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Preparations for Search
What if the private detective you might pay to find someone long gone thinks to hire you, or money lent for him gets spent on home improvement; or if relations among a group of friends and lovers go on not so much too long as in new angles to exchange poignant energies even of ending? Is it literally some chemistry we’re in or motion with its partial randomness?
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
In conversation with Joseph McElroy, I once described his short novel Preparations for Search in genre terms as "noir-core," in which the conventions of noir are flattened and compressed into dense, jet-black space, a gravitational singularity. As unprecedented as McElroy's work appears at first glance, he's also not afraid to use the familiar forms of genre to put forth his vision. Hind's Kidnap is, at heart, a detective story. Plus? File under science fiction. Lookout Cartridge offers more than a little something to fans of John le Carré. Even later stories like "Night Soul" engage in coy flirtations with genre; in this case, the fairy tale. McElroy's 2003 novel Actress in the House has a set-up straight out of Raymond Chandler: complex and alluring young woman entices older man (not actually a detective, but functionally so) to help her out of a jam.
There's a sense of noir in Preparations for Search as well, "noir" as defined by George Tuttle as a subcategory of hardboiled detective fiction in which "the protagonist is usually not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator." Amateur sleuths abound in McElroy, from the titular Hind in Hind's Kidnap to Jim Mayn in Women and Men (again, not an actual detective but a kind of investigative journalist whose freelance sleuthing propels a good portion of the book). One could say that McElroy, in both his novels and short fiction, invites us to become sleuths as we plunder, decode, hypothesize about and interrogate his information-rich narratives.
But what makes Preparations for Search "noir-core" is McElroy's approach to tempo and tone. Here the prose is so tightly wound—the pace accelerated to two-hundred beats-per-minute—that what we're left with is the structural essence of noir without the flabby clichés. Begun in the early-Eighties when the author was chest-deep at work on his 1987 masterpiece Women and Men, an early version of Preparations for Search was intended as part of Women and Men but pulled at the last minute, and except for a hush-hush appearance in Formations in 1984 (again, in nascent form), the narrative remained out of the public eye until Small Anchor Press published a limited run in 2010. This is the same text you have before you now.
PRAISE
"...the text knows what it means to be excised from a former home (Women and Men). Which would mean that the anxious, anguished, coastal drawing on the front is an accurate portrait of the contents of the text, which is coastal in the sense that it constitutes an outline of a shore which is otherwise impossible to measure. Which would mean that Preparations for Search is fractal, or infinitely subdivisible, as McElroy's sentences often are..." —Golden Handcuffs
"...[cut from Women and Men before publication in 1987] Preparations for Search gives evidence that... there are unities and ideas of completion that have nothing to do with length, and which instead make the case that certain material has to go, and yet this material, whether germane to the narrative trajectory of the whole is still somehow, by virtue of the man's style, breathtaking and electrifying, despite the fact that it reveals its vintage in details (telephones, answering machines, an absence of computers), and thus the excision is as invigorating as the most refreshing voice we are likely to encounter in the firmament of the present." —Rick Moody
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
In conversation with Joseph McElroy, I once described his short novel Preparations for Search in genre terms as "noir-core," in which the conventions of noir are flattened and compressed into dense, jet-black space, a gravitational singularity. As unprecedented as McElroy's work appears at first glance, he's also not afraid to use the familiar forms of genre to put forth his vision. Hind's Kidnap is, at heart, a detective story. Plus? File under science fiction. Lookout Cartridge offers more than a little something to fans of John le Carré. Even later stories like "Night Soul" engage in coy flirtations with genre; in this case, the fairy tale. McElroy's 2003 novel Actress in the House has a set-up straight out of Raymond Chandler: complex and alluring young woman entices older man (not actually a detective, but functionally so) to help her out of a jam.
There's a sense of noir in Preparations for Search as well, "noir" as defined by George Tuttle as a subcategory of hardboiled detective fiction in which "the protagonist is usually not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator." Amateur sleuths abound in McElroy, from the titular Hind in Hind's Kidnap to Jim Mayn in Women and Men (again, not an actual detective but a kind of investigative journalist whose freelance sleuthing propels a good portion of the book). One could say that McElroy, in both his novels and short fiction, invites us to become sleuths as we plunder, decode, hypothesize about and interrogate his information-rich narratives.
But what makes Preparations for Search "noir-core" is McElroy's approach to tempo and tone. Here the prose is so tightly wound—the pace accelerated to two-hundred beats-per-minute—that what we're left with is the structural essence of noir without the flabby clichés. Begun in the early-Eighties when the author was chest-deep at work on his 1987 masterpiece Women and Men, an early version of Preparations for Search was intended as part of Women and Men but pulled at the last minute, and except for a hush-hush appearance in Formations in 1984 (again, in nascent form), the narrative remained out of the public eye until Small Anchor Press published a limited run in 2010. This is the same text you have before you now.
