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The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium
Composed of a series of letters between a husband and wife, The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium is a brilliant comedy about love and longing, dashed hopes and frustrations, and trying to make connections. Newly wedded Zachary McCaltex (a librarian in Miami) and Twang Panattapam (originally from the Southeast-Asian country of Pan-Nam, but residing in Italy) try to trace the whereabouts of a treasure supposedly lost off the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century, while navigating a relationship separated by an ocean as well as their different cultures. In the end, the postal service may be responsible for what gets lost (including Zachary's sanity) along the way.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
8 people are currently reading
324 people want to read
About the author
Harry Mathews
70 books88 followersHarry Mathews was an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.
Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, one of Mathews's chief early influences) from 1961 to 1962.
Harry Mathews was the first American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as the Oulipo, which is dedicated to exploring new possibilities in literature, in particular through the use of various constraints and algorithms. The late French writer Georges Perec, likewise a member, was a good friend, and the two translated some of each other's writings. Mathews considers many of his works to be Oulipian in nature, but even before he encountered the society he was working in a parallel direction.
Mathews was married to the writer Marie Chaix and divided his time between Paris, Key West, and New York.
Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, one of Mathews's chief early influences) from 1961 to 1962.
Harry Mathews was the first American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as the Oulipo, which is dedicated to exploring new possibilities in literature, in particular through the use of various constraints and algorithms. The late French writer Georges Perec, likewise a member, was a good friend, and the two translated some of each other's writings. Mathews considers many of his works to be Oulipian in nature, but even before he encountered the society he was working in a parallel direction.
Mathews was married to the writer Marie Chaix and divided his time between Paris, Key West, and New York.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
March 28, 2022
The novel is a correspondence of man and wife: the alternating letters of the librarian residing in Miami and the flower of Siam on the special errand in Italy…
They are on the treasure hunting – he tries to find an old secret map in the library and she attempts to discover in Italy what the nature of their treasure is…
The librarian gets acquainted with strange rich people… He is surrounded with their beneficial attention… He becomes an honorable member of some ridiculous arcane society… He participates in mysterious rites… Now he is a part of the team… And the entire venture starts turning into mystery… And now there are a lot of doubts…
For a dreamer any figment is superior to reality.
My hopes are unquenchable. I feel that I stand on the brink of lofty exchanges that will make the ills of life ridiculous. After each respite, even a nap, we can all meet each other as gods. I have entrusted my life to expectation, as if the bud would surely blossom. I can only live this way.
They are on the treasure hunting – he tries to find an old secret map in the library and she attempts to discover in Italy what the nature of their treasure is…
Listn! I have, how ever, find: coin clippings are-can to be a treazure. 1391 the papa Banifacio IX sell this emty abbazy of Montpelas, that is neighbr-like to Avignon on a edge of of-Antipopoes land. The buy-man is Messer Todao, he ’s a fiorentine who have a hous in Mont Pelier. He for-get to pay, the pope take his propriety in Florence, of-it is a part a box of gold-most-hllippins with a worht of 37,000 florini!
The librarian gets acquainted with strange rich people… He is surrounded with their beneficial attention… He becomes an honorable member of some ridiculous arcane society… He participates in mysterious rites… Now he is a part of the team… And the entire venture starts turning into mystery… And now there are a lot of doubts…
I feel that I’ve been tried as silver is tried, and found to be tin. How can I stand firm in trouble when I can’t even stand up! Outside of you there has been nothing to give me hope. My work at the library is disreputable and I am frequently told as much. I haven’t found a trace of the map. I wrote to Avignon and Harvard for help: no replies. Mr. Hood might just as well live in Peshawar for all the attention he pays me. And yet these things would matter little if I had seen you – if I had not lost touch with you. It’s unpleasant to blame you, but who else is there to blame for the wasted days and nights, the money spent, and the terrible expense of passionate affection?
For a dreamer any figment is superior to reality.
November 10, 2016
Checking an old New York Times review from the 70s, I was amused to see that this was described as "containing three novels". How true, I thought, of this multilayered work where an epistolary romance is also spun by each correspondent deep into its own opposing sub-stories: a historical mystery across late-medieval to renaissance Italy and game of secret societies and subterfuge in near future Miami. But no, the Times was referring to The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium and Other Novels which literally contains three novels. But make that five novels, then, as Odradek is gleefully plural.
