Harry Mathews

A “cool, humorous, and affectionate” book of vignettes about a practice both universal and universally taboo: masturbation. In sixty-one vignettes, Harry Mathews records the imaginative varieties of this solitary activity in prose that is playful, intimate, urgent, quirky, and humane. The soloists range in age from nine to eighty; the locales from Australia to Zaire; the means of masturbation from the commonplace to the bizarre. The young man in Gaza with his hair dryers, the woman in Manila with her cello bow, the long-eared bat, the charioteer, the candelabra—this swirl of unlikely individuals and objects is brought together in such a way that it floods a world born fresh once more. “There is nothing pornographic, in the strict sense, about Mathews' text, since it does not seek to arouse the reader,” wrote John Ash for Artforum. “His intention is to leave us deeply impressed by the ingenuity, tenacity, and inventiveness with which humans in all places and at all ages have pursued their own pleasure. He succeeds completely.” In this light-hearted collection, Mathews underscores the essential generosity of an apparently scandalous enterprise, where in the act of making love with ourselves we throw our imaginations open to a union with anything the universe itself has fended and fostered into being. The book is illustrated throughout with watercolors by Francesco Clemente that offer an intriguing counterpoint to Mathews's fictions.

A remarkable and unusual novel by "one of the most remarkable prose stylist presently writing in English." --The San Francisco ChronicleAt a dinner party hosted by a wealthy New Yorker, a guest receives an ancient golden weapon as a prize. When the mysterious host of this party dies the next day, his fortune is left to whomever it was that received the prize at the party. The only requirement: the owner must answer three cryptic questions relating to the artifact's mysterious history. In his search for answers, He quickly finds himself entangled in the centuries-long history of a secretive religious sect, embarking on an odyssey that begins at a dinner party, and ends on the ocean floor. Along this wild goose chase, we encounter a menagerie of eccentric personalities: an ancient revolutionary in a Parisian prison, a ludicrous pair of gibberish-speaking brothers, and customs officials who spend their time reading contraband materials. The Conversions is a wildly unpredictable novel, inviting readers along in the search for answers that may never have existed in the first place.

Cigarettes is a novel about the rich and powerful, tracing their complicated relationships from the 1930s to the 1960s, from New York City to Upper New York State. Though nothing is as simple as it might appear to be, we could describe this as a story about Allen, who is married to Maud but having an affair with Elizabeth, who lives with Maud. Or say it is a story about fraud in the art world, horse racing, and sexual intrigues. Or, as one critic did, compare it to a Jane Austen creation, or to an Aldous Huxley novel—and be right and wrong on both counts. With a new introduction by Lucy Sante, Cigarettes returns to print in full force: a brilliant display of Harry Mathews's ingenuity and deadly playfulness.

A blend of postmodern metafiction and old-style bedroom farce, The Journalist explores the elusive, sometimes illusive, boundaries between facts and the fictions we weave around them. The novel's protagonist, living at a time that might be the present in a city that might be anywhere, has decided for reasons of mental hygiene to keep a detailed record of his thoughts, words, and deeds. Very quickly, however, the project begins to absorb his entire life, as the increasingly meticulous recording of experience threatens to supplant experience itself. To make matters worse, what he records offers its own grist for worry: his devoted wife suddenly grows secretive, his equally devoted mistress turns evasive, his frustratingly independent son might or might not be visiting that same mistress behind his back, and his closest friend begins acting in mysterious ways (and is it just his imagination, or is this friend having clandestine meetings with his wife?). His ever more convoluted perceptions breed a dark muddle of suspicion, leading to a climax that is at once intensely funny and excruciatingly poignant.

Voskhititelnaja postmodernistskaja komedija nravov KHKh veka, roman o molekuljarnykh brounovskikh otnoshenijakh prizrakov neskolkikh "poterjannykh pokolenij". V nem proslezhivajutsja sudby neskolkikh desjatkov ljudej iz dovolno preuspevajuschikh semejstv shtata Nju-Jork, poetomu eto esche i semejnaja saga, okhvatyvajuschaja znachitelnyj kusok KHKh veka - ot 1930-kh godov do 1960-kh. Krome togo, eto roman o zhivopisi i iskusstve KHKh veka, o tajne tvorchestva, ob istinnykh i mnimykh ego tsennostjakh, ob originalakh i poddelkakh. Esche eto "roman vzroslenija", a takzhe zhulnicheskij roman so svoej detektivnoj intrigoj, tajnami i neozhidannymi povorotami sjuzheta. I konechno, eto kniga so mnogimi slojami ironii, kotorye masterski sobrany v takuju izjaschnuju kitajskuju shkatulku-golovolomku, chto razbiratsja s "Sigaretami" - sploshnoe chitatelskoe naslazhdenie. Perevodchik: Nemtsov Maksim Vladimirovich

