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Michael Martone
A giddy exploration of the parts of books nobody ever reads
Michael Martone, by Michael Martone, continues the author's giddy exploration of the parts of books nobody ever reads. Michael Martone is its own appendix, comprising fifty “contributors notes,” each of which identifies in exorbitant biographical detail the author of the other forty-nine. Full of fanciful anecdotes and preposterous reminiscences, Martone’s self-inventions include the multiple deaths of himself and all his family members, his Kafkaesque rebirth as a giant insect, and his stints as circus performer, assembly-line worker, photographer, and movie extra.
Expect no autobiographical consistency here. A note revealing Martone's mother as the ghost-writer of all his books precedes the note beginning, “Michael Martone, an orphan . . . “ We learn of Martone’s university career and sketchy formal education, his misguided caretaking of his teacher John Barth’s lawn, and his impersonation of a poor African republic in political science class, where Martone's population is allowed to starve as his more fortunate fellow republics fight over development and natural resource trading-cards.
The author of Michael Martone, whose other names include Missy, Dolly, Peanut, Bug, Gigi-tone, Tony's boy, Patty's boy, Junior's, Mickey, Monk, Mr. Martone, and “the contributor named in this note," proves as Protean as fiction itself, continuously transforming the past with every new attribution but never identifying himself by name. It is this missing personage who, from first note to last, constitutes the unformed subject of Michael Martone.
Michael Martone, by Michael Martone, continues the author's giddy exploration of the parts of books nobody ever reads. Michael Martone is its own appendix, comprising fifty “contributors notes,” each of which identifies in exorbitant biographical detail the author of the other forty-nine. Full of fanciful anecdotes and preposterous reminiscences, Martone’s self-inventions include the multiple deaths of himself and all his family members, his Kafkaesque rebirth as a giant insect, and his stints as circus performer, assembly-line worker, photographer, and movie extra.
Expect no autobiographical consistency here. A note revealing Martone's mother as the ghost-writer of all his books precedes the note beginning, “Michael Martone, an orphan . . . “ We learn of Martone’s university career and sketchy formal education, his misguided caretaking of his teacher John Barth’s lawn, and his impersonation of a poor African republic in political science class, where Martone's population is allowed to starve as his more fortunate fellow republics fight over development and natural resource trading-cards.
The author of Michael Martone, whose other names include Missy, Dolly, Peanut, Bug, Gigi-tone, Tony's boy, Patty's boy, Junior's, Mickey, Monk, Mr. Martone, and “the contributor named in this note," proves as Protean as fiction itself, continuously transforming the past with every new attribution but never identifying himself by name. It is this missing personage who, from first note to last, constitutes the unformed subject of Michael Martone.
186 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
Michael Martone
65 books64 followersMichael A. Martone is a professor at the creative writing program at the University of Alabama, and is the author of several books. His most recent work, titled Michael Martone and originally written as a series of contributor's notes for various publications, is an investigation of form and autobiography.
A former student of John Barth, Martone's work is critically regarded as powerful and funny. Making use of Whitman's catalogues and Ginsberg's lists, the events, moments and places in Martone's landscapes — fiction or otherwise — often take the same Mobius-like turns of the threads found the works of his mentor, Barth.
A former student of John Barth, Martone's work is critically regarded as powerful and funny. Making use of Whitman's catalogues and Ginsberg's lists, the events, moments and places in Martone's landscapes — fiction or otherwise — often take the same Mobius-like turns of the threads found the works of his mentor, Barth.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
January 4, 2009
Michael Martone's got a imagination that ticks, one in which the manifold cogs & springs crank up something extra at each revolution of an idea. The idea in the case of MICHAEL MARTONE BY MICHAEL MARTONE, a canny & disturbing exercise -- disturbing in best sense, the sense that doesn't interfere w/ the man's quick finger on the pulsing detail or w/ his wit, capable of fluxing up to laugh-inducing fullness & then down to a sobering diminuendo in the space of few perfectly-ironized lines -- the idea, anyway, or should I say ideas, anyway it's self & society, or the empirical, historical life & the dreamed-of, maybe-better alternatives, or the multiply-reflecting mirrors of who we are & what we say we are, we & others, plus the ultimate definition provided by death as well... Yes, at its most serious, this is a book about death, & in particular the death of Martone's mother, so that MM b MM constitutes a lovely valedictory for the woman, a compendium of all the lives her son might've lived. Or then again, maybe I should speak more plainly, & say rather that the book collects some 45 two- or three-page riffs, largely but not wholly jocular, each a variation on the "Contributor's Notes" that run at the back of every literary magazine. In the process this author comes his closest to the novel form (closer certainly than in my other favorite of his, the sparkling BLUE GUIDE TO INDIANA), though the result has got nothing Aristotle would recognize as a drama, & no tragic hero either. Hey, everybody dies. Everybody has a career, w/ some interesting intersections along the way -- & this one's also all about those intersections, moments when MM's life was briefly redefined, yet again, by a Kurt Vonnegut or a John Barth or Amanda "Binky" Urban (a so-called "famous" NY literary agent, she already needs a footnote). So there's still another way to put the idea that rachets through such fascinating changes, here: it's a portrait of US literary life, over the last generation, w/ nearly every entry beginning in middle-American Ft. Wayne, Indiana, & developing, eventually, all the options of success & its opposite a writer might think of. To imagine, this brilliant experiment reminds us, takes the best of us to rendering another world: on the page, the book, the object... the art.
