/noble/aristocratic, the more people react and insist that they are immature or base or try to sleep with farmhands.

And the cycle continues, as the stupidities of the immature cause others to set themselves up as mature or noble, and then everyone fights, and the fight does not end.

And the genius of this book is how much of humanity it describes, just in those terms. It concludes with our narrator 'giving in' to a dream and kissing a woman he's just 'abducted'--dream or ideal vs reality being another of these dialectical situations.

The genius of this book, also, is that it does all that in the form of fart jokes. Only really funny books should be taken seriously. ( )

I'd been told to read this for so many years that when I did I kind of looked up and said 'huh?' ( )

The first book I read by Gombrowicz was Pornografia and, though I enjoyed it, Ferdydurke surpasses it by far! If I could give this book a higher rating than five stars I would. The seamless manipulation of perspectives and non sequitur of plot had me floored every time I came across them. His complete disregard for narrative conventions and his novel ways of tripping the reader all while not coming off as fluffed up by cliche modernist flourish found in far too many experimental/unconventional writers was really a pleasure. Highly recomended! ( )

I wondered a bit about where to start with comments about this one, but it's the sort of thing you just have to dive right into. The plot defies description - the narrator, a man of 30, is dragged back to middle school and treated as if he is a child. Everyone refuses to listen to his protests that he's actually an adult, and pat him on the head and infantilize him at every turn.

Immaturity, new vs. old, conformity and indoctrination into what is considered "good art" are a few of the topics and themes that Gombrowicz tackles throughout the novel. I liked the book in the beginning, and then the style started to wear thin for me in the middle. It picked back up toward the end, though, and I was definitely glad I read it. It's good to get a mental workout from a book where the style is at least as importance as the substance, and I also found it quite quotable.

Recommended for: fans of Tristram Shandy.

Quote: "Is this why an author tries to show his skill in the way he constructs his work, so that an expert may show off his expertise on the subject?" ( )

Publié en 1937 en polonais ce roman ou ce conte romanesque est le chantre de la jeunesse et de l'immaturité. Le narrateur cuculisé est ramené à l'enfance et aux bancs de l'école. Il y vivra l'aventure de la jeunesse, de la modernité et entreprendra une quête sans but, une recherche sans objectif. Le tout est écrit dans un style déroutant où priment la dénonciation des bonzes de l'aristocratie artistique, la haine du maître, le rejet de ceux qui établissent les règles. Mêlant humour, absurde, invention et écriture intimiste, Ferdydurke plonge dans l'adolescence et plonge l'adolescence dans le monde.

[http://rivesderives.blogspot.ca/2009/03/ferdydurke-witold-gombrowicz.html] ( )