In some ways, this a classically oulipan book of games and inventions, one which begins inscrutably mid-sentence, mid-plot, mid-character with few signposts and leaves the reader initially flailing even as it plays out little narrative intrigues in the story's present to seize upon until sense can begin to be made of the deeper threads -- labyrinthine historical puzzles and playful linguistic constructions. This is to say that despite the hooks offered, this not a simple book to approach, and probably demands fairly committed blocks of reading to keep it all straight despite the short length.
For instance, the more fascinating correspondent is Twang, a young women from the fictional Italy-colonized south-east Asian nation of Pan. Twang has an odd eloquence, conceptually deft even as her English is initially a pidgin agglomeration of odd phonetic dissonances, grammatical structures that appear to be grabbed from a working knowledge of other languages, and bits of her own invented mother-tongue, which the reader inevitably begins to pick up even as Twang learns English and which seems in some ways the more dexterously descriptive language. Which may require quite a bit of thumbing back and forth to keep straight, particularly for the early stages when the combined narrative and linguistic uncertainties may make Twang completely incomprehensible until the reader has progressed somewhat. But this attention is rewarded in full by the new details I glean on each pass.
In the meantime, Twang's constructions and musings further obscure the winding multi-century path of a treasure that may or may not still be lost. Again, the reader is thrown into deep water and will need to revisit in due course to make sense of all the information, and perhaps to piece together the underlying plot. Is this fully possible? Well, I'm midway and I'm still working on it. This is a book that makes me feel stupid and inattentive, something that plays into my sometime worries that I actually am -- that I'm becoming a worse reader, or at least a reader with worsening skills of synthesis and memory for all the little details.
But then, as my progress slows in flipping back and forth through the letters, it occurs to me that this may in fact be precisely the point, as well as another bit of oulipan game-playing. Our correspondents also seem to continuously re-read and and scour eachothers letters, so the whole imagined format of this being a pile of documents seems to support this mechanism of reading. (Indeed it is necessitated by the way the story is front-loaded with obfuscations.) Questions appear in rapid succession:
1. The letters are dated and in order (at the repeated demands of our other correspondent), but are they really or is part of the confusion down to filing errors? (note: recheck date order!)
2. Where are these letters collected together now, within the story's own world and digesis? In what fictional archive?
3. Who am I, the new reader of these letters, and what exactly am I looking for? Is the treasure still out there?
This is one of those cases where the mechanics of this novel have my brain in such a wonderful internal boil that it suddenly became essential to get my thoughts down here, to crystallize a few of my threads of inquiry. Which is very much to the credit of this unique slow-burn conceptual adventure story.
In some ways, this a classically oulipan book of games and inventions, one which begins inscrutably mid-sentence, mid-plot, mid-character with few signposts and leaves the reader initially flailing even as it plays out little narrative intrigues in the story's present to seize upon until sense can begin to be made of the deeper threads -- labyrinthine historical puzzles and playful linguistic constructions. This is to say that despite the hooks offered, this not a simple book to approach, and probably demands fairly committed blocks of reading to keep it all straight despite the short length.
For instance, the more fascinating correspondent is Twang, a young women from the fictional Italy-colonized south-east Asian nation of Pan. Twang has an odd eloquence, conceptually deft even as her English is initially a pidgin agglomeration of odd phonetic dissonances, grammatical structures that appear to be grabbed from a working knowledge of other languages, and bits of her own invented mother-tongue, which the reader inevitably begins to pick up even as Twang learns English and which seems in some ways the more dexterously descriptive language. Which may require quite a bit of thumbing back and forth to keep straight, particularly for the early stages when the combined narrative and linguistic uncertainties may make Twang completely incomprehensible until the reader has progressed somewhat. But this attention is rewarded in full by the new details I glean on each pass.
In the meantime, Twang's constructions and musings further obscure the winding multi-century path of a treasure that may or may not still be lost. Again, the reader is thrown into deep water and will need to revisit in due course to make sense of all the information, and perhaps to piece together the underlying plot. Is this fully possible? Well, I'm midway and I'm still working on it. This is a book that makes me feel stupid and inattentive, something that plays into my sometime worries that I actually am -- that I'm becoming a worse reader, or at least a reader with worsening skills of synthesis and memory for all the little details.
But then, as my progress slows in flipping back and forth through the letters, it occurs to me that this may in fact be precisely the point, as well as another bit of oulipan game-playing. Our correspondents also seem to continuously re-read and and scour eachothers letters, so the whole imagined format of this being a pile of documents seems to support this mechanism of reading. (Indeed it is necessitated by the way the story is front-loaded with obfuscations.) Questions appear in rapid succession:
1. The letters are dated and in order (at the repeated demands of our other correspondent), but are they really or is part of the confusion down to filing errors? (note: recheck date order!)