PRAISE
"...the text knows what it means to be excised from a former home (Women and Men). Which would mean that the anxious, anguished, coastal drawing on the front is an accurate portrait of the contents of the text, which is coastal in the sense that it constitutes an outline of a shore which is otherwise impossible to measure. Which would mean that Preparations for Search is fractal, or infinitely subdivisible, as McElroy's sentences often are..." —Golden Handcuffs
"...[cut from Women and Men before publication in 1987] Preparations for Search gives evidence that... there are unities and ideas of completion that have nothing to do with length, and which instead make the case that certain material has to go, and yet this material, whether germane to the narrative trajectory of the whole is still somehow, by virtue of the man's style, breathtaking and electrifying, despite the fact that it reveals its vintage in details (telephones, answering machines, an absence of computers), and thus the excision is as invigorating as the most refreshing voice we are likely to encounter in the firmament of the present." —Rick Moody
- GenresFiction
ebook
First published January 1, 2010
51 people want to read
About the author
Joseph McElroy
32 books234 followersJoseph McElroy is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.
McElroy grew up in Brooklyn Heights, NY, a neighborhood that features prominently in much of his fiction. He received his B.A. from Williams College in 1951 and his M.A. from Columbia University in 1952. He served in the Coast Guard from 1952–4, and then returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. in 1961. As an English instructor at the University of New Hampshire, his short fiction was first published in anthologies. He retired from teaching in 1995 after thirty-one years in the English department at Queens College, City University of New York.
McElroy's writing is often grouped with that of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon because of the encyclopedic quality of his novels, particularly the 1191 pages of Women and Men (1987). Echoes of McElroy's work can be found in that of Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. McElroy's work often reflects a preoccupation with how science functions in American society; Exponential, a collection of essays published in Italy in 2003, collects science and technology journalism written primarily in the 1970s and 1980s for the New York Review of Books.
He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ingram Merrill Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
McElroy grew up in Brooklyn Heights, NY, a neighborhood that features prominently in much of his fiction. He received his B.A. from Williams College in 1951 and his M.A. from Columbia University in 1952. He served in the Coast Guard from 1952–4, and then returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. in 1961. As an English instructor at the University of New Hampshire, his short fiction was first published in anthologies. He retired from teaching in 1995 after thirty-one years in the English department at Queens College, City University of New York.
McElroy's writing is often grouped with that of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon because of the encyclopedic quality of his novels, particularly the 1191 pages of Women and Men (1987). Echoes of McElroy's work can be found in that of Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. McElroy's work often reflects a preoccupation with how science functions in American society; Exponential, a collection of essays published in Italy in 2003, collects science and technology journalism written primarily in the 1970s and 1980s for the New York Review of Books.
He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ingram Merrill Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 20, 2014
un petit morceau
of Joe
is not narrow
or fallow,
shallow or
malapropos,
so
go,
fellow
aficionado,
go!
Read slow!
Be thorough!
This virtuoso,
this head-honcho
of Pro-
se, know
s, ok? he KNOWS shit, and he writes like a bloody dream. So set aside an hour and see how this lovely little thing takes you.
Then go read the rest of the old fella'
of Joe
is not narrow
or fallow,
shallow or
malapropos,
so
go,
fellow
aficionado,
go!
Read slow!
Be thorough!
This virtuoso,
this head-honcho
of Pro-
se, know
s, ok? he KNOWS shit, and he writes like a bloody dream. So set aside an hour and see how this lovely little thing takes you.
Then go read the rest of the old fella'
February 25, 2024
I liked "Taken from him" a bit better. They both pose a background mystery and play with confusion, but Preparations feels more social (inter-subjective), whereas Taken is more intra-subjective.
It so weird. His writing is simple - the "plot" is simple, he doesn't use fancy words, yet it is so easy to get lost. The sentences seem simple, but are very deceptive.
I always feel like you are listening in on something more-or-less mundane (OK, there is a private detective), but it feels confusing but in a hard to put in words way.
So freaking fascinating.
(I'd so like to read more of his stuff, but most my reading time is very late in the evening when babies finally sleep, so tired, and this needs attention and focus... Actually you need to 100% focus in order to achieve the hypnagogic feeling of the book, which is hard when you are at the edge of the actual (physiological) hypnagogic state of your own....) :)
It so weird. His writing is simple - the "plot" is simple, he doesn't use fancy words, yet it is so easy to get lost. The sentences seem simple, but are very deceptive.
I always feel like you are listening in on something more-or-less mundane (OK, there is a private detective), but it feels confusing but in a hard to put in words way.
So freaking fascinating.
(I'd so like to read more of his stuff, but most my reading time is very late in the evening when babies finally sleep, so tired, and this needs attention and focus... Actually you need to 100% focus in order to achieve the hypnagogic feeling of the book, which is hard when you are at the edge of the actual (physiological) hypnagogic state of your own....) :)
July 17, 2014
Enos wants to hire a private detective to find his father, but his friends don't want to lend him the money and everyone knows more than they're letting on. Written in a clipped style, Joseph McElroy's chapbook poetically renders the evolving nature of a group of friends, through the lense of laid back paranoia. The detective that nobody can figure out if Enos has hired, or if he did where he got the money, hangs around until even he is unsure of his relationship with the group. There aren't any real answers here, just circumstances and people. It's life imagined and made truer for it.
May 22, 2021
Upon a second reading, I've upped my review to four stars. This novella was excised from Women and Men and really only coheres within the context of the latter's themes and structures and styles. The circumlocutions of Bet, Enos, Susan, Mary, Dectective Korn - not to mention the yet more distant satellite of Enos's father, Matt - perfectly contain, advance, and expound Women and Men's bipartite elements of realist vignette and colloidal unconscious.
December 2, 2012
Chapters that were missing from the original Women and Men.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews