My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973

by Harry Mathews

"Through a series of improbable coincidences, in the early 1970s Harry Mathews, then living in France, was commonly reputed to be a CIA agent. Even friends had their suspicions, which were only reinforced each time he tried to deny such a connection. With growing frustration at his inability to make anyone believe him, Mathews decided to act the part." "My Life in the CIA documents Mathews's experiences as a would-be spy during 1973, where amid charged world events - the coup in Chile, Watergate, the ending of the Vietnam War - he found himself engaged in a game that took sinister twists as various foreign agencies decided he was a presence that should be eliminated." Harry Mathews has turned these strange events into a thriller where the line between fact and fiction gets relentlessly blurred.

Genres: Fiction, American, Novels, Espionage, American Fiction, The United States Of America, United States

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Harry 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.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Senryu Review:

Bored Oulipian
takes a summer of intrigue
in endearing romp.

[TK421 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonder how much of this book is actual fact and how much is artistic licence? Regardless, a very interesting read.

[Andrew]

I've been a fan of Harry Mathews for years, and each of his books has an entirely different angle -- I gotta say I appreciated this not-quite-thriller quite a bit, with its echoes of Foucault's Pendulum (or if we're being declasse, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), and its satire of the infighting and self-seriousness of the impotent French leftism of the time period, and delightfully vague middle-finger ending. I would hardly call this essential reading, but if you're a fan of Mathews or the Oulipians and their ilk more broadly, check it out.

[Monica Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books weren't much use, aside from a few novels, and who can trust a novelist?
-Harry Mathews


Harry Mathews is special. Special because he is the first American to be featured on Salonica. He achieved this status because he is the only American to be a member of the prestigious group, Oulipo . If he is good enough for them...


And Harry Mathews is not to be trusted. Even though he is not to be trusted as a novelist, never fear, dear reader, you will be in capable hands. Someone clever enough to deceive a reader, to make the reader reach for any literary truth to grab hold of, is more than capable as a craftsman. My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 by Harry Mathews is a subdued thriller about a bored American writer named Harry Mathews, circa 1973, who pretends he is in the CIA. The wily Mathews pens this mock-memoir style so we are never quite sure what is fact and what is fiction. Was he involved in a clandestine plot that would eventually lead to his escaping his own death? No one, and maybe not even Mathews himself, knows for sure. This is the kind of high-wire act Mathews manages to pull off with ease.

It all began when someone inferred he was with the CIA and instead of denying it, he wholeheartedly ensconces himself in the life of a spy. He cases joints, he marks walls with chalk, he invents a business, he gets involved in subversive politicking and he manages to bumble his way into bizarre situations in which he has no idea he is being set-up. Which leads the reader to constantly feel as if they are being set-up. Did this really happen to him or is this the fictional part that connects two seemingly unrelated events? As a reader, you ask yourself this on almost every page. Amazed that even half of these things could be true, it's difficult to ignore the blending of a life lived on the edge because he was tired of denying he was CIA and a writer writing on the edge because he was mistakenly assumed to by CIA.

Only a deft hand and a certain type of writer could incite this vertiginous feeling in the reader - to actually feel like you're floating in that invisible, intellectual space known as suspension of disbelief. It's all so plausible and simultaneously off-kilter, almost unbelievable as in this plot hatched while Mathews skies one day:

Two qualities are required of an intelligence officer in the field: placement and access, that is , knowing whether information can be found and how to get it. What activity could supply those qualities? Something involving travel to Iron Curtain countries. If I worked for CIA, I could run a real travel agency; short of that, couldn't I set myself up as a travel advisor? Thus a new and necessary entity was born on the last schuss of my trail: Locus Solus - International Travel Counsel.

The name was the clincher. Locus Solus had been a little magazine I'd started thirteen years before with three poet friends (it was originally the title of a work by one of our idols, Raymond Roussel). The magazine was officially published in Lans-en-Vercor, or rather, unofficially: then as now I wanted to avoid bureaucratic hassle, and I managed to persuade the quiet, friendly man who ran - and was still running - the local post office to let me use my personal address as the magazine's.

It's the simplicity of style with which he delivers the story but also the simplicity of Mathews himself that lulls the reader into a an intimate relationship. This matter-of-fact retelling or inventing is written with a wink. We know it happened because he told us so. But like with any memoir, the subjectivity of the memory of the subject colors the truth, the facts, and as we readers we are left to choose to believe or not to believe if this is "how it really happened." This is partly why My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 is a tricky thriller. It's not until the end that we know that all his play-acting has landed him in life-threatening trouble. People are on to him, but they have no idea what he is onto. And so Mathews comes across as a Keystone Cop who is missing a partner. Even if he know this, he gains confidence from the idea of playing a game that no one knows about. He creates a fictional world to live that soon outpaces the life he has established in Paris:

I now was beginning to see that what my intellectual friends cared about was not anything I needed or wanted. They may have had the answers. I noticed, however, that their answers frequently came from commentators on the authors they revered rather than from the authors themselves - they were like students taking refuge in essays on Shakespeare instead of tackling Hamlet on their own. They reminded me of 4th-century Manicheans who hoped that if they ate a fig from the right tree they might eventually sigh forth some particles of the Godhead. My friends were looking for the figs of intellectual correctness. For me, what matter was not the rightness of the ideas I'd collected but the process of thinking, something that often led to confusion - in my opinion, a very productive state of mind. So I went on listening to the talk about post-structuralism or Maoist theory, as interested as ever, but keeping my mouth shut, unless there was an urgent reason for me to open it.

As thrilling as this novel is, in it's friendly style, there's comfort in it as well. There is stability in the intellectual pursuits Mathews amuses himself with in between faux espionage episodes; there is Nureyev and Makarova dancing Swan Lake in the courtyard of the Louvre, the meetings with George Perec and Souzay performing Schumann. There are the historical events that buttress some of the excitement - the chaos of Baader-Meinhof Gang, mention of George Bush as Nixon's last ambassador to the UN and the uprisings in Chile. All these happenings and historical accuracies lend solace to the reader, they give us locus, a place we know.

Mathews writes with a worldliness that makes us feel as if we are a reader of the world. We are present there, in Paris, in 1973, getting drugged at a Communist Party Meeting or having a coffee with Perec at a cafe on Saint Germain. I think Mathews is overlooked for his creativity as well as his writing. It doesn't matter if his story is true or not, it's a good one and it's as thrilling as Mathews is.

[Chip Masters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wonder what it would be like to pretend to be a CIA agent? How would you go about convincing people you were a spy? What kinds of mind games would you play? How would you concoct and maintain cover? What would happen if people took you seriously? If you are curious to know, you will enjoy My Life in CIA. But is it fact, fiction, or somewhere in between?

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A younger William Hurt would be an excellent 'Harry Mathews' if this was made into a movie. David O. Russell as director...

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harry likes games. Harry likes to get lost. Harry likes romps. Harry is quickly becoming my new hero. Harry is not CIA. No one CIA would ever say they were CIA. Harry is not CIA.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable.

Mathews has written what is classified on the cover as an Autobiographical Novel.

What I think he's done is take what was originally a minor incident from his life - in this case his being mistakenly identified as a CIA agent. Then he's run with the idea so that as the novel progresses events get more and more out of hand. His fictional persona appears to be irresistible to the ladies also!

Mathews was a member of the OULIPO literary movement which attempted to get all sorts of numerical and literary tricks smuggled into their works. Although on the face of it this doesn't appear to be such a novel I do wonder if there is some OULIPO motivation behind his constant meetings in cafes and restaurants plus visits to galleries and the opera.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faux espionage as authentic literary entertainment. Funny, charming, surprising -- an Oulipian page turner.

4.5 stars

[Allan]

Harry Mathews worked for CIA. I have proof. In the late 1950 s my father occasionally took work as a courier for a small Parisian publishing house called Dencours with a small apartment office off the rue Mouffetard in le cinquieme arrondissment. I believe they were a marginally leftist House with a small catalog in ideological tracts and pamphlets. They also distributed bible stories in comic book form to third world countries without asking permission. My father was habitually unemployed after the war and would take whatever work he could get. He liked to travel. He would often be called into Dencours to pick up a packet that had been left with Una Autre the publisher to be delivered to a Monsieur Mathews who was staying at the time in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Everyone knew he was the gardener at the American Embassy& [return][return]Well of course all of the above is silly. But I ve been so enthralled in the conceit of Harry Mathews latest book, My Life in CIA, that I just want to play along. I have no idea if it is all true or all fantasy or, more likely a mix of both, but it is all marvelous and, surprisingly, a real page turner. I don t typically read spy thrillers (excepting Eric Ambler and Graham Greene) but the book reads like a primer on How To Be A Spy (Or Not). A plethora of beautiful exotic women, evil archvillains and minor poets and academicians& [return][return]Mathews, an American living in Paris in the 70 s, cannot convince his friends that he is not, as they believe, an agent of CIA (insiders never say the CIA), and so decides to live the part, setting up a cover business as an exotic travel consultant ( Fear-free Travel for the Hopelessly Dyslexic ) and eventually making contact with a motley crew of fascist crime bosses, Russian intelligence agents, Stasi assassins and beautiful midgets& It all becomes a little too real and Mathews has to quickly disappear, in the best spy thriller fashion.