Cigarettes is a novel about the rich and powerful, tracing their complicated relationships from the 1930s to the 1960s, from New York City to Upper New York State. Though nothing is as simple as it might appear to be, we could describe this as a story about Allen, who is married to Maud but having an affair with Elizabeth, who lives with Maud. Or say it is a story about fraud in the art world, horse racing, and sexual intrigues. Or, as one critic did, compare it to a Jane Austen creation, or to an Aldous Huxley novel—and be right and wrong on both counts. What one can emphatically say is that Cigarettes is a brilliant display of Harry Mathews's ingenuity and deadly playfulness.

John and Paul were also visitors to the town. They were twins, as identical as can be. They wore the same clothes, chino trousers and open-neck sweaters, in John's case adorned with a faded maroon neckerchief. Both were addicted to the shellfish harvested year-round from the rocks and sands of the coast: little clams, winkles, cockles, crabs, and above all sea urchins-their dessert, as both said. They drank only McEwan's India pale ale and smoked the same thin black Brazilian cigars ... So begins the great writer Harry Mathews's final novel, The Solitary Twin, a rollicking yet incredibly moving story of two young men who come to a picturesque beach town. Seen prismatically through the viewpoints of the towns' residents, they offer a variety of worldviews. Yet are they really twins or a single person? Harry Mathews, the first American member of the French avant-garde literary society Oulipo, and long associated with the New York School of Poets, passed away this year, and The Solitary Twin is his last novel. "I believe this novel is his finest," his friend John Ashbery wrote.

Genom en serie osannolika händelser under 1970-talets början kommer Harry Mathews, som vid tiden bor i Paris, att allmänt betraktas som CIA-agent. Till och med hans vänner har sina misstankar, vilka bara förstärks varje gång han nekar till anklagelserna. Med växande frustration inför att ingen vill tro honom bestämmer sig Mathews för att spela med. Mitt liv i CIA skildrar Mathews upplevelse av att vara spion in spe 1973, omgiven av laddade världshändelser kuppen i Chile, Watergate-skandalen, Vietnam krigets slut. Låtsasleken kommer plötsligt att ta en ödesdiger vändning, då ett antal utlänska underrättelsetjänster bestämmer sig för att han ska elimineras. Harry Mathews gör dessa märkliga händelser till en spännande thriller, där gränsen mellan fakta och fiktion efterhand blir något otydlig.

Harry Mathews berättar i Enskilda nöjen på omisskännelig oulipo-manér 61 historier om masturbation. Vad som först eventuellt skulle kunna uppfattas som spekulativt, visar sig snabbt istället skapa en varm och djupt mänsklig mosaik över världen. Rikt illustrerad av Francesco Clemente.

The subject of this unique book of short fiction is masturbation, a practice both universal and virtually taboo. In sixty-one vignettes, Mathews records the imaginative varieties of this solitary activity in prose that is playful, intimate, urgent, quirky, and humane.

Composed of a series of letters between a husband and wife, ?" The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium"?is a brilliant comedy about love and longing, dashed hopes and frustrations, and trying to make connections. Newly wedded Zachary McCaltex (a librarian in Miami) and Twang Panattapam (originally from the Southeast-Asian country of Pan-Nam, but residing in Italy) try to trace the whereabouts of a treasure supposedly lost off the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century, while navigating a relationship separated by an ocean as well as their different cultures. In the end, the postal service may be responsible for what gets lost (including Zachary's sanity) along the way.

At a dinner party hosted by a wealthy New Yorker, a guest receives a gold adze, the coveted prize in a worm race. When the man dies the next day, he bequeaths, according to a stipulation in his will, the bulk of his fortune to the adze's possessor, provided he answer three mysterious questions relating to the artifact's history. In his search the owner encounters a menagerie of eccentric personalities: an ancient revolutionary in a Parisian prison, a ludicrous pair of gibberish-speaking brothers, and customs officials who spend their time reading contraband materials. He soon finds himself immersed in the centuries-long history of a persecuted religious sect and in an odyssey that begins in a forgotten fog-covered town in Scotland and ends on the ocean floor off the cost of an uncharted French island. A wild goose chase through a remarkably unusual world, The Conversions invites both reader and protagonist to participate in a quest for answers to an elusive game.

For a period of just over a year, Harry Mathews set about following Stendhal's dictum for writers of "twenty lines a day, genius or not." What resulted is a book that is part journal, parts writer's manual, and part genius. First undertaken as a kind of discipline, the work molds itself into a penetrating reflection on daily events in Mathews's life, his friends, himself, and the act of writing.