2. Where are these letters collected together now, within the story's own world and digesis? In what fictional archive?
3. Who am I, the new reader of these letters, and what exactly am I looking for? Is the treasure still out there?
This is one of those cases where the mechanics of this novel have my brain in such a wonderful internal boil that it suddenly became essential to get my thoughts down here, to crystallize a few of my threads of inquiry. Which is very much to the credit of this unique slow-burn conceptual adventure story.
November 15, 2024
Zachary McCaltex, a Miami librarian, corresponds with his new Southeast Asian wife, Twang Panattapam in Rome, as they search for clues to the whereabouts of a sixteenth-century treasure ship wrecked off the coast of Florida...but this brief synopsis tells you nothing very useful about The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium.
It's an odd novel, first published in 1971, and the more you think about it, the odder it becomes. Mathews writes to arbitrary (and unknown) constraints in the manner of Raymond Roussel, so that could lead us anywhere.
Communication is a big problem: Twang's English is rudimentary (it gradually improves) and her own language Pan is obtuse ("Weï weï lemö slop. Wo-woe the mysyry of love, we say. But it has no so bad a soun be-cause weï is "a-las" and "sadness", OK, but all-so "to-laugh") whilst Zachary has a knack for misinterpreting almost everything he sees. The letters tell of secret societies, Italian Renaissance plots, a fantasy carnival, con-men and grifter slang...with a possibly revelatory index at the end.
As Twang says "Hwat is to-persieve and to-think?" Personally, I have no idea hwat to-think...but no matter. The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium is a wonderfully strange novel that deserves to mystify more people.
It's an odd novel, first published in 1971, and the more you think about it, the odder it becomes. Mathews writes to arbitrary (and unknown) constraints in the manner of Raymond Roussel, so that could lead us anywhere.
Communication is a big problem: Twang's English is rudimentary (it gradually improves) and her own language Pan is obtuse ("Weï weï lemö slop. Wo-woe the mysyry of love, we say. But it has no so bad a soun be-cause weï is "a-las" and "sadness", OK, but all-so "to-laugh") whilst Zachary has a knack for misinterpreting almost everything he sees. The letters tell of secret societies, Italian Renaissance plots, a fantasy carnival, con-men and grifter slang...with a possibly revelatory index at the end.
As Twang says "Hwat is to-persieve and to-think?" Personally, I have no idea hwat to-think...but no matter. The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium is a wonderfully strange novel that deserves to mystify more people.
January 25, 2026
An epistolatory novel where an American husband (based in Miami) is co-ordinating with his Asian wife (based in Italy) over an attempt to recover a lost treasure trove of gold.
The wife's English starts out so poor that it's quite difficult to make out what she's trying to say, but this does improve as the novel progresses.
For me the hunt for the treasure is a bit of a MacGuffin with the real story being the breakdown of the relationship between spouses due to misunderstandings.
The wife's English starts out so poor that it's quite difficult to make out what she's trying to say, but this does improve as the novel progresses.
For me the hunt for the treasure is a bit of a MacGuffin with the real story being the breakdown of the relationship between spouses due to misunderstandings.
September 18, 2009
An epistolary novel, reminiscent of Pale Fire in ways, divided between a husband and wife who are separated between Miami and Italy in an intentionally farcical hunt for sunken treasure. The Southeast Asian wife's character and feelings, abetted by her dizzying Finnegans Wake-styled pidgin English, remain ambiguous throughout. The cover blurb will tell you it is funny but more in a clever than "laugh out loud on the subway" way.
Joel Adams said "it's like a more approachable Impressions of Africa" - all very well if you've read Roussel - for me, that remark adds yet another must-read to the toppling tower in my living room!
Joel Adams said "it's like a more approachable Impressions of Africa" - all very well if you've read Roussel - for me, that remark adds yet another must-read to the toppling tower in my living room!
July 22, 2024
There is no author that makes me happier while reading than Harry Mathews. His sardonicism was so total that I wear a dumbshit grin the entirety of each reading, this being, sadly, the last of his novels for me. I’ve spent my Harry, I strung it out for as long as possible. But there’s still so much ephemera left me that I can hardly complain.
Mood elevator: Harry Mathews. God bless ya, captain.
Harry was not CIA.
Mood elevator: Harry Mathews. God bless ya, captain.
