Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish is Tom McCarthy's own selection of the best of the essays he has published over more than a decade in such places as The Believer and the London Review of Books. It includes essays on writers, of course (Laurence Sterne, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Kathy Acker among them), but also on Gerhard Richter, David Lynch, and Sonic Youth-and all of them are written with the same stylish and provocative flare that made McCarthy's Remainder such a hit. This is an indispensable introduction to the mind and work of one of today's most brilliant and controversial novelists.
Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish is Tom McCarthy's own selection of the best of the essays he has published over more than a decade in such places as The Believer and the London Review of Books. It includes essays on writers, of course (Laurence Sterne, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Kathy Acker among them), but also on Gerhard Richter, David Lynch, and Sonic Youth-and all of them are written with the same stylish and provocative flare that made McCarthy's Remainder such a hit. This is an indispensable introduction to the mind and work of one of today's most brilliant and controversial novelists.
Lauded novelist and critic Tom McCarthy has handpicked the essays in this original collection, which will appeal both to fans of McCarthy's fiction, pop culture, and serious criticsm.
Provisional Table of Contents
1 18
Semiconnected Thoughts on Michel de Certeau, On Kawara, Fly
Fishing, and Various Other Things
13 From Feedback to Reflux: Kafka’s
Cybernetics of Revolt
23 Get Real; or, What Jellyfish Have
to Tell Us About Literature
35 The Prosthetic Imagination of
David Lynch
43 On Dodgem Jockeys: A Suggested
Alternative Career for Writers
45 Meteomedia, or Why London’s
Weather is in the Middle of Everything
56 Nothing Will Have Taken Place
Except The Place
71 Recessional – or, the Time of the
Hammer
87 Richter Article
94 Stabbing the Olive
106 The Geometry of the Pressant
117 On Balls and Planes: An Introduction to The
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence
Stern
135 Kool Thing, or Why I Want to Fuck Patty
Hearst
139 Why Ulysses Matters
Tom McCarthy is known in the art world for the reports, manifestos and media interventions he has made as general secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network. His previous books include Men in Space, C, Remainder, and Tintin and the Secret of Literature. In 2013 he was awarded an inaugural Windham-Campbell Literature Prize from Yale University. He lives in London.
“[Tom McCarthy] is one of the few writers who not only illuminates
his subject matter but also takes our understanding down new paths.
There is an enormously wide frame of reference here, from Aristotle
to MC Hammer, and it never feels forced.” —Nicholas Lezard, The
Guardian
"Perhaps only in a Tom McCarthy essay would profound philosophical
insight be pulled from both William Faulkner and M.C. Hammer. Such
is the brainy, playful and always subversive power of McCarthy's
first collection, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish….[McCarthy is] an
adept stylist, in the vein of Nabokov, and never fails to deliver
dazzling twists of language and meaning. Each essay impresses with
the author's preternatural intelligence. Typewriters, Bombs,
Jellyfish will entice lovers of art and literature." —Scott
Neuffer, Shelf Awareness
"Reading Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish is like receiving a map of
all the space that art, literature, and culture have carved out for
each other. . . . This is the kind of book that deepens your
appreciation of the subjects you’ve previously encountered, and
sends you to seek out the ones you haven’t." —Gabe Habash,
Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Stimulating, intellectually exciting, and highly imaginative."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“McCarthy’s fiction and nonfiction aim to skewer an ideology of
authenticity that is fed and watered by a certain humanist
conception of literature.” —Simon Critchley
“McCarthy’s crisp, clean prose is stimulating, his concepts
original and his visual imagery powerful.” —Layla Sanai, The
Independent
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