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No, this is not a how-to book to help you get ready for your vacation in Lisbon or Brazil. Now that you mention it, though: what kind of book is this?

source: Amazon

This first book in a series that now runs to three volumes follows von Igelfeld (German for "hedgehog") from his grad school days through the events of his early career as an emerging scholar who becomes famous for his masterpiece, Portuguese Irregular Verbs.

The jacket blurb describes von Igelfeld as "a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and of Inspecteur Clouseau." Good comparisons — and another I'd bring in would be the series of films running from Waiting for Guffman through Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. In those movies, as here, the subject is a strange subculture with devotées who are no less comical for how serious they are. And like those films, Smith's "tall novel" of life in the academy may simultaneously charm and cut a bit too close for comfort.

The best chapter is "Italian Matters," which takes von Igelfeld on a sojourn to a small village near Siena. Here Smith is at his best, combining glowing descriptions of the countryside with the central tragi-comic account of his protagonist's encounter with xenophobia. I was moved by Smith's deft hand in sketching von Igelfeld's deep conditioning to miss the sublime and dwell on the small social slights of an academic's life.

In short, my guess is that non-academics will find this book so quirky that they either laugh loud and long or think it's just weird. But academics may find plenty to mull over in Smith's small sketches of one pathetic academic's bumblings through life.

first published May 5, 2004