Harry was not CIA.
March 26, 2018
Senryu Review:
Panamaniac
writes inscrutable missives
to sad arch merkin.
Panamaniac
writes inscrutable missives
to sad arch merkin.
February 3, 2017
Odradek Stadium is a novel that takes some work to get into, not because it’s boring, but because the structure of the novel relies on letters between a rambling, self-deprecating and obsessive man and a woman who is learning English pretty much as she goes (so uses a kind of Pan-Italian-English pidgin; the first 8 or so letters of hers are almost incomprehensible). We’re given no introduction to the characters and the first “letter” starts mid-sentence and goes on to describe a bunch of ads on TV that Zachary, the main character, watched while in a hotel. If this sounds painfully bizarre to you, then don’t read it. If this is intriguing, then you’ll probably enjoy this novel. Yet, it is one of those novels where you feel like you’re missing something (or you’re an idiot) until about halfway through. At that point Twang’s English grows stronger and an interesting plot begins to develop. It’s both a comedy of errors and a bit of a romance, as well as a mystery. It’s fun. And the final “letter” is rather beautiful and reminded me somewhat of Molly Bloom’s “speech” in Ulysses .
Regarding the title.
I’ll leave you with a line I found rather pretty: “…I’m a doomed machine, and can’t forget it, although wishing I could.”
Regarding the title.
I’ll leave you with a line I found rather pretty: “…I’m a doomed machine, and can’t forget it, although wishing I could.”
February 28, 2017
Meh. I'm sure I would've enjoyed this more if I gave it a chance, but it didn't grab me, and I wasn't looking to put in as much work as the concept required. I absolutely love Mathews' first two novels, but this one wasn't for me. I still think he's fantastic, though. I appreciate that he does such great and challenging work regarding what a novel can and should be.
February 13, 2009
what a fun fucking book. medusa carcasses and fish skulls line the beach. this gold sting like death fishes. toy lightning. wild migratory cows. blinding beach attire. inanimate scurrying. it's all in there
May 3, 2020
I returned to this novel after reading it last year in the 1975 omnibus edition, The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium and Other Novels. My first read left me weary and confused because I'd read The Conversions and Tlooth (the Other Novels) in a trance-like state of almost-constant hilarity and was expecting something similar from Odradek. I am reviewing this novel now, and logging it under the individual paperback, because I believe it deserves special attention.
Mathews is not only one of my very favorite writers, but in my estimation one of the most woefully underrated writers of his generation. His language possesses all the elegance and outward simplicity of Nabokov, while containing labyrinthine interior structures to rival his fellow postmodernists (though Mathews himself insisted he was not one). In content, he is as committed to the absurd and the slapstick as much as Pynchon or Barthelme. All these qualities are on display in The Conversions and Tlooth (with particular emphasis on a humor unlike most any other), but in Odradek, Mathews spins his linguistic idiosyncracy to dizzying heights.
On the surface, this is an epistolary romance novel: it takes as its subject the marriage-by-correspondence of Zachary McCaltex, slovenly Miami archivist and librarian, and Tro-tsi Twang Panattapam, an Asian woman from the fictional nation of Pan. But in its brief 190 pages, it contains multitudes: foremost, Twang's use of the letters to progressively learn English as she writes to her husband in the US, infusing her native Pan language (like the country, invented by Mathews himself) into a compelling pidgin tongue that serves as one of the novel's many puzzles; a document of an unappealing, lonely bachelor enduring all the drudgery of professional and social life; and their mutual and unfailingly complex involvement in a treasure hunt, led ostensibly by the potentates of Miami's over- and underworlds.
Mathews' vocation as a poet seems to be the stakes in Odradek. Not just with his brilliant invention of Pan (in which Twang is tutoring him as he gives her instructions on English), but the singular charm of Twang's English, which while always improving has curious and constant features like the replacement of nouns with their closest infinitives. Moreover, the Rousselian devices and wild invention of his first two novels is still present here in all its glory, but Mathews has turned his gaze inward, exploring the consciousness of two independent and diametrically opposed people who happen to be married with a poetic intensity unrivaled anywhere in comic literature.
Mathews is not only one of my very favorite writers, but in my estimation one of the most woefully underrated writers of his generation. His language possesses all the elegance and outward simplicity of Nabokov, while containing labyrinthine interior structures to rival his fellow postmodernists (though Mathews himself insisted he was not one). In content, he is as committed to the absurd and the slapstick as much as Pynchon or Barthelme. All these qualities are on display in The Conversions and Tlooth (with particular emphasis on a humor unlike most any other), but in Odradek, Mathews spins his linguistic idiosyncracy to dizzying heights.
