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TYPEWRITERS, BOMBS, JELLYFISH

Name: TYPEWRITERS, BOMBS, JELLYFISH
Author: Tom McCarthy
ISBN: 978-1-68137-086-6

ESSAYS

by Tom McCarthy ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 9, 2017

Stimulating, intellectually exciting, and highly imaginative.

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A debut collection of essays covering the scope of modern literature, along with a quiet plea for its violent overthrow.

When it comes to realism, McCarthy, the author of such experimental novels as Remainder (2007), C. (2011), and Satin Island (2015), doesn’t seek authenticity; he wants an explosion. The kind of real he has in mind involves "a radical and disastrous eruption within the always-and-irremediably inauthentic; a traumatic real; a real that's linked to repetition; a real whose framework of comprehension is ultimately neither literary nor philosophical but psychoanalytic." These essays are all invigorating examinations of writers (and artists such as Gerhard Richter, On Kawara, Ed Ruscha) who destroyed boundaries, collapsed rules of time, space, and gender, and bombed their own systems of control. On Joyce’s radical use of language in Ulysses, for example, McCarthy remarks, “this is not interior monologue; it’s exterior consciousness, embodied—or encorpsed—consciousness that has ruptured conventional syntax’s membrane, prolapsed.” More than 150 years earlier there was Laurence Sterne, who wrote a masterpiece in which conventional narrative order falls apart. "Error is everywhere in Tristram Shandy; it's the most glitch-ridden book imaginable—it's all glitch," McCarthy writes. "Everything gets lost or misdirected; every action generates unwanted consequences." A most illuminating essay on Kafka interprets the great writer’s “Letter to His Father” in cybernetic terms, as a counterproductive “feedback loop,” in which the relationship becomes not self-repairing but self-destructive. Through it all, McCarthy seems to be mapping out the coordinates of his own ambitions, wondering if there’s any unchartered territory left. The thought is there in the book’s final sentence, in a concluding essay on the life and work of the late Kathy Acker: “It might just be that the final measure of a writer is not so much what they achieve themselves as what they render possible for others.”

Stimulating, intellectually exciting, and highly imaginative.

Pub Date: May 9, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-68137-086-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: New York Review Books

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
DARK SONNET
by Tom McCarthy & Bill Dohar

- BOOK REVIEW
PIRATES AND SHIPWRECKS
by Tom McCarthy

- BOOK REVIEW
SATIN ISLAND
by Tom McCarthy

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.