The Mastersinger from Minsk

 By Morley Torgov, 2012 

To start with the positive, this is a clever conception for a comic novel – Richard Wagner is preparing the premier of his opera, Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and someone is killing off his star performers. Torgov nicely shows both the megalomania of Wagner and the glorious style of his music. (And he describes the pleasures of other musical performances in a sensitive language, as well.) The over-the-top personality of Wagner deserves an over-the-top storyline that punctures the balloon of self-importance he lives on.

Sadly, the execution of this conception is pretty awful. I was well into the story before I asked myself, Is this supposed to be comical? And I decided that it couldn’t be. The story seemed so ridiculous that it couldn’t be serious, but it seemed too earnest and clumsy to be humour. Later, reading on the book cover that Torgov won the Leacock award for humour for another book, I concluded that I was wrong: it is supposed to be comical, although it’s still not funny.

Humour is a personal thing, so perhaps it’s humorous for other readers. But the characters are also stereotyped and unbelievable, the sex scenes are gratuitous, the conclusion is contrived. Torgov tells us the facts to move the plot along, but doesn’t show them in his writing. He sticks bits of background into the narrative as if he needed to pad the scenes, but doesn’t create the atmosphere to make them fit in. The characters are illogical puppets who act to suit the plot, but have nothing interesting about them.

It would be fun if someone were to write a comic novel about Wagner with realistic characters who weren’t just silly. Unfortunately, this isn’t that