There Have Only Been Readers
February 4, 2017 7:25 AM Subscribe
“I’ve always said that my ideal reader would be someone who, after finishing one of my novels, would throw it out the window, presumably from an upper floor of an apartment building in New York, and by the time it had landed would be taking the elevator down to retrieve it.” --Harry Mathews, 1930-2017 (RIP, OULIPO) [Previously]
From the Times obit:
posted by languagehat at 8:03 AM on February 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
He qualified for the group unwittingly, he recalled, after engaging in a particularly challenging word game: He rewrote Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by using the vocabulary from a Julia Child recipe for a cauliflower dish, and vice versa.I regret to say that even though I'm a fan of Oulipo I've never read Mathews, but I can heartily recommend the [Previously] link. Oh, you sweet innocent MeFites of 2011!
What some might see as completely pointless, he found intellectually liberating.
posted by languagehat at 8:03 AM on February 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
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My favorites of his are My life in CIA, and Cigarettes.
posted by hopeless romantique at 8:52 AM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
My favorites of his are My life in CIA, and Cigarettes.
posted by hopeless romantique at 8:52 AM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I don't ever think an author should limit their desired readership to those folks who live in NYC skyscrapers with elevators that exceed the terminal velocity of falling books... that's a really small subsegment of the population... granted you are guaranteed they have copious amounts of money, but still - that is an extremely limiting pool of patrons for even the most pretentious artist.
It's a bummer that he must have died dissatisfied that he was unable to drive away all those extra fans of his work - failing to minimize his voice to his desired pool.
He will be missed.
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posted by Nanukthedog at 11:37 AM on February 4, 2017
It's a bummer that he must have died dissatisfied that he was unable to drive away all those extra fans of his work - failing to minimize his voice to his desired pool.
He will be missed.
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posted by Nanukthedog at 11:37 AM on February 4, 2017
Even though he has passed away, he will still be expected to attend OuLiPo meetings. He and the other necessarily absent oulipians are given special dispensation at the start of every meeting to not attend.
Reading Cigarettes was one of the formative experiences of my life, both for the things I loved about it, as well as what I disliked. Few books have drawn such a wide range of responses from me. Anna Karenina is another. He was a great writer, and I'm glad he had such a long, productive life.
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posted by Kattullus at 11:41 AM on February 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Reading Cigarettes was one of the formative experiences of my life, both for the things I loved about it, as well as what I disliked. Few books have drawn such a wide range of responses from me. Anna Karenina is another. He was a great writer, and I'm glad he had such a long, productive life.
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posted by Kattullus at 11:41 AM on February 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
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posted by oulipian at 12:28 PM on February 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by oulipian at 12:28 PM on February 4, 2017 [4 favorites]
From the article: "But [his first novel] baffled most of the reading public, including the poor Time critic who complained that the symbolism 'spreads through the novel like crab grass.'"
I adore Harry Mathews, and that line is not a "poor Time critic" misunderstanding his subject. If any writer would have agreed with and relished a comparison to a noxious weed, it was Mathews.
RIP, you brilliant jerk.
posted by ZaphodB at 2:34 PM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I adore Harry Mathews, and that line is not a "poor Time critic" misunderstanding his subject. If any writer would have agreed with and relished a comparison to a noxious weed, it was Mathews.
RIP, you brilliant jerk.
posted by ZaphodB at 2:34 PM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Oh gosh. Tlooth and The Conversions were both formative reading experiences for me but I haven't read them in 15 years, I'll have to fix that.
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posted by hapticactionnetwork at 2:42 PM on February 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by hapticactionnetwork at 2:42 PM on February 4, 2017 [1 favorite]
Of his works, I've only read The Conversions, but Mathews seemed to be a bit of a an odd one (er Oulipo-ian) in that most of the other notable oulipo works around, typically you can find the author has acknowledged (cf. Raymond Roussel's How I Wrote Certain of My Books) or there is third party discussion of what particular constraints the author was writing under...I did spend some time looking and never found any such for The Conversions.
posted by juv3nal at 5:03 PM on February 4, 2017
posted by juv3nal at 5:03 PM on February 4, 2017
He qualified for the group unwittingly, he recalled, after engaging in a particularly challenging word game: He rewrote Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by using the vocabulary from a Julia Child recipe for a cauliflower dish, and vice versa.
The text of this piece may be found here, for the curious. It is quite possible, and quite entertaining, to decipher the cauliflower recipe, once you know what it is, using the Keats poem as an occasional crib for vocabulary.
posted by kenko at 5:13 PM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
The text of this piece may be found here, for the curious. It is quite possible, and quite entertaining, to decipher the cauliflower recipe, once you know what it is, using the Keats poem as an occasional crib for vocabulary.
posted by kenko at 5:13 PM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I did spend some time looking and never found any such for The Conversions
The Conversions was written prior to his membership in the Oulipo (I think he and Perec first met because Perec was translating it into French, but I'm not certain about that); at any rate, Mathews, unlike Perec and many other members, never outright revealed what constraints he had followed (one reason that he said no one would now be able to figure out the structure of Cigarettes). At most he dropped hints—Mathews' Algorithm is in play in The Journalist, for instance.
posted by kenko at 5:15 PM on February 4, 2017
The Conversions was written prior to his membership in the Oulipo (I think he and Perec first met because Perec was translating it into French, but I'm not certain about that); at any rate, Mathews, unlike Perec and many other members, never outright revealed what constraints he had followed (one reason that he said no one would now be able to figure out the structure of Cigarettes). At most he dropped hints—Mathews' Algorithm is in play in The Journalist, for instance.
posted by kenko at 5:15 PM on February 4, 2017
would throw it out the window, presumably from an upper floor of an apartment building in New York
That's a very litter-ate sentiment.
posted by Twang at 7:52 PM on February 4, 2017
That's a very litter-ate sentiment.
posted by Twang at 7:52 PM on February 4, 2017
Ah, on reading the quote, Harry only expected you to have entered the lift to retrieve it, rather than having actually beaten the book to the ground. That makes more sense.
posted by trif at 8:50 AM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by trif at 8:50 AM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
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