[michal k-c · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s fine and fun enough but there’s a kind of bourgeois / bored detachment that’s the unintentional underpinning of the whole premise that makes the “Harry Mathews” character pretty grating. Nothing interesting or insightful to say about the CIA or espionage in general, probably because of Mathews’ criminally comfortable life as an expat in france financially capable of maintaining multiple residences.

On the other hand — we’re all so literal these days — this is possibly a very sneaky condemnation of this exact type of bourgeois dunce, to whom imperialist war crimes in Vietnam are nothing other than a prop. I’m pointing this out just to be fair, I don’t think the novel is much of a critique of anything

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прекрасная пародия на то, что сейчас известно под модным погонялом "автофикшн" (как все заемные термины, слово лишенное всякого смысла). Автобиографией же это никогда и не притворялось, так что непонятно, с чего вся эта "брухаха". Этим "мокьюментари" Мэтьюз попросту продолжает дело Лоренса Стерна, а то, что оба они мыслили насмешкой, в 21 веке вдруг стало восприниматься всерьез и породило "жанру", в которой так блистательно выступил Эггерс ср своим "ДРТОГом".
Изумительно и сверкающе, в общем, и как "шпионский роман", где шпионаж - форма деятельностного искусства, а сам по себе сюжет - прихотливый побег на стволе Пинчона, конечно. ...Хотя нет, предлог не тот: это побег по стволу.

[Jeff Buddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second time around on this one. It's still a pretty funny book, but there's a layer of radical politics underpinning the whole thing. "My Life in CIA" is Harry Matthew's (fictional?) account of his life in Paris in the late 60s and early 70s. Harry was the only American in the Oulipo, best friends with George Perec and ran in the most esoteric of literary circles. He was successful at his trade, but his sort of literary output was not the most remunerative, so his friends and acquaintances began to suspect that his money came from "other" sources. They thought he was a spy.

Harry decides not to disappoint them. Rather than discourage these ideas, Harry decides to play the part. He plays it so well, however, the game grows larger than just a practical joke. There's a lot of funny stuff, skulduggery: Harry gets rolled up in a rug, he ends up smuggling secret packages across European borders, he forges and sells maps. Everybody believes him. He's called to the Soviet Embassy and accused outright. A noted fascist tries to pin crimes on him. He realizes he's in WAY over his head.

I remember all this stuff from the first time. What I forgot was the backdrop of the story: the May '68 uprising in France, the Vietnamese War, Watergate, Pinochet's coup. The latter tragedy is the tipping point. Appalled by the United States support of Pinochet, he decides he doesn't want to be even fictionally associated with CIA, but by then its too late. He's implicated. His life may very well be in jeopardy.

Harry Matthews is a fine writer. His prose is strong, rhythmic, compelling. The set-up is a guy having a lark, trying to fool his friends. He's populated his world with real people, real history. It's so good, that when the most outre stuff starts to happen, the reader rolls right along with it. But it's actually kind of fun to let the lines blur, to believe some of the most unbelievable stuff. Who knows, maybe it did happen.

Harry Matthews is not as well known as he should be. That's a shame. He's definitely one of our best. "My Life in CIA" is a story, but you'll also see the hand of the Oulipo here too. There are little math games, logical strings and other entertaining stuff along the way. Recommended.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

