CASE OF PERSEVERING MALTESE PA

by MATHEWS,HARRY

• ISBN13: 9781564782885
• ISBN10: 1564782883
• Edition: 00
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2003-03-17
• Publisher: JOHN MUIR
• More Book Details

Summary

A companion to last season's The Human Country: New and Collected Stories, this volume collects all of Harry Mathews's nonfiction. These astonishing essays range from discussions of complex literary and musical forms to the works of Lewis Carroll. Raymond Roussel, Italo Calvino, Joseph McElroy, Georges Perec, and the Oulipo. Throughout the collection Mathews examines the relationship between form and literature in a lucid, intimate voice, arguing with erudition, grace and humor for the importance of artifice.

Author Biography

Harry Mathews was born and raised on New York's Upper East Side, but left America for France in 1952 shortly after graduating from Harvard University. French culture has played a big role in his writing, especially the Oulipo -- the Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature) -- of which Mathews is the only American member. He is the author of over a dozen books

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
I
For Prizewinners	3	(18)
Notes on the Threshold of a Book	21	(6)
The Monkey at the Wheel	27	(40)
Fearful Symmetries	s55
Translation and the Oulipo: The Case of the Persevering Maltese	67	(18)
II
In Quest of the Oulipo	85	(6)
The Pursuit of the Whole	91	(6)
III
La Camera Ardente	97	(6)
Queen Story	103	(20)
Roussel and Venice: Outline of a Melancholic Geography (with Georges Perec)	123	(24)
The Bad Dreams of Carolus Ludovicus Dodgson	147	(4)
Les Merveilleux Nuages	151	(24)
We for One: An Introduction to Joseph McElroy's Women and Men	175	(38)
Sex Real and Imaginary	213	(10)
Isidore Ducasse	223	(16)
A Valentine for Elena	239	(16)
Charity Begins at Home	255	(14)
IV
Georges Perec	269	(10)
Vanishing Point	279	(6)
"That Ephemeral Thing"	285	(16)
APPENDIX: PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS
Mathews's Algorithm	301	(20)
Dormouse Poem	321