Tell Me About Harry Mathews

which is the other cigarette-focussed oulipo novel?

My top six picks might be: The Conversions, Tlooth, Odradek Stadium, The Human Country, Armenian Papers, My Life in CIA.

I was surprised at how good Twenty Lines A Day was. Selected Declarations of Dependence wasn't nearly as good as I hoped. The Orchard, about Perec, is nice.

That Singular Pleasures hasn't been mentioned yet is something of a travesty. One of the most beautiful books about masturbation imaginable.

Everyone has had nice things to say about My Life In CIA, why not you too?

which is the other cigarette-focussed oulipo novel?

Richard Beard's x20?

Actually, we are overlooking a big contribution of his at the other end of the specturm: his work as co-editor of The Oulipo Compendium. Which contains a nice little alphabet-based thing often credited to him that I can never actually find inside the book, the one that starts "Hey! Be seedy effigy."

Also, I wasn't aware that Richard Beard's x20 was meant to be Oulipo. I remember quite liking it at the time, but not being blown away by its form or language.

found not under alpha- or homophon- but sequence.

I think I'll reread Cigarettes too since it's been years and it's right here and you are all so full of its merits.

The structure of the novel, based on the number 20 encompasses four basic constraints.

1. The novel covers the first 20 days after Gregory Simpson gives up smoking 20 cigarettes a day, each day comprising a chapter.
2. Each chapter has exactly 4000 words, calculated as the number of minutes it would take Simpson to smoke 20 cigarettes a day for 20 days (at ten minutes per cigarette; 10 is also the number of years he has been smoking 20 cigarettes a day).
3. Each chapter is divided into sections: 20 sections in the first chapter, 19 in the second, progressing to 1 section in the last and 20th chapter.
4. The novel contains the same number of words as Simpson has smoked during the ten year period.

As constraints go it's hardly Alphabetical Africa, but they're there, nonetheless.

also seek out the lit. 'zine he published in the early '60s, 'locus solus' -- edited by koch, schuyler and ashbery. they can be found cheaper than you'd think, or could a few years ago. it only lasted three issues but were exceptional and really thick.

The armchair or the book?

http://www.trendir.com/archives/parri-free-armchair.jpg

The Conversions is more what they call a romp. Over and over things are elaborately converted from one form or medium to another. E.g., Grent Wayl's will asks for a batch of small pancakes in the shape of the notes of the score of the music played at his funeral to be cooked and eaten by the mourners.

"Singular Pleasures" happens to be anthologized in The Way Home.

Harry Mathews: Name Your Reasons Why He Is So Bad & Hated

I need my own copy of Singular Pleasures!

I need to reread Tlooth

never read his short stories so I picked some up from the library and holy shit Country Cooking from Central France is incredible

this dude is such a great writer, he seems like such a wonderful loveable piece of shit

I read the story with like one of those high energy bright eyed but braindead hangovers I sometimes get in a coffee shop this morning and the story just made me like make noises and faces all over the place I hope I didn't look crazy

haha I can totally picture that. and have done the same thing myself many times (most often with Barthelme stories; most recently with Flaubert's "A Good Heart" or whatever it's called).

found 'singular pleasures' in a back number of some journal and read it. is the book version longer? or is it just gratuitously formatted?

:-(

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/01/25/harry-mathews-1930-2017/

The interview linked within is great and he managed to complete one more novel!

Cigarettes-ing now, and loving it

I'm reading _The Conversions_ ... 50 pages in and thoroughly confused and delighted and maybe slightly annoyed. Was tempted to spend some time trying to decipher some of the odder passages, to see if I could figure out what he's doing, but I decided to just push on and see to what extend he reveals it more explicitly later. If not, well, I can always go back!

Cigarettes-ing now, and loving it

I've only read Cigarettes and CIA, keen now to check out some of his shorter writing.

i read Tlooth and then Sinking of the Odradek Stadium about 25 years ago, they both had a really big impact but I haven't read anything Oulipian in almost that long. I should revisit Tlooth especially.