On the surface, this is an epistolary romance novel: it takes as its subject the marriage-by-correspondence of Zachary McCaltex, slovenly Miami archivist and librarian, and Tro-tsi Twang Panattapam, an Asian woman from the fictional nation of Pan. But in its brief 190 pages, it contains multitudes: foremost, Twang's use of the letters to progressively learn English as she writes to her husband in the US, infusing her native Pan language (like the country, invented by Mathews himself) into a compelling pidgin tongue that serves as one of the novel's many puzzles; a document of an unappealing, lonely bachelor enduring all the drudgery of professional and social life; and their mutual and unfailingly complex involvement in a treasure hunt, led ostensibly by the potentates of Miami's over- and underworlds.
Mathews' vocation as a poet seems to be the stakes in Odradek. Not just with his brilliant invention of Pan (in which Twang is tutoring him as he gives her instructions on English), but the singular charm of Twang's English, which while always improving has curious and constant features like the replacement of nouns with their closest infinitives. Moreover, the Rousselian devices and wild invention of his first two novels is still present here in all its glory, but Mathews has turned his gaze inward, exploring the consciousness of two independent and diametrically opposed people who happen to be married with a poetic intensity unrivaled anywhere in comic literature.
February 15, 2021
Nice! This one's my second favorite Mathews so far, after Tlooth.
This is (99%) entirely epistolary between a husband and wife. There are a lot of technical nuances that sustain the story, and which I think are genius:
1. The wife is from East Asia and doesn't yet have a solid grasp of English, and so initially the letters from her are difficult to read. But this doesn't stop the husband from laying on some thick academia in his own letters. Her progress in learning the language is its own subplot.
2. They're ostensibly trying to track down an ancient lost treasure, but their letters touch on the personal too. What is and isn't their focus as they correspond is another subplot, and often a hilarious and/or troubling one.
3. Of course there are miscommunications that require several back-and-forths to clear up.
4. The integrity of the letters begins to mirror as the book unfolds. I could say more but #spoilers.
5. The ending is sort of a heartbreaker, turns out.
Anyway, I think this book was hard to pull off, and that Mathews is a mega-talent when he wants to be. While I wasn't outwardly laughing, my brain was tickled throughout (I could "hear the click," as David Foster Wallace would say). Not quite five stars though because it doesn't quite grab my soul.
Recommended for people who like/identify with this quote, "I am hunky-dory which means only normally depressed" (133).
This is (99%) entirely epistolary between a husband and wife. There are a lot of technical nuances that sustain the story, and which I think are genius:
1. The wife is from East Asia and doesn't yet have a solid grasp of English, and so initially the letters from her are difficult to read. But this doesn't stop the husband from laying on some thick academia in his own letters. Her progress in learning the language is its own subplot.
2. They're ostensibly trying to track down an ancient lost treasure, but their letters touch on the personal too. What is and isn't their focus as they correspond is another subplot, and often a hilarious and/or troubling one.
3. Of course there are miscommunications that require several back-and-forths to clear up.
4. The integrity of the letters begins to mirror as the book unfolds. I could say more but #spoilers.
5. The ending is sort of a heartbreaker, turns out.
Anyway, I think this book was hard to pull off, and that Mathews is a mega-talent when he wants to be. While I wasn't outwardly laughing, my brain was tickled throughout (I could "hear the click," as David Foster Wallace would say). Not quite five stars though because it doesn't quite grab my soul.
Recommended for people who like/identify with this quote, "I am hunky-dory which means only normally depressed" (133).
March 1, 2024
Unlike his first two books here I think Mathews’ experimentation serves the narrative preoccupation with the exploration of the main character’s relationship and to some extent the difficulties language faces as shown through the pidgin English. It’s done in the most convincing matter I’ve ever seen and gives the book a complexity that to me was lacking in the preceding novels whilst still retaining the interesting set pieces of those novels. Also whole heartedly approve of the index.
April 23, 2018
I should say skimmed not read. After making a heroic effort at a straight-on run at this book, I couldn't hack it. I get the drift and I like the comedic premise (I think), but Mathews makes it all too hard--though wife's English improves modestly as one struggles on. Maybe I'll come back to it one day, when there's nothing else left on the shelf.
July 14, 2023
I couldn't make it through.
Wife Twang's pidgin English is a bit of a ball-ache.
