The Grasshopper King

April 7, 2003
A prominent scholar who stops speaking in the late 1960s is the unlikely central figure of this clever campus satire, the debut of a young Princeton mathematics professor. Thirteen years after Prof. Stanley Higgs mysteriously clams up, Sam Grapearbor joins the Ph.D. program at the mediocre Western university of Chandler State. It's his job to encourage Higgs to talk again—an essential task, because Higgs is a revered scholar of the Gravinian poet Henderson, a misfit literary figure from a fictional Soviet republic—and is expected to produce at least one more pronouncement of genius. Meanwhile, Sam is laboring over a translation of Gravinian nursery rhymes, most concerning a character called Little Bug. Ellenberg's offbeat premise gives rise to plenty of witty observations and absurd situations (for example, Higgs's entire house is wired with tape recorders in case he decides to speak) that recall masters like Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The interlarded Henderson lore can grow tedious, as can Higgs's silence. Fortunately, Ellenberg balances his Nabokovian devices with poignant human relationships. Sam devotes much thought to whether he should marry his college girlfriend, Julia, who accompanies him to Higgs's home every day, while the distinct tenderness between mute Higgs and his patient wife, Ellen—and their mutual craziness—provides an unconventional but oddly appealing model of married life. Campus novels often tend toward the parochial or the arcane, but Ellenberg breathes fresh air into the genre. (Apr.)Forecast:Ellenberg has a regular column in the online journal
Slate, which may help him in terms of name recognition.

January 1, 2002
A prominent scholar who stops speaking in the late 1960s is the unlikely central figure of this clever campus satire, the debut of a young Princeton mathematics professor. Thirteen years after Prof. Stanley Higgs mysteriously clams up, Sam Grapearbor joins the Ph.D. program at the mediocre Western university of Chandler State. It's his job to encourage Higgs to talk again-an essential task, because Higgs is a revered scholar of the Gravinian poet Henderson, a misfit literary figure from a fictional Soviet republic-and is expected to produce at least one more pronouncement of genius. Meanwhile, Sam is laboring over a translation of Gravinian nursery rhymes, most concerning a character called Little Bug. Ellenberg's offbeat premise gives rise to plenty of witty observations and absurd situations (for example, Higgs's entire house is wired with tape recorders in case he decides to speak) that recall masters like Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The interlarded Henderson lore can grow tedious, as can Higgs's silence. Fortunately, Ellenberg balances his Nabokovian devices with poignant human relationships. Sam devotes much thought to whether he should marry his college girlfriend, Julia, who accompanies him to Higgs's home every day, while the distinct tenderness between mute Higgs and his patient wife, Ellen-and their mutual craziness-provides an unconventional but oddly appealing model of married life. Campus novels often tend toward the parochial or the arcane, but Ellenberg breathes fresh air into the genre. (Apr.) Forecast: Ellenberg has a regular column in the online journal Slate, which may help him in terms of name recognition.

March 15, 2003
Stanley Higgs, Chandler State University professor of Gravinic studies and the foremost expert on Henderson, the mysterious Gravinic poet who influenced such notables as Brecht and B ll, is not talking. The Henderson Society is so sure that Higgs's next utterance will be significant that its members have wired his house and hired a full-time graduate student to keep tabs on him. Having drifted through most of his college career, Samuel Grapearbor discovers Gravinic language and literature and ends up with the job of monitoring Higgs. Henderson has never been seen, and Higgs's attempts to contact him have all resulted in dead ends, but even when Henderson is rather fantastically implicated in the start of World War II, Higgs doesn't hold forth. Throughout all of this, Samuel is redefining his life with girlfriend Julia, Higgs's wife is dealing stoically with the situation, and the Gravinic Studies Department carries on. This first novel by Slate columnist Ellenberg, a mathematics professor at Princeton, is not quite funny enough to be true farce and not quite realistic enough to be seious. But Ellenberg handles relationships nicely. Recommended for larger libraries.-Josh Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2003
Chandler University is trying to make its mark on academia by bolstering its new Gravinics Department with the help of a well-known authority on the subject, Professor Stanley Higgs. From a little-known country in the Carpathian foothills, the Gravinic language, mythology, and history are heralded by a cynical, rather demented poet named Henderson. Professor Higgs' bizarre course has finally given Chandler University some notoriety and officially sealed the beginning of the Henderson Society for aficionados of the acrid prose. When Professor Higgs becomes nonsensical and ceases to talk, the university hires Samuel Grapearbor to sit with the mute, checker-playing professor to await some prophetic utterance that might spill from his mouth. While Samuel waits for the serendipitous musings of Professor Higgs, his own future as a whole is wallowing in an unspoken pool of indecision. It is Ellenberg's keen sense of humor and propensity for drawing out the absurdity in collegiate obsessions that take center stage in this very strange and over-the-top but amusing novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)