October 3, 2015
Fifty-odd "contributor's notes": a man in full, in some sense. Even the blurbs - one of which is from John Barth, the author's mentor at Johns Hopkins - are part of the game. But for all of its formal weirdness, this is a fairly straight-faced biography, telling a life-story in thick, overlapping brushstrokes, jumping around, curving but not breaking the truth. I don't know how long I'll remember it, but it's a unique and worthwhile addition to my collection.
August 8, 2011
As I finish this book I think that this is probably one of the most interesting books I have ever read. Composed of "Contributor's Notes" and a few other sections, it paints the life-story (fictional or non-fictional, I am never sure) of the author, Michael Martone. Through the repetitious Notes, a whole life is developed and unfolds. The reader feels very close to Martone, his family, his experiences, his travels, his writings and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Highly recommended.
January 9, 2013
While this book has a clever concept, Martone's attempt at cleverness gets in the way of his execution. A collection of "contributor's notes", this book is at times humorous, and at other times nauseatingly banal. After reading cover-to-cover, I was still left wondering what, if anything to take from the book.
The format was clever, even inspired. But Martone missed the chance to subtly tie the individual pieces together to tell a full story or paint a complete picture.
The format was clever, even inspired. But Martone missed the chance to subtly tie the individual pieces together to tell a full story or paint a complete picture.
April 17, 2014
Charming, lulling, gentle, frolicking, tongue-in-cheek, painful, precise, very Gogol in many ways.
Like Sorrentino, but hopeful. Free, easy, autistic, watchful. I wish it was twice as thick a book.
Of destinies all varied all equal. All pointless and poignant. So extremely human.
And yes, it's hilariously tragic and tragically hilarious.
Like Sorrentino, but hopeful. Free, easy, autistic, watchful. I wish it was twice as thick a book.
Of destinies all varied all equal. All pointless and poignant. So extremely human.
And yes, it's hilariously tragic and tragically hilarious.
July 7, 2012
Every other note or so I really loved, particularly about his Harvard students, George Plimpton, John Barth, the one that suggests Gordon Lish. Clever, good natured, amiable, affable stuff -- I'm glad I read it. If the average note were a bit shorter, this would be a great bathroom book.
January 2, 2014
Гимн "недооцененному и элегантному искусству сочинения справок об авторах". Добрый и лукавый Мартоун - как младшая и уютная версия Доналда Бартелми. Очень созвучная у него вселенная - надо читать дальше, и эта книжка - хорошее знакомство.
December 31, 2009
Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. You will read that sentence many many times. It will be worth it.
July 14, 2020
Micheal Martone is not lazy. He does not expect his reader to be lazy, either. If you pick up this book, you will probably find yourself becoming ensnared in the series of tangled webs he weaves, as you attempt to distinguish truth from fiction.
Warning: you might take these vignettes so seriously, you could find yourself counting each word in a "Contibutor's Note" just to check if it exceeds the recommended word count for the story it ostensibly accompanied.
Warning: you might take these vignettes so seriously, you could find yourself counting each word in a "Contibutor's Note" just to check if it exceeds the recommended word count for the story it ostensibly accompanied.
March 1, 2024
This book contains contributors' notes like no other, hybrids between the contributor's note and the short story that raise all sorts of considerations: the folly of claiming reality, the impossibility of telling a life story, the selectivity of memory, etc. The concept of this book is a gag, but the tales told are disarmingly humane.
November 15, 2021
"The crowd was in shock and pressed toward the site of the accident only to discover the disfigured remains of a mannequin being mourned by a mocking ground crew."
February 9, 2025
These quaint fictions are pleasant to read and the idea is really funny.
April 24, 2025
one of my favorite books. spiritually Irish but blessedly free of specifics on JudaismChristisnityIslam apart from a bit where you feel a spinster put pressure on him
April 17, 2016
The narrator Michael Martone is talking on the subject of Michael Martone in the book Michael Martone by writer Michael Martone of Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is, strangely enough, the birthplace of the author Michael Martone. The voice is matter of fact, copying the third-person style of contributors’ notes over and over. Martone breathes new life into these typically comatose creations that he believes “have settled into a conventional form."
Because he’s playing on the traditional contributor’s note, the voice is not loud and not very personal, though nostalgic at points. The reader is aware of the author because of the form, which reminds people that there is an author and the narrative of each note is an appendage to his supposed stories. Martone approaches the pseudobiographical material with a whimsy that originates from playing with the line between fiction and reality, breaking conventions under the guise of obeying them.