We know Harry Mathews as a writer of elaborately plotted novels, generally highly mischievous ones, many of them menaced by an aura of the conspiratorial. The reader may approach MY LIFE IN CIA with a certain amount of suspicion; it would surely be to the reader’s credit. What are we to make of an outlandish, highly “told” tale by Harry Mathews in which the man himself is the protagonist and the pretence of a kind of autobiographical vamp is self-consciously on display? Not many will make it more than two pages before they become aware that they are reading a novel, a fiction, which is precisely how MY LIFE IN CIA has been and demands to be classified. However, there can likewise be no denying that this novel contains a tremendous amount of unassailable fact, much of it doubtlessly originating in things that actually happened in and around the actual life and times of Harry Mathews, though any precise quantification is impossible for the layperson (and most likely any living person) to calculate. A game is being played, a puzzle presented. Any victories or solutions on our end can only be partial, provisional, piecemeal. Constitutive opacity is the basis of any legitimate epistemology, especially in eminently paranoid times. Not only does this not have to represent a discomfiting existential trauma, it can become an impetus for free play and tremendous fun. I suggested that a sufficiently crafty reader will understand MY LIFE IN CIA to be a kind of put-on having read the first two pages. Perhaps I should have said the first two paragraphs. The first paragraph consists of a single sentence: “That she was the natural child of an Orsini could not be proved or disproved; but those dark flashing eyes, that dusky complexion betrayed the Italian blood in her veins.” End of paragraph. Now, the opening sentence of the second paragraph: “Paris, 1971; a bright, faintly overcast spring morning, like a swath of gauze dipped in cool buttermilk; and there she was, sheathed in provincial chic, on Rue du Bac.” She will turn out to be Andrée, but for the moment that is of no major concern to us. Firstly, we might consider what the two sentences I have just quoted are doing (I think quite explicitly). The form, the style, the spirit. I read the opening as very clearly evoking the legacy of Série noire, the Éditions Gallimard publishing imprint that started bringing hardboiled crime fiction, mostly translated American stuff, to French readers beginning in 1945. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ed McBain, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, William P. McGivern. The Série noires became a major cultural institution in France, influencing the domestic culture in ways both pervasive and enduring. French novelists and writers of short fiction were influenced, but so was the popular culture more generally, from the films of Jean-Pierre Melville and the nouvelle vague (plus the bigger, brasher, trashier mainstream stuff), to some of the songs of edgy chanteurs like Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Dutronc. It was a French film critic in the late 40s who retroactively assigned the term “film noir” to categorize a certain genus of American film prevalent in the late 30s and throughout the 40s, calculatedly associating these films with the corresponding French publishing imprint. It is interesting that Série noire first set up shop in 1945, the year of the Second World War’s termination, many major European cities bombed into the Stone Age, a certain idea of Europe gone for good, and America now the de facto Western superpower. One could elaborate at length, but suffice it to say that in a way Série noire kinda looks like a sly byproduct of a new imperial arrangement, especially successful in having so demonstrably impacted the French sensibility. If MY LIFE IN CIA is a novel in flirtation with the world of espionage, intelligence gathering and counterintelligence manoeuvrings, it comes on with jocose hardboiled mien. Matthews himself is vamping as intelligence agent in his vamp of autobiography, but he resembles less a character from John le Carré than he does an extremely sophisticated-cosmopolitan but way-out-of-his-league version of Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op. Again, the novel begins with our hero, Harry Mathews, encountering a woman named Andrée on an overcast morning, Paris, 1971. Andrée brings with her a reminder that the Parisian intelligentsia apparently persist in assuming with utmost confidence that Mathews is CIA. Mathews tires of these persistent rumours, as he has tired of others. “I’d quickly learned that arguing I wasn’t CIA (or gay, or very rich) was a waste of time. It just kept the likelihood alive. I was crazy to care so much; but I did.” Mathews goes on to reflect upon having first been confronted with accusations of agency affiliation in 1967, proffered by a writer named Michel Loriod, Surrealist hanger-on. The rumours began to take on a new dimension during the pivotal events on May ’68, Mathews having traveled from New York to Paris in order to keep watch over his seventeen-year-old daughter at the behest of his ex-wife. Wholesale revolution is perhaps imminent. “It wasn’t war, only some kind of wild civic psychodrama—a true cultural revolution while it lasted, undeniably rough but exhilarating.” During the turbulence of May, Mathews falls in with the new student-and-worker-sympathetic (though essentially ineffectual) Writer’s Union, thus into a position of antagonism with Philippe Sollers and the brain trust at TEL QUEL, all French Communist Party hardliners (set, in their outmoded orthodoxy, against the students and workers). In this context, allusions to CIA affiliation can be and ultimately are used to discredit Mathews. Bewilderment and disappointment circa 1971 cause Mathews to reflect further back, pinpointing what are almost certainly the origins of the rumours; meeting and then befriending six-foot-six Oxford-pompous Fred Warner in Cairo, Autumn 1963. Mathews took an immediate dislike to Warner but the two men rapidly grew close, travelling to Luxor and then Dendera, an Egyptian idyl, as it were. Ward is fantastically worldly, supernaturally knowledgeable, providing Mathews with what in intelligence lingo would be called “access.” Ward finds himself posted in a diplomatic position in Vientiane, capital of Laos, smack dab in the middle of the United States’ insidious, universally-reviled Indochina adventure. Harry Mathews goes to Vientiane, tells a few fibs. The rumours start. Not only rumours. His name clearly ends up on a list. “I wanted to play a part in the grand conspiracy of poetic subversion; in fact that was how I justified my life. But how could I get a hearing if people thought I was an ordinary, paid conspirator? Every time I protested my innocence I felt a bitterness as futile as jealousy itself.” Of course, this confession as to modus operandi in general (“play a part in the grand conspiracy of poetic subversion”) is also very much a confession as to the modus operandi of MY LIFE IN CIA specifically, the “play” in question very much grounded in a meddling with fact and fiction buttressed by the fundamental opacity of reality. In early 1973 Mathews devises a method to overcome the futile bitterness. He is going to stop protesting that he is not an agent. In fact, he is going to engineer his entire life around the vamp, playing the part to the hilt. This methodical game of pretend is in large part an extension of Mathews’ literary practices. Harry Mathews was of course the one American member of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle), an organization started by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais in 1960, the basic aim to consolidate a group of artists set on using mathematical and other algorithmic formulae to produce texts of various shapes and sizes. The main figure in the movement during the time in which the novel is primarily set is the great Georges Perec, Mathews’ real life close friend and a character in MY LIFE IN CIA. Perec loved games and puzzles, often incorporating elements of both in the DNA of his literary output. Mathews had a tendency, especially in his longer prose works, to create intricate plotting problems for himself that had to be worked out through deductive experimentation. By playing the role of CI agent, Mathews brings to a lived experiment (which may have had a substantial, minimal, or absolutely no basis in things that actually happened in his actual life) elements adopted from the literary techniques of he, Perec, and Oulipo more generally. The experiment proves both exciting and stimulating … for awhile. It does at first successfully assuage feelings of bewilderment and disappointment. “I decided that leading the life of a secret agent was like having an affair with a gangster’s wife.” Occasional girlfriend Marie-Claude Podopoulos is told by a friend of Matthews’ curious itinerary on one particular day, observed at first by chance, then with increasing curiosity. Mathews is extremely pleased with the development, finding crafty ways to play to his new stalker. Much of the spy vamp is random and absurd. “I carried a piece of pink chalk in my pocket and I’d sometimes stop in out-of-the-way streets to scribble a cryptic sign on a wall.” Mathews quickly realizes that to appear as a credible agent he needs to have a believable cover, a problem since he lacks a work permit. He devises a plan to set up a kind of dubious consultancy, run out of his home just outside of Lans-en-Vercors. He calls the new enterprise Locus Solus — International Travel Counsel. LOCUS SOLUS was the title of Raymond Roussel's 1914 proto-Oulipian novel and subsequently a literary journal run by Mathews, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler in 1961 and ’62. The sequence or lineage here, with the doubled appropriation of Roussel's title, proves extremely telling. The consultancy excites a series of mysterious inquiries and commissions for Mathews, and we might be inclined to fault him for insufficiently scrutinizing them, though it is hardly clear how he would go about doing that. A key commission, which will prove a major catalyst, finds Mathews called upon to deliver a lecture to a cohort of Americans overseas all of whom are to said suffer from “travel-stress dyslexia,” a condition for which Mathews finds an ingenious (indeed hilarious) Oulipian solution. He also unwittingly—completely unbeknownst to himself—draws himself deep into an international conspiratorial mire in the process of presenting his talk. The largest part of the original shame of being associated with CIA was the implication that Mathews was directly complicit in the current predations of American Empire, the Indochina fiasco foremost among them. MY LIFE IN CIA consistency presents its fanciful, extremely delicious Série noire machinations alongside contemporaneous geopolitics. Exigencies interfere peripherally even when the game is still fun. Economics: “I’d shown that I could perform successfully in the game I’d chosen to play. This more than made up for the news that the dollar (i.e., my purchasing power) had just been devalued by ten percent.” As fake spy, the geopolitical realm becomes less sinister, more abstract or purely conceptual, paranoia replaced by games. “I thought it was emblematic of our decade that in the week of Nixon's second inauguration the American League introduced the degrading position of designated hitter into baseball. I cared about such matters, but more the way I cared about catastrophes in the Peloponnesian Wars when I was reading Thucydides.” When the trip starts to become a bad one in the summer of 1973, this involves a return of the repressed at two levels: a) the horror of history can no longer be cordoned off in the domain of the conceptual or abstract; b) sudden consciousness of immediate personal peril demands decisive recourse. Bad omens, harbingers in the summer of 1973. Mathews is present for a performance during which Natalia Makarova takes an embarrassing fall in a production of SWAN LAKE at the Opéra. Chile is on the verge of coup. July, August, the actual coup (and Allende’s death) in September. I happen to be a bit obsessed with the 1970s. I know some stuff about the summer of 1973. The Paris Opera Ballet performance in which Natalia Makarova is purported to have taken a fall was part of a brand new festival called Les Nuits du Louvre. I note also that during the previous month, June, SPECTRE, the truncated four-hour-fifteen minute version of Jacques Rivette's twleve hour 1971 Blazacian conspiracy opus OUT 1 played the Internationales Forum des Jungen Films in Berlin, a city that plays a major peripheral role in MY LIFE IN CIA. You might call that neither here nor there. You would not be strictly correct. Chile figures in terms of the breaking of Mathews’ spell, but it is the aforementioned sudden consciousness of personal peril that introduces a proper state of emergency of the sort we would tend to demand of our hardboiled crime novels. Mathews is taken along with Perec to meet with the suspicious, somewhat aggrieved Laurent Duchamp. Duchamp organizes an extremely sub rosa meeting between Mathews and an SDEC man. You are in deep shit, Mathews. Turns out that at least since the “travel-stress dyslexia” talk our hero has been a chess piece manipulated from multiple angles, an earlier trip to Milan, recounted in the novel, was not in fact about opera and a harmless handoff, but rather about surreptitiously setting Harry up as a fall guy, a patsy. One key figure was not who he said he was, a number of coincidences were no accident. Harry Mathews is a walking dead man and he ain’t got much time. There is a nice Série noire third act, involving flight to Lans-en-Vercors, undercover transhumance (sheepwalk between seasonal pastures), and a religious-pastoral copulatory act. An epilogue presents us with something like a moral-of-the-story-is: history becomes concertized, consolidated, even if only in cloaked café society colloquy, but not only are facts not truth, who is to say that truth is truth? Some kind of truth truth always surely truths. No? I began by mentioning that Mathews appears in his MY LIFE IN CIA as a variation on Hammett’s Continental Op. Let’s also acknowledge the legacy of peerless exile genius Patricia Highsmith, whose 1971 novel A SUSPENSION OF MERCY is similarly about a creative’s increasingly risky game of make-believe. You also might just say MY LIFE IN CIA is the best ever novel of another esteemed-if-also-oft-dubious genre, namely The Prodigal American in Paris. As fond of him as I have at times been, Henry Miller always seems to be a brash American huckster, hawking the snake oil that is he himself. Harry Mathews—postmodern in his pastiche, modernist in his revolutionary committedness with regard to form, structure, and methodology—plays at something similar, but it is precisely the case that, in every sense, he is at play.

