Andrew Crumey
Andrew Crumey(born 1961) is anovelistand formerliterary editorof theEdinburghnewspaperScotland on Sunday. His works ofliterary fictionincorporate elements ofspeculative fiction,historical fiction,philosophical fictionandMenippean satire.Brian Stablefordhas called them "philosophical fantasies".[1]The Spanish newspaperEl Mundocalled Crumey "one of the most interesting and original European authors of recent years."[2]
Life and career
[edit]Crumey was born inGlasgow,Scotland, and grew up inKirkintilloch.He graduated with First Class Honours from theUniversity of St Andrewsand holds aPhDintheoretical physicsfromImperial College,London.His thesis was onintegrable systemsandKac-Moody algebras,supervised byDavid Olive.[3]
Crumey's first novel,Music, in a Foreign Language,won the Saltire Society First Book Award in 1994.[4]Its theme ofalternate historywas inspired by themany-worldsinterpretation of quantum mechanics.[5]
His second novelPfitzwas a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" in 1997, described as "cerebral but warm and likeable".[6]The sequel,D'Alembert's Principletook its title from a principle of physics.
Crumey was a regular book reviewer for Scotland on Sunday from 1996 and became the newspaper's literary editor in 2000. He won an Arts Council of England Writers' Award, worth £7,000.[7]
In 2000 Crumey's fourth novelMr Meewas longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award.[8]He followed it withMobius Dick,described byJoseph O'Connoras "perhaps the only novel about quantum mechanics you could imagine reading while lying on a beach."[9]
In 2003 Crumey was selected for Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists", but had been incorrectly submitted by publisher Picador, being over 40 at the time.[10]
In 2006, Crumey became the fifth recipient of theNorthern Rock FoundationWriter's Award forSputnik Caledonia,[11]which was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize[12]and Scottish Book of the Year.[13]
In 2006 he became lecturer increative writingatNewcastle University.In 2011 he was a visiting fellow atDurham Institute of Advanced Study,[14]then became lecturer in creative writing atNorthumbria University.[5]It was during this time that he wroteThe Secret Knowledge,published in 2013.[15]
His PhD students at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities have included Alex Lockwood,[16]Guy Mankowski[17]and John Schoneboom[18]
He has an interest in astronomy and in 2014 he published on the subject of astronomic visibility andRicco's law.[19]
His short story Singularity was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2016[20]and later published inThe Great Chain of Unbeing.
In 2017 he was a contestant in the St Andrews team on BBC Two's Christmas University Challenge.[21]
In 2018The Great Chain of Unbeingwas shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Award.[22]Adam Robertswrote inLiterary Review:'Andrew Crumey’s new book is a quasi-novel built out of connected short stories. It’s something for which we English have no specific term, but for which German critics have probably coined an impressively resonant piece of nomenclature (Kurzgeschichtenverkettung,maybe?). It’s as good an example of the form as I know.'
In 2023 he published his ninth novel,Beethoven's Assassins,described inThe Irish Timesas "a deliciously intellectual, ambitious book that explores time, metaphysics, narrative and pretty much everything, all at once."[23]
Critical reception
[edit]Jonathan Coedescribed Crumey as "a writer more interested in inheriting the mantle ofPerecandKunderathanAmisandDrabble... Crumey seems so untouched by the post-war British tradition that he simply writes as if it never existed. "[24]
The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945,commenting on unorthodox approaches to genre fiction by writers including Crumey,Frank KuppnerandKen Macleod,said "Andrew Crumey is one of the most innovative and engaging Scottish writers to emerge out of this context in the last twenty years. His speculative fiction has a strong European and global dimension, drawing on the influence ofBorges,CalvinoandMilorad Pavicin its intricate, nested narratives, non-linearity, and ludic encyclopaedism. "[25]
InTwenty-First-century Fiction: Contemporary British Voices,Daniel Lea put Crumey in a list of "post-postmodernist" British writers that includedIain Banks,Bernardine EvaristoandNeil Gaiman,characterised by an "intermingling of genre and literary fiction."[26]
Bent Sorensen bracketed Crumey with another physicist-turned-novelist,Alan Lightman,and discussed their move from science to literature usingPierre Bourdieu'sconcepts of "field", "position-taking" and "gatekeeping". Sorensen wrote that Crumey was "opposed to the postmodern epistemology when asked to define his world-view in philosophical terms... his fictional practice, however, can still fairly be characterized as postmodern."[27]
Timothy C. Baker described Crumey's novels as "monadological", citingDeleuze'sreading ofLeibniz,and observing that "The relation between [Crumey's] novels is unusual: five of his seven novels explore, in various ways, the legacies of Enlightenment thought, often drawing upon the same ideas and figures. These novels, crucially, do not amount to a sequence, nor is the relation between events in them ever straightforwardly causal. Instead, each novel covers similar ground in a series of overlapping folds, while remaining narratively distinct."[28]
Cultural theorist Sonia Front wrote, "The notion of parallel universes seems to be Andrew Crumey's favourite physical theory... His writings can be seen as amultiversethemselves, with the characters reappearing to live an alternative world-line in another novel. "[29]
Florian Kläger sees "a self-reflexive cosmopoetics of the novel" in the writings of Crumey,Martin Amis,John Banville,Zadie SmithandJeanette Winterson.[30]
Works
[edit]- Music, in a Foreign Language(1994)
- Pfitz(1995)
- D’Alembert’s Principle(1996)
- Mr Mee(2000)
- Mobius Dick(2004)
- Sputnik Caledonia(2008)
- The Secret Knowledge(2013)
- The Great Chain of Unbeing(2018)
- Beethoven's Assassins(2023)
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^Brian Stableford, The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Scarecrow Press (2009). p191
- ^"Angel Vivas. El Mundo. August 29, 2003".
