esrosedotblog

READIN'

I finished the Dog book. I enjoyed it. I liked its warm evocation of a life behind the mask of autism. I liked the realistic family scenes. I liked that it was a page turner. I liked the puzzles and math problems inserted. All of it.

I have moved on now to one of my grand sweep efforts; reading all I can of one author. In this case, Harry Mathews, an expat writer now approaching 75 years of age; a little ahead of my cohort. He would have been 25 when I went to college.

I stumbled upon him through a NYTimes Book Section review of his latest How I Joined CIA in which he 'admits' to being a long time CIA operative; or does he? Is it fact or fiction or both? Dunno.

He is allied with a type of writing called OuLiPo: Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle / Workshop for Potential Literature; the only American member.

Oulipo members favor the use of constraints, mathematical and otherwise, to tighten up and discipline the writing process. I will have to wait and see how this has affected Mathews.

I have started with one of his mid life works Cigarettes which seems to be constrained to the use of segments only involving two people directly. Peripheral characters will appear in their own bi-personal chapter.

In a way, they read like short stories; as in smoking a cigarette. Twenty minutes of satisfaction, then the need for another one. Here the need to go on is compelling. As layer after layer of people's stories are removed, certain central issues emerge which begin to loom. In this case, who has the real painting.

I know, it is sort of globby to describe. But I sort of get the idea of the technique. In the meantime, the story or stories themselves are quite entertaining and enjoyable.

I will report on other Mathews works in due course, including his edited work on Oulipo!

I can hear the yawns out there now. There is nothing more boring than to hear about someone else's reading, unless it is to hear about someone else's movies. But we do that all the time. So this is just more of the same and it is what is going on today and tomorrow. No films. No real appointments of any kind. Reading. It is summer.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.