[Jon]

I've repeatedly tried to read Mathews, an American writer associated with the French-based Oulipo group of experimental writers, and never been able to get beyond a few short stories, so I thought I'd try this odd memoir-fiction hybrid dealing with his experiences in Europe in the 1970s, when, since many acquaintances of his assumed he was a CIA agent, he decided to pretend to be one. (He also says that people tended to assume he was gay, which was incorrect--I admit it, I thought he was too.) For me the most interesting aspect of this story is Mathews' naivete about the CIA--when he learned more about the agency for research purposes, he seemed to be genuinely surprised at the extent of its criminal doings. This book is quirky, entertaining, unique...but not really memorable. It left me feeling somewhat the way HM himself must have during the period it describes, caught in a sort of no-man's land.

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a terribly fascinating premise, and there's something that really appeals to me about fake memoirs in general and fake spies in particular. And from someone associated with the Oulipo, I would certainly expect something intriguingly deep and well-written. But I didn't really enjoy this book very much.

First of all, there's waaaaay too much detail about what restaurants he went to and what he ate and drank when he got there. I'm sorry, but I don't care about that at all. Secondly, the main story takes a really long time to really get interesting. This wouldn't be so bad, except for the ending. Everything seems to be leading up to a big finale, but that's not really what happens. Or not what seems to happen--I'm actually not totally sure what did happen. But the simple fact is that I'm big on endings, and this book is lacking in that respect.

[Peter Panic McDaniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

My friend lent me a copy of this book which was accompanied with rave reviews. But perhaps I am missing something here. A flakey writer with a penchant for wine decides to say he is a spy, make money off it and then find out he has gotten into deeper shit than he expected? Matthews has lead me to believe in 1973 he ran aroud freely, hardly worked and played socialite and then many many years later writes a memoir of how he played the game and won-just barely. This is by far the most narcissistic book I have encountered in a long time. If I didn't have issues with not finishing a book, I surely would have thrown this to the side.

[Roger Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

It helps to know a bit about Mathews and the Oulipo before starting this, but you'll find it wildly entertaining in any event.

Is it autobiography? I'm not sure.

Look out for the menus. I will only catch trains with palindromic departure times in future.

[Heather scarlett victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among my favorite writers, Harry Mathews, is intricately entertaining. The prose is dense, and that is the way i prefer it. This particular novel was absoulutely engrossing and hilarious.