- ^"Integrable Dynamical Systems Associated With Kac-Moody Algebras"(PDF).crumey.co.uk.
- ^"Music, in a Foreign Language by Andrew Crumey: Our Books:: Dedalus Books, Publishers of Literary Fiction".www.dedalusbooks.com.
- ^ab"Andrew Crumey".www.northumbria.ac.uk.
- ^https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/07/reviews/notable-fiction.html?_r=1[bare URL]
- ^The Times (London). Friday, May 12, 2000.
- ^"Scottish Arts Council Book Award".Northumbria University Research Portal.
- ^"Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey: Our Books:: Dedalus Books, Publishers of Literary Fiction".www.dedalusbooks.com.
- ^"Then and now: Granta's best young British novelists".6 April 2013 – via The Guardian.
- ^"Matt Thorne - Dreams of Space".Literary Review.
- ^"Nobel winner in running for book prize".The University of Edinburgh.
- ^"New sponsor announced for £30,000 book awards".HeraldScotland.
- ^"Dr Andrew Crumey | IAS Durham".
- ^Acknowledgment in book.
- ^ "Alex Lockwood, Roundfire Books".Retrieved17 September2023.
- ^"Andrew Crumey".Northumbria University.Retrieved17 September2023.
- ^"Andrew Crumey".Northumbria University.Retrieved17 September2023.
- ^Crumey, A. (2014).Human contrast threshold and astronomical visibility.MNRAS 442, 2600–2619.
- ^"BBC Radio 4 - Singularity by Andrew Crumey".BBC.
- ^"BBC Two - University Challenge, Christmas 2017, Selwyn College, Cambridge v St Andrews University".BBC.
- ^"Scotland's National Book Awards 2018: Fiction Shortlist".The Saltire Society.
- ^McKee, Ruth (19 August 2023)."Beethoven's Assassins by Andrew Crumey: A deliciously intellectual and ambitious book".The Irish Times.Dublin.Retrieved17 September2023.
- ^Jonathan Coe, The Guardian. August 16, 1994
- ^David Goldie, in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945, edited by David James. CUP 2015.
- ^Daniel Lea, Twenty-First-century Fiction: Contemporary British Voices. Manchester University Press, 2017
- ^Bent Sørensen. Physicists in the Field of Fiction. Comparative Critical Studies Volume 2, Issue 2, pp241-55 (2005).
- ^Timothy C. Baker. Harmonic Monads: Reading Contemporary Scottish Fiction through the Enlightenment. Scottish Literary Review, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 95-113. (2017)
- ^Sonia Front. Shapes of Time in British Twenty-First Century Quantum Fiction. Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2015)
- ^Florian Kläger. Reading Into the Stars: Cosmopoetics in the Contemporary Novel. Universitätsverlag Winter, 2018
External links
[edit]- Andrew Crumey's webpage (author site)
- Andrew Crumey's webpage (Northumbria University)
- Works by Andrew Crumey at the Internet Archive (free loan)
- Andrew Crumeyat theInternet Speculative Fiction Database
- Goodreads.com author profile
- "The Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award 2006".The Northern Rock Foundation. 30 March 2006. Archived fromthe originalon 22 November 2006.Retrieved24 March2007.
