Rising over its self-consciousness, Undermajordomo Minor not only salutes the literature of a bygone era but fully inhabits it, and the result is a novel that offers the same delights as the fairy tales and adventure stories it takes on, while reminding us that in the long game of literature, what lasts is what thrills.
It’s daringly imagined, expressed in wavering colors, not quite fully rendered, such that when we get to the end of it we think: Um . . . Would one more draft have done the trick? We’ll never know.
The pacing is superb and, as I read, I kept thinking how grateful I am to writers who can make me laugh. I just also wanted to feel affected. While I marveled at the author’s technique, I cannot assert that he illuminated a corner of existence for me.
DeWitt seems at times to be in a rush to get all of his bows tied, especially in the novel's final act — when, with t's to cross and i's to dot, his quick pace seems to give way to a simple checklist. Questions duly get their answers, but satisfaction is another matter.
Throughout the novel, he seeks to play against our expectations, to take the moral lessons inherent in his chosen form and rewire them, give them additional dimension and heft.
None of which is to the detriment of a novel that has a lot of knowing fun with its fun: if Undermajordomo Minor occasionally lacks the heft and panache of The Sisters Brothers, it only proves the rule that great acts are murderously hard to follow.
Freed from the realistic settings of his first two novels, deWitt romps in a world of cannonball warfare, ballroom orgies and Very Large Holes in the ground that lead to utter darkness, with new drama and danger every step of the way. Madcap dialogue unfolds like a fencing match, acts of cruelty are dovetailed by tenderness, and backstories of murder, revenge and lost love are nested within Lucy’s quest, giving the world texture while amplifying the story’s themes of love and longing.
One of deWitt’s great strengths is to breathe life into characters with just a few quick strokes; yet in a story with dozens of characters, only a few are onstage long enough to gain much emotional weight. While The Sisters Brothers also brimmed with new characters at every turn, the first-person narration of that picaresque gave readers deep access to the surprisingly tender heart of a violent assassin. In this novel, the folkloric voice keeps readers at arm’s length, and like the Castle Von Aux itself, the emotional landscape can feel 'somehow too sheer, too beautiful.'
Mr. deWitt, whose previous novel was the fine Western pastiche The Sisters Brothers (2011), has a good time toying with fairy tale conventions. The story is farcical, macabre and surprisingly lewd (after the baroness finally returns there is one of the strangest orgy scenes you’ll ever read). As I read the book, I more than once made the sound the valet finds so base and unpleasant.
Fairly or not, it’s easiest to describe Patrick deWitt, so far, as a novelist who riffs on things. Thrillingly so. His previous novel, The Sisters Brothers, bent the western into new shapes. His new one is a meandering but often entertaining fairy tale, in which a hapless man called Lucy Minor goes to work for the major-domo of a castle. Geography and era are purposely abstracted. Where we are, when we are, or why we’re there are all afterthoughts. What matters is Mr. deWitt’s imagination, which is a forceful train that ignores the usual tracks.
In the tradition of such virtuosos as Vladimir Nabokov and Steven Millhauser, DeWitt seduces the reader with verbal swashbuckling and pyrotechnics while also offering up a charming vision of a Never-Never Land for adults. It’s an entertaining read, complete with its own implication that distraction from the mundane travails of life is sometimes exactly what one needs...One could counter that the mystery ultimately doesn’t add up to much, but that seems a trifle dogmatic. This is a high-spirited romp, whose climax occurs in a grand ballroom of the castle, with three drunken members of the filthy-rich aristocracy, observed by one romantic servant, Lucy himself.
Some of deWitt's characters are marvelously depicted, such as Mr. Olderglough, the castle's aging, skeletal majordomo, and Memel, the elder of the pair of thieves. Other characters are not so well drawn, like the Baron and Baroness, who barely register beyond a few examples of atrocious behavior. Lucy, for his part, quickly metamorphoses from an unlikeable liar into a vaguely heroic figure; his yearning for the beautiful Klara is palpable and effectively romantic. While his transformation happens perhaps a bit too quickly, Undermajordomo Minor offers a satisfying tweak on the Bildungsroman formula...For most readers, the question will be if Undermajordomo Minor is as good as deWitt's outstanding The Sisters Brothers. I would say that it isn't, but I don't hesitate for a second to recommend it anyway.
In Undermajordomo Minor, deWitt has somehow created a fable in which the comic narrative voice is impossibly accomplished, and nearly every word is funny...Lucy, once such a diffident, passionless sad-sack, does become positively, heart-swellingly heroic—and not even mock-heroic—by the novel’s end. But the constant confounding distractions from his character arc make it hard to see that coming, and all the more delightful when it does.
If we are to measure amusement in smiles, and pages turned per hour, then this succeeds on that front...We are distracted — depth is hinted at — we move on.