Martone is discussing that enigmatic character Martone, yes—but more specifically he’s discussing identity. He’s asking how much leeway we have to play with our memories and change our own stories, to present different selves. In the story where his parents leave him at the orphanage, Martone says a friend points out how he continually tells the story. The friend “said often that we all have these stories we come back to. We worry them. We tell them over and over without knowing we are doing it, trying to make sense out of our lives." Throughout the collection, it seems like Martone is taking real stories, or simple facts, of his life and trying to mold them into something more in an effort not just to keep them alive but to give them a new life.
He's also playing with memory. For example, the contributor’s note in which he has a colonoscopy and tells his son a dozen times the details contains this important section: “[Martone] had been there, had felt what it felt like, but that part of his memory had been scrubbed clean by the chemicals. And then there he was, trying to start up that machine again. It was like yanking on the ignition cord of a recalcitrant lawn-mower. At last it took, sending the spool spinning centripetally in his mind, the gathering in of the things that would stick again. Martone told himself not to forget how it felt to forget. Remember, Martone remembers saying to himself. Remember how the past started up again, how it reattached to the ceaseless parade of present moments, moments you can’t remember because you forgot how to remember them.”
I think this is even more important than the last section in which he discusses his fascination with contributors’ notes. If the entire book hinges on Martone's novel obsession with contributors' notes, then the collection is mostly a joke—not a bad joke necessarily, but one that’s too long to be only that. What this section gives us is the importance of memory, how we know who we are and what we’ve done, just as the first sentence (“Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was educated in the public schools there”) tells us who Martone, the writer and the character, is at the most irreducible level.
The work points out how we make up fictions about our lives to make them more interesting or because we simply can’t remember. When Martone asks his mother—who presumably took part in Alfred Kinsey’s famous studies at IU—about his own origins, “his mother simply said she couldn’t recall much more about that night but that she could make something up if that would help." I think the mother’s response gets at something important: Sometimes it’s more comforting to believe something, whether fact or narrative, that you know isn’t true rather than not know what to believe. Michael Martone makes up the story of who Michael Martone is, then make it up again and again, because that’s better than not having a story.
Because he’s playing on the traditional contributor’s note, the voice is not loud and not very personal, though nostalgic at points. The reader is aware of the author because of the form, which reminds people that there is an author and the narrative of each note is an appendage to his supposed stories. Martone approaches the pseudobiographical material with a whimsy that originates from playing with the line between fiction and reality, breaking conventions under the guise of obeying them.
Martone is discussing that enigmatic character Martone, yes—but more specifically he’s discussing identity. He’s asking how much leeway we have to play with our memories and change our own stories, to present different selves. In the story where his parents leave him at the orphanage, Martone says a friend points out how he continually tells the story. The friend “said often that we all have these stories we come back to. We worry them. We tell them over and over without knowing we are doing it, trying to make sense out of our lives." Throughout the collection, it seems like Martone is taking real stories, or simple facts, of his life and trying to mold them into something more in an effort not just to keep them alive but to give them a new life.
He's also playing with memory. For example, the contributor’s note in which he has a colonoscopy and tells his son a dozen times the details contains this important section: “[Martone] had been there, had felt what it felt like, but that part of his memory had been scrubbed clean by the chemicals. And then there he was, trying to start up that machine again. It was like yanking on the ignition cord of a recalcitrant lawn-mower. At last it took, sending the spool spinning centripetally in his mind, the gathering in of the things that would stick again. Martone told himself not to forget how it felt to forget. Remember, Martone remembers saying to himself. Remember how the past started up again, how it reattached to the ceaseless parade of present moments, moments you can’t remember because you forgot how to remember them.”
I think this is even more important than the last section in which he discusses his fascination with contributors’ notes. If the entire book hinges on Martone's novel obsession with contributors' notes, then the collection is mostly a joke—not a bad joke necessarily, but one that’s too long to be only that. What this section gives us is the importance of memory, how we know who we are and what we’ve done, just as the first sentence (“Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was educated in the public schools there”) tells us who Martone, the writer and the character, is at the most irreducible level.
The work points out how we make up fictions about our lives to make them more interesting or because we simply can’t remember. When Martone asks his mother—who presumably took part in Alfred Kinsey’s famous studies at IU—about his own origins, “his mother simply said she couldn’t recall much more about that night but that she could make something up if that would help." I think the mother’s response gets at something important: Sometimes it’s more comforting to believe something, whether fact or narrative, that you know isn’t true rather than not know what to believe. Michael Martone makes up the story of who Michael Martone is, then make it up again and again, because that’s better than not having a story.
August 14, 2008
Like his Blue Guide to Indiana (often accompanied by a disclaimer explaining that it is not a "real" Blue Guide, just in case the inclusion of the Trans-Indiana Mayonnaise Pipeline didn't tip you off) Michael Martone by Michael Martone is a lively patchwork of facts, fabrications, trivia, exaggerations and narrative play.
Composed of forty-two Contributor's Notes, an Acknowledgement, an About the Author, and a Vita, Michael Martone by Michael Martone gives a partial composite picture of Michael Martone, the man (or, if not quite that, then Michael Martone, the inside of head). This is a very funny book, but decidedly not a parody or satire of either contributors' notes