[Metin Celâl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Mathews roman, şiir, öykü kitapları ve denemeleri ile tanınan Amerikalı bir yazar. 14 Şubat 1930’da doğmuş, 25 Ocak 2017’de vefat etmiş. Türkçede daha önce 2000 yılında yayınlanan “Eşsiz Hazlar” (Sel yay.) adlı kitabını okumuşuz.
Harry Mathews, 1952’de Harvard Üniversitesi’nden müzik alanında lisans derecesiyle mezun olduktan sonra ailesiyle Paris’e taşınmış. I’École Normale de Musique’te orkestra şefliği eğitimine devam etmiş.1961’den 1962’ye kadar John Ashbery, James Schuyler ve Kenneth Koch ile birlikte, edebiyat dergisi Locus Solus’u yayınlamış. Derginin adı Mathews’un etkilendiği isimlerden biri olan Raymond Roussel’in bir romanından geliyormuş.
Oulipo, yani Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Potansiyel Edebiyat Atölyesi), 1960 yılında Raymond Queneau ve François Le Lionnais tarafından kurulan, edebiyatın sınırlarını zorlayan deneysel bir topluluk olarak biliniyor. Sürrealistlerin aksine, Oulipo üyeleri sınırlamanın yaratıcılığı artırdığına inanıyor. Yazarlar, önceden belirlenmiş dilsel, matematiksel veya yapısal kurallara göre metin üretiyor.
Lipogram, Belirli bir harfi hiç kullanmadan yazmak. Örneğin Georges Perec’in Kayboluş romanı Fransızcada “e” harfi olmadan yazılmıştır. Cemal Yardımcı da kurallara uygun olarak, yani hiç “e” kullanmadan Türkçeye başarıyla çevirmişti (2005, Ayrıntı yay.). Tersten okunduğunda da aynı kalan ifadeler (Palindrom), metindeki her kelimeyi sözlükte kendisinden sonra gelen yedinci kelimeyle değiştirme tekniği S+7 (ya da N+7), her satırda bir harf eklenerek büyüyen şiir yapısı yani kartopu şiiri gibi ilginç teknikler kullanmışlar. Harry Mathews, Oulipo’ya üye seçilen ilk Amerikalıymış. Georges Perec ile de iyi arkadaşmış.
“CIA Hayatım, 1973 Yılının Kroniği”, Mathews’un hayattayken yayınlanan son romanı. Mathews, eseri “roman” diye yayınlamış ama hem hayat öyküsüyle uyumu hem de Georges Perec gibi kahramanların bir çoğunun yaşayan kişiler olması “CIA Hayatım, 1973 Yılının Kroniği”nin roman değil anı olduğunu düşündürmüş. Çünkü neyin gerçek neyin kurgu olduğunu anlamak mümkün değilmiş.
Romanın kahramanı, yazarıyla aynı adı taşıyan Harry Mathews, Paris’te yaşayan bir Amerikalı yazar. Henüz birkaç eseri yayınlanmış ve çok küçük bir çevrede yazar olarak tanınıyor. Belki de yeterince tanınmadığı, kimliği bilinmediği için çeşitli yakıştırmalar yapılıyor. Önceleri eşcinsel olduğu söylentisi yayılmış, ardından “çok zengin bir insan” olduğuna inanılmış ve kendini geçindirmek için bir iş yapmaması da gözönüne alınarak CIA ajanı olduğu düşünülmüş. Ajanlığına Mathews’u tanıyan, tanımayan bir çok kişi inanmış. Hatta yüzüne söyleyenler de olmuş. Kimseyi çok zengin olmadığına da, ajan olmadığına da inandıramamış bir türlü. Ajan olduğunu inkar etmesi de ajanlığının delili olarak kabul edilmiş.
İnkâr etmenin bir işe yaramadığını anlayınca bu yaftadan kurtulmanın yolunun ajan olduğunu kabul etmek ve ajan gibi davranmak olduğuna karar veriyor. Bir ajan nasıl yaşar, nasıl davranır taklit etmeye başlıyor. Şüpheli hareketler, garip buluşmalar, duvarlara garip işaretler çizmeler derken bir ajan olmak için paravan bir işi olması gerektiğini düşünüp Locus Solus adında bir turizm şirketi kuruyor. Bu şirket o zaman gitmenin çok zor olduğu Sovyetler Birliği’ne hayali turlar düzenliyor. Bu turların tanıtım toplantısında kendisiyle tanışan kişilerin maceraya katılması ile 1973 yılının siyasi yaşamının, gizli uluslararası ilişkilerinin tam ortasına düşüyor Mathews.