Husband Zachary's correspondence is sometimes fantabulous, often niminy-piminy.
The technical prattle about the secret treasure glazed my eyeballs.
An uneven contrivance. Like this review. I couldn't make it through.
Wife Twang's pidgin English is a bit of a ball-ache.
Husband Zachary's correspondence is sometimes fantabulous, often niminy-piminy.
The technical prattle about the secret treasure glazed my eyeballs.
An uneven contrivance. Like this review. I couldn't make it through.
October 14, 2025
The is the most readable/unreadable absurdist comic novel ever. He kept me engaged and laughing all the way to the end. What a master.
January 21, 2010
Harry Mathews once described the ideal reaction to his writing this way: The reader, upon finishing the book, immediately throws it out the window, but is compelled to go retrieve it before it hits the ground. I felt that way after the first two novels, but my energy began to flag as I approached the end of the third.
Thought I liked reading these, I can't recommend it to anyone.... When you get to your five hundredth page of puns, anagrams, absurdly plotted stories that amount to nothing, you begin to run out of steam. There are just so many educated buffoons stumbling through these clouded tales...
At the same time, if you are a fan of words, you'll probably enjoy each of these three novels in part. To echo one Florida-stuck character, Mathews is the "Naples ultra" of wordplay. If you felt somehow pleased recognizing that pun, you may enjoy this book.
Thought I liked reading these, I can't recommend it to anyone.... When you get to your five hundredth page of puns, anagrams, absurdly plotted stories that amount to nothing, you begin to run out of steam. There are just so many educated buffoons stumbling through these clouded tales...
At the same time, if you are a fan of words, you'll probably enjoy each of these three novels in part. To echo one Florida-stuck character, Mathews is the "Naples ultra" of wordplay. If you felt somehow pleased recognizing that pun, you may enjoy this book.
March 26, 2018
Masterpiece by Mathews in a great package by Dalkley Archive. Contains all the usual secret Oulipo algorhythms, varied styles of narrative voice, imagery which feel like conceptual art pieces with the words creating a kind of avant gard architecture, set pieces of emotional weight and pseudo Cold War intrigue that goes with Mathews so 'regulars' will get their moneys worth. It's done in the style of a correspondence but due to his style of experimentation and depth it is pointless in terms of narrative sense to follow it as it is always more of a sketchbook than a scripture with Mathews. I also read The Conversions and Cigarettes which are also weird and convoluted but feel overall much more minimalist whereas this has more travel, sprawl, conflict, raw emotion and a deep sense of loss
May 4, 2009
Aspects of the mise-en-scene of this book were so inventive, the criminal cults of Miami, the strange romance, etc., I wanted to ignore how boring and self-consciously "experimental" the writing often was. Compared to Ttlooth and The Conversions, the structure here is too knowable, too on the surface. I imagine this would be an easier book to teach from in a lit course than the other two, but that's not much of a recommendation. This one risks less than the other Mathews novels, a loss that affects the reader too. I felt a lack here when my adventure in navigating the text seemed tedious while the characters were having all the excitement.
January 1, 2015
Outstanding if esoteric.
The book is very very funny in more ways than can be explained without spoilers, but is not necessarily easy to read. It took me some time. I would be challenged to reconstruct what happened in detail, but was swept up by it. Intricate and full of fantasies that are unforgettable.
Don't rely on the index. Look up all tangential references. That the title is a joke is a sideshow.
Mathews flies the flag for his genre high. Unmissable in many [good] ways.
The book is very very funny in more ways than can be explained without spoilers, but is not necessarily easy to read. It took me some time. I would be challenged to reconstruct what happened in detail, but was swept up by it. Intricate and full of fantasies that are unforgettable.
Don't rely on the index. Look up all tangential references. That the title is a joke is a sideshow.
Mathews flies the flag for his genre high. Unmissable in many [good] ways.
Read
September 21, 2008I'm half way through War and Peace (I'm not giving up!) and I just need a little something on the side because I've been in Tolstoy Russia for months. Harry Mathews is the perfect break to pull me back into modernity, or past it, I should say. His brain is so weird and wonderful...
Want to read
August 31, 2007I've started this book 4 times now, and this time I swear I will finish it.
September 25, 2017
Magnificently written. The psychology and mood of the characters transpires through the text. The novel from 1971 is (even now) original, insightful, poetic and funny... really funny.
Read
September 11, 2021Checked out after 100 pages into The Conversions. Cute, clever storytelling. Clean prose. Too much Roussel.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews