Product Description

From the beginning, Oliver Walzel is a natural - at ping-pong; he can chop, flick and half-volley like a champion. At sex he is not a natural, but with tuition his game improves. This is the story of coming-of-age in 1950s Manchester.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #292253 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Howard Jacobson has been described as "one of the funniest writers alive", his fiction a masterpiece of comedy. "At its best", writes Mary Loudon, "it simply tears you apart." Following the success of No More Mr Nice Guy in 1998--Jacobson's foul and funny rendition of the sex war--The Mighty Walzer moves into the strange, and passionate, world of ping pong to tell the life of one Oliver Walzer. "Grandiosity was in the family," Oliver announces at the very beginning of his account of a childhood in Manchester in the 1950s. "On my father's side. Normally, when I speak of "the family" I seem to mean my father's side. Make what you like of that." It's a challenge which runs throughout the book. We can make what we like of this "history of embarrassments" and the family--"from some sucking bog outside Proskurov"--which supports it.

"One disillusionment at a time" is the principle behind Jacobson's telling of a youth suspended between ping pong and masturbation, mortification and omnipotence, anti- Semitism and the Akiva gang. At the Akiva club, Walzer comes into his own: he's a natural, with the makings of a "star" (even if he is stoned by the "prefab boys" on his way there). At home, he's caught between the flamboyance of his market-trader father--the "swag", and swagger, he wants to pass on to his son--and his mother's famous "reserve". Balancing the split legacy--win or lose? laugh or cry? put up or shut up?--is part of the pain, and pleasure, of the book. No surprise, perhaps, that Walzer is unwilling to make a clear distinction between the two. When it comes to sex and friendship, family and history, life and ping pong, The Mighty Walzer is a brilliant story of one man's journey to the realm of "pain fun": the pleasure of a life spent losing and learning what you can ask for. --Vicky Lebeau

Customer Reviews

Hard bats etc
A comic English novel and table-tennis, two of my Favourite Things. How could this not be a good read? Well, possibly because Jacobson still doesn't seem to have got over reading Philip Roth from around 1970, but reworks Roth's old formula-but-two: the faux-autobiographical style, the oh-so-naughty jokes, the displaced narrator alienated by life (and here, even by the new style of table-tennis). Whereas Roth and others have long since moved on to amazing and subtle kinds of story-telling, here's the dear old English version, still plugging on with a literary sort of Carry On palaver and its tedious set-pieces. I've read Jacobson being very drole indeed as a columnist but as a novelist he seems to have run out of steam, and ideas, by this point.

Tedious & Uninspiring
This book was extremely disappointing. From the cover it appeared to be a warm coming of age story involving a sport (table tennis) which is very infrequently written about (a sport I personally enjoy). The small amount written about table tennis was adequate, but the characters themselves, particular Walzer, are never engaging. The reader never develops any care for what happens to them. In the end, I was never motivated to read further the travails of Walzer. The most satisfying aspect of this book is the end, because it menat I could move on to something else.

Mighty by name...
When I first read this book, I was not bowled over by it, but as time went by a nagging thought in my mind became increasingly apparent – “You have to read this book again.” And thank goodness I did; The Mighty Walzer is a minor masterpiece.

I think the main reason I love this book so much is that Walzer is something of an anti-hero, but sympathetic nevertheless – Alexander Portnoy rather than Holden Caulfield. He is a character with whom any teenage misfit is able to identify.

The novel’s humour is largely down to Jacobson’s deadpan delivery, without which the book would be much more heavy-going. There are moments which misfire – I was not convinced of the necessity of the Cambridge scenes, though maybe necessity is not the point – Jacobson is telling a story, and not everything in life makes sense. I found the reunion scenes particularly powerful.

I would urge anybody to read this book, but would advise that some prior knowledge of Yiddish (or at least Hebrew or German) could be useful. “The Joys of Yiddish” by Leo Rosten is a sound investment for the first-time Yiddish-user.