1970’ler, dünyada Soğuk Savaş’ın sürdüğü bir dönem. Bir yandan da öğrenci hareketleri gelişiyor, uluslararası terorizm ortaya çıkıyor, uçak kaçırmaları gibi tüm dünyayı etkileyen olaylar yaşanıyor. Tabii ajanlar da her yerde. Harry Mathews sahte CIA ajanlığı da bu ortamda yaşanıyor. Yani oldukça tehlikeli zamanlarda… Ve soluk soluğa bir macera başlıyor. Roman kahramanı Mathews çeşitli tuzaklara düşüyor, bazen şansı, bazen tesadüfler, bazen de dostlarının yardımıyla bunlardan kurtuluyor.
Harry Mathews, kısa bölümler halinde çok akıcı ve etkileyici bir yapı kurmuş. Her şeyi kendi üzerinden ve gerçek kişilere bağlı olarak anlattığı için de ne kadar gerçek ne kadar kurgu diye sürekli merak ediyorsunuz. Yani yazar bir anlamda okurlarıyla oynuyor. Harry Mathews’un Oulipo’ya üye olduğunu bilmeseniz, her an bir oyun, bir hinlik beklemeseniz heyecanlı bir casusiye olarak da okunabilecek bir eser “CIA Hayatım, 1973 Yılının Kroniği”.

[Kevin R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not at all what I was expecting but very funny and weird. Fits well in the tradition of novels about Americans in France. Like many of Hemingway's protagonists, Harry Mathews is a writer, living abroad, drinking and seeking experiences. There's also a Peter Mayle-vibe with all the details about meals and wines. But there was also something very Big Lebowski about all the strange coincidences and tangled up competing interests. I was left wondering how many of the threads were actually connected.

Based on the dust jacket blurb, I thought there would be much more spy stuff as well as ambiguity about whether Mathews was actually in CIA. He definitely was not. It's very Coen Brothers, not Jason Bourne.

My favorite aspect was the gradually building intensity throughout the book. Mathews has these repeated sexual meetups with a woman but they do not touch. Their desire grows more unbearble with each meeting. These meetups were injected sporadically throughout the story and were perfect for tracking the growing intensity of the story. The story starts when he is bored, playing spy for fun, trying to attract suspicion. By the end he is using codes out of necessity, running from real danger, and, finally, disappearing into the mountains. I never felt too worried though.

[Arjan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amusing read, although you start to wonder where the reality ends and fictions kicks in. I guess this is the creative freedom of writing, yet it also reflects the theme of the book: a man, accused of being CIA by others, decides to play along and stops denying these false claims. Obviously this sets mystery over what really happened, and what did not.
Yet it creates hilarious encounters and conversations, but when it takes the expected dark turn - people start want to get rid of him - the author seems to get away without any consequences for his immoral behaviour, which I find unsatisfying.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daję ocenę może trochę na wyrost, ale to dlatego, że jest tu naprawdę dużo tego, co lubię: niebanalna, nieco absurdalna intryga, nieoczekiwane zwroty akcji, zadziwiająca mieszkanka bohaterów zmyślonych i rzeczywistych (tych ostatnich 90%), ciekawe dekoracje (Paryż, OuLiPo), poczucie humoru, lekkość - wszystko połączone w zadziwiająco smaczny koktajl, który starczy na kilka wieczorów, choć książeczka wydaje się nieco wątła na pierwszy rzut oka. Plus dodatkowy bonus za sekwencję zaczynającą się od zawinięcia bohatera w dywan :)

[Masha Zhaksybek · Rating 4 out of 5]

kinda funny, blurs the line between fiction and reality, he claims that this is a true memoir/ autobiography, but also kind of pulls your tail about believing him, which is funny when you think of yourself/ the reader as one of the people in the book that he’s trying to convince that he’s CIA and how the lines between him being CIA and not CIA the further he takes it begin to blur as well

also the foot job part was weird

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Less than meh. Very short read, but the story could have been told in about a quarter of the length. The author is SO full of himself and very sexist. A friend recommended this, and I think it's because he likes the author's novels. Without bringing that to the book, though, there's really no reason to read this.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean, it's interesting, but I guess I'm not a fan of the "fictional memoir." If your life isn't interesting enough as is, then maybe it's not worth writing about. Especially if the fictional elements aren't exactly engrossing either.

Nice premise, though. Should've maybe been billed as a noir novel instead.

Recommended for proponents of delayed gratification.

[Nick Grammos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hoot. Serious, witty and amusing. But the final third lets it down. I sensed the filler material was more made up nonsense than fiction. Fiction would've been better rather than memoir giving way in the absence of material.

[A gin and orange, a lemon squash, and a scotch and water, please! · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF and I can't remember why. Got about half way through, and just moved on. Scenes from the book still come back to me, so I have to revisit this some time soon.

[Doc · Rating 4 out of 5]

charming story

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious.