Harry Mathews – Page 3 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

#tobyreads: Variations on Seclusion From Fiona Maazel, Matt Bell, Stefan Zweig, and Harry Mathews

April 12, 2013 No Comments

There can be a literary virtue in seclusion. Whether a long narrative is constrained to a reduced number of characters or settings (what I like to call the “person in a room talking” novel) or making use of themes related to isolation, memorable results are capable in either instance. Loneliness and solitude are essential elements to the human condition; they can be as liberating as the feeling of walking alone through a city that’s not your own, half-buzzed on coffee, […]

Books, Featured

Potential Literature, Actual Reading: Regarding Oulipo in 2013

April 9, 2013 2 Comments

If you like your literature Francophile and theoretical, then the name Oulipo is one that likely resonates with you. And 2013 has already given us numerous reasons to think about this movement’s influence, history, and status: New Directions has released a 65th anniversary edition of Oulipo fouder Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, and Zero Books has published The End of Oulipo? by critics Lauren Elkin and Scott Esposito. Each leaves the reader with much to consider: questions of legacy and influence; […]

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Lost Correspondence: Dispatches From Elena Ferrante, John McPhee, Harry Mathews, and Lawrence Weschler

April 5, 2013 No Comments

Four books to cover today: two works of nonfiction and two novels, one of which is deeply rooted in reality and one of which is…not. At their core is a shared fondness for transmissions: letters sent from continent to continent; artists whose work clamors for revival (or may require a late-career boost); lifelong bonds that abruptly cease to exist. Whether the setting is post-war Italy or the Soviet Union on the cusp of its dissolution, these books evoke places on […]

Bites

Afternoon Bites: Jessica Hopper on Cat Power, Johnny Temple Interviewed, Joe Hill on “Doctor Who,” and More

September 5, 2012 No Comments

“You’d think a polemic dispatch from the thick of a Koch Brothers-fuelled culture war might push one to new depths of emotional dispossession, but lo! Marshall instead loses some of her famous ethereal malaise and conjures vampy disdain instead.” Jessica Hopper on Cat Power’s latest, Sun. Emily St. John Mandel came up with a list of books where reality turns disorienting for The Millions. A.N. Devers on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the legacy of his father. Akashic’s Johnny Temple […]

Indexing

Indexing: Bradbury signs, Gang Gang Dance DJs, Jo Walton’s “Among Others,” Johnny after The Smiths, and much more

January 21, 2012 3 Comments

A roundup of things consumed by our contributors. Tobias Carroll “She was looking at a record called Anarchy in the U.K. by a group called the Sex Pistols. It was a very ugly cover, but I am quite interested in anarchism because of The Dispossessed.” That’s from Jo Walton’s Among Others, a novel set in 1979 about a young woman named Morwenna attending an English boarding school. She reads voraciously; she expounds at length on the science fiction and fantasy that she’s encountering, and this […]