An esoteric author who's developed a follwing: Helen DeWitt

You've got to wonder about an author - Helen DeWitt, in this case - whose jacket blurb boasts of the dozen of so languages that she speaks/knows, in descending order of proficiency. But I guess everything about Dewitt is or is meant to be quirky, unconventional, sometimes unbelievable; I for one am suspicious of her claim of polyglotality and of her claim noted in an online bio that she had 50 uncompleted manuscripts before completing her debut novel, The Last Samurai, which received excellent review. I couldn't land a copy of same so am at least getting a sense of her work through her collection of 11 stories, Some Trick (New Directions). Rea the first two, plus the impenetrable author's preface, and can see where she has developed a following though I'm not sure for how long I can follow. The first story, Brutto, is a send-up of the contemporary art scene (not sure when story was written/publishing; ND not forthcoming w/ that info), a an Italian gallerist poking around in a London studio fixates on an incredibly ugly dress that one of the artists made as a student project years back and wants her to produce another 50 or so for a major exhibit; she feels in has nothing to do w/ her contemporary work but can't turn down the offer for lots of money and potential fame, which the ugly dresses bring to he, eventually. All told it shows the ridiculous follow-the-leader nature of the art business: nobody, least of all the artist, really like the ugly dresses but because of the guy producing the show crowds storm in Milan, NYC, etc. OK, kinda funny, and full of references to real "avant-garde" artists, which you can check out easily via a search engine. The second story, similarly in a way but with a reversal, is about a scholarly author who achieves unexpected success w/ a children's book about robots; a top-level agent tries to take over the sale and promotion of his follow-up book but the scholar resists; he'd rather get less $ and a contract that would allow him to write a book about his passions, such as Bertrand Russell. The story is filled w/ a # of charts of x/y axes about certain points of probability that I in no way understand. Is it her esoterica that has made her reputation, or he bi-coastal sensibility (she's apparently an American by birth who studied at Oxford and now lives who knows where - but her writing includes much British lingo). I'll read a little further before making any lasting judgments.