Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews | |
---|---|
Key West, Florida, U.S. | |
Occupation | Author |
Nationality | American |
Education | Groton School |
Alma mater | Princeton University Harvard University (BA) |
Genre | Novels, poetry, short fiction, essays, French translation |
Notable works | The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium and Other Novels The Conversions Tlooth |
Spouses | Niki de Saint Phalle, sculptor (1949-1961)[1] Marie Chaix, writer |
Children | 2 |
Harry Mathews (February 14, 1930 – January 25, 2017) was an American writer, the author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays. Mathews was also a translator of the French language.
Life
Born in New York City to an upper-middle-class family,[2] Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts, before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947. He left Princeton in his sophomore year for a tour in the United States Navy, during the course of which (in 1949) he eloped with the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, a childhood friend. His military service completed, Mathews transferred to Harvard University in 1950; the couple's first child, Laura Duke Condominas, was born the following year. After Mathews graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music, the family moved to Paris, where he continued studies in conducting at I’École Normale de Musique.[3]
A second child, their son Phillip, was born in
Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus[5] (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, one of Mathews's chief early influences[6]) from 1961 to 1962.
Mathews was the first American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as
In the 1960s Mathews had a relationship of several years' duration with Paris Review editor Maxine Groffsky.[9] Mathews was later married to the writer Marie Chaix, and divided his time among Paris, Key West, and New York City.
Novels
Mathews's first three novels share a common approach, though their stories and characters are not connected. Originally published as separate works (the third in serialization in The Paris Review), they were gathered in one omnibus volume in 1975 as The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium and Other Novels, but have since been reprinted as individual volumes. Each novel displays the author's taste for improbable narrative invention, his humor, and his delight in leading the reader down obscure avenues of learning.[10]
At the outset of his first novel, The Conversions, the narrator is invited to an evening's social gathering at the home of a wealthy and powerful eccentric named Grent Wayl. During the course of the evening he is invited to take part in an elaborately staged party game, involving, among other things, a race between several small worms. The race having apparently been rigged by Wayl, the narrator is declared the victor and takes home his prize, an adze with curious designs, apparently of a ritual nature, engraved on it. Not long after the party, Wayl dies, and the bulk of his vast estate is left to whoever possesses the adze, providing that he or she can answer three riddling questions relating to its nature. The balance of the book is concerned with the narrator's attempts to answer the three questions, attempts that lead him through a series of digressions and stories-within-a-story, many of them quite diverting in themselves. The book has some superficial affinities with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49;[11] the reader, like the narrator, is never sure to what extent he has fallen victim to a hoax. Much of the material dealing with the ritual adze, and the underground cult that it is related to, borrows from Robert Graves's The White Goddess. [11] Mathews's novel concludes with two appendices, one being in German.
His next novel, Tlooth, begins in a bizarre
The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, like The Conversions, is the story of a hunt for treasure, this time told through a series of letters between a Southeast Asian woman named Twang and her American husband, Zachary McCaltex. The couple are researching the fate of a vanished cargo of gold that once belonged to the
Mathews's next novel, Cigarettes, marked a change in his work. Less whimsical but no less technically sophisticated than his first three novels, it consists of an interlocking series of narratives revolving around a small group of interconnected characters. The book's approach to narrative is generally realistic, and Cigarettes is ultimately moving in a way that none of his previous books attempted to be.[14]
My Life in CIA, the last published novel in his lifetime (if it is indeed fiction),
His final novel, The Solitary Twin, was published posthumously in March 2018 by New Directions.
Other works
Mathews's shorter writings frequently cross or deliberately confuse genres. A case in point is the piece entitled "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)." Originally included in an issue of the literary magazine Antaeus devoted to travel essays, it is ostensibly a recipe with extended commentary.[A 1] Another example is the title section of Armenian Papers: Poems 1954 - 1984: actually prose, this purports to be (but evidently is not) a translation from a fragmentary medieval manuscript. American conductor David Woodard praised Mathews' Plaisirs singuliers (1983) as "a long prose piece about masturbation."[16]
Mathews used proverbs in many creative ways in his book Selected Declarations of Dependence, which was based on the words found in 46 common English proverbs.[17] He used them to write poems, following self-invented rules. He also created "Perverbs and Paraphrases", complex riddles based on proverbs. In addition, he created anti-proverbs that he called "snips of the tongue", such as "Look before you leave."
Among the more important collections of his miscellaneous works are Immeasurable Distances, a gathering of his essays; The Human Country: New and Collected Stories; and The Way Home: Selected Longer Prose. Other works by Mathews include Twenty Lines a Day, a journal, and The Orchard, a brief memoir of his friendship with
Other
Mathews invented "Mathews's Algorithm", a method for producing literary works by transposing or permuting elements according to a predetermined set of rules.[18]
Death
Mathews died on January 25, 2017, in
Appearances in fiction
Mathews, along with his second wife Marie Chaix, appears as a minor character in the novels What I Have Written by John A. Scott, The Correspondence Artist by Barbara Browning, and The Hidden Keys by André Alexis. Mathews, among other literary luminaries, makes an appearance as a party guest in Paul Auster's novel 4321.
Bibliography
- The Conversions. Random House, New York, 1962. Repr.: ISBN 1-56478-166-6 [1](novel)
- Tlooth. Paris Review Editions/ Doubleday, Paris/ Garden City, N.Y., 1966. Repr.: Dalkey Archive, 1998. ISBN 1-56478-194-1(novel)
- The Ring: Poems 1956-69. Juillard Editions, Leeds, U.K., 1970.
- The Planisphere. Burning Deck, Providence, R.I., 1974 (poetry)
- The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium. Harper & Row, 1975. Repr.: Dalkey Archive, 1999. ISBN 1-56478-207-7. [2](novel)
- Le Savoir des rois: poèmes à perverbes. La Bibliothèque oulipienne, no. 5, 1976. (poetry)
- Trial Impressions. Burning Deck, Providence, R.I., 1977. (poetry)
- Selected Declarations of Dependence. Z Press, Calais, Vt., 1977. With Alex Katz. Repr.: Sun & Moon, 1996. (poems and short fiction)
- Country Cooking and Other Stories. Burning Deck, Providence, R.I., 1980. ISBN 0-930900-82-0
- voiceover). INA. 1995.
- La cantatrice sauve. 1981(fiction)
- Plaisirs singuliers. P.O.L., Paris 1983. (fiction, in French). Singular Pleasures. The Grenfell Press, New York 1988. With ISBN 978-1-56478-233-5
- Le Verger. P.O.L., Paris 1986. (memoir, in French). The Orchard: A Remembrance of Georges Perec.
- Cigarettes. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. Repr.: Dalkey Archive, 1998. ISBN 1-55584-092-2 [3](novel)
- Armenian Papers: Poems 1954-1984. Princeton University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-691-01440-X
- The Orchard: A Remembrance of Georges Perec. Bamberger Books, 1988. (remembrance)
- 20 Lines a Day. Dalkey Archive, Normal, Il., 1988. ISBN 0-916583-41-4. (journal)
- The Way Home: Collected Longer Prose. Grenfell Press, New York 1988. With ISBN 1-900565-05-6. (includes The Orchard, 1988, and Autobiography, from: Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale, Detroit 1988)
- Out of Bounds Burning Deck, Providence, R. I., 1989. ISBN 0-930901-61-4. (poetry)
- Écrits français. Oulipo, Paris 1990.
- Immeasurable Distances: The Collected Essays. 1991. ISBN 0-932499-43-0
- A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991. Carcanet, Manchester 1992.
- Giandomenico Tiepolo. Editions Flohic, Charenton 1993. ISBN 2-908958-65-1(essay)
- The Journalist. David R. Godine Books, Boston 1994. Repr.: Dalkey Archive, 1997. [4] ISBN 978-1-56478-165-9. (fiction)
- Epithalamium for Judith Kazantzis and Irving Weinman. Grenfell Press, 1998. (poem). With collages by Marie Chaix.
- Stefano Baroni, ISBN 2-02-030409-0
- Sainte Catherine. Editions P.O.L., 2000. (fiction, in French).
- The Human Country: New and Collected Stories. Dalkey Archive, 2002. ISBN 1-56478-321-9
- The Case of the Persevering Maltese Dalkey Archive, 2003. ISBN 978-1-56478-288-5 [5](essays)
- Day Shifts. Editions de la Mule de Cristal, Brussels 2004. (poetry). With Jean-Marc Scanreigh .
- My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973. Dalkey Archive Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56478-392-8(memoir or fiction)
- The New Tourism. Sand Paper Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9843312-3-9(poems)
- The Solitary Twin. New Directions, 2018. ISBN 978-0-8112-2754-4(novel)
- Collected Poems: 1946-2016. Sand Paper Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-9843312-8-4(poems)
Collaborations
- S: Semaines de Suzanne (1997), with Jean Echenoz, Mark Polizzotti, Florence Delay, Olivier Rolin, Sonja Greenlee, & Patrick Deville
- Oulipo Compendium (1998), as editor, with ISBN 0-947757-96-1
Secondary sources
- Leamon, Warren Harry Mathews (1993) ISBN 0-8057-4008-2
- McPherson, William "Harry Mathews: A Checklist" The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Harry Mathews Number (1987)
Notes
- ^ "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)" was performed onstage in London at the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone by the French actor Sam Spiegel but the title was later used for a collection of the author's short stories.
References
- ^ "January 2017 - Niki Charitable Art Foundation". Niki Charitable Art Foundation. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ^ a b "The American Oulipian – TheTLS". www.the-tls.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ^ a b c Fok, Kevin. "Biografia of Niki de Saint Phalle". www.mam.gov.mo. Civil and Municipal Affairs Bureau of Macao S.A.R. Archived from the original on 2017-04-12. Retrieved 2017-04-11.
- ^ "Life & Work - Niki Charitable Art Foundation". Niki Charitable Art Foundation. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ^ BOMB MagazineWinter, 1988-1989. Retrieved on [May 15, 2013]
- ^ (in French) Christophe Reig, « Harry Mathews/Raymond Roussel : Comment j’ai réécrit certains de ses livres », Cahiers Raymond Roussel, numéro III, Archived 2017-04-08 at the Wayback Machine dir. Anne-Marie Amiot et Christelle Reggiani, Paris/Caen, éditions Lettres Modernes/Minard (Classiques Garnier), 2008 (p. 181-204).
- ^ (fr) Christophe Reig, « Les autofrictions de Harry Mathews », La Licorne, n°100, (« Cinquante ans d’Oulipo de la contrainte à l’œuvre » (Carole Bisenius-Penin & André Petitjean eds), Rennes, P.U.R., 2013 (pp. 175–190).
- ISBN 9781438140667.
- ^ Seroy, Interviewed by Jeff (2017). "The Art of Editing No. 3". Vol. Fall 2017, no. 222.
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(help) - ^ "The Many False Floors of Harry Mathews". Vice. 16 October 2013. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ^ a b "Solving (and Not Solving) The Conversions | Quarterly Conversation". quarterlyconversation.com. Retrieved 2017-06-15.
- ^ "Tlooth | Dalkey Archive Press". www.dalkeyarchive.com. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ^ "BOMB Magazine — Harry Mathews by Lynne Tillman". bombmagazine.org. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
- ^ Momus, "I’m indebted to David Woodard", Mrs Tsk *, August 28, 2013.
- ^ Mieder, Wolfgang. 2019. "All roads lead to 'perverbs'": Harry Mathews' Selected Declarations of Dependence. Proverbium 36:183-216.
- ISBN 9781611680478.
- ^ "Harry Mathews, 1930-2017". The Paris Review. January 25, 2017. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
External links
Works or texts by Mathews
- Digital version of Mathews's Epithalamium for Judith Kazantzis and Irving Weinman, with introductory note
- Mathews, Harry Translation and the Oulipo: The Case of the Persevering Maltese
- "Observations of a Crab," a short story by Harry Mathews on UpRightDown
- Podcast of "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)" as read by Isaiah Sheffer
Conversations
- A Conversation with Harry Mathews. By John Ashbery
- Harry Mathews: A Meal Should Last Forever. Interview at Ioggernaut
- An Interview with Harry Mathews by Alexander Laurence from The Portable Infinite
Other
- Susannah Hunnewell (Spring 2007). "Harry Mathews, The Art of Fiction No. 191". The Paris Review. Spring 2007 (180).
- Composing: Harry Mathews' Words & Worlds
- Harry Mathews / bibliographie (in French, on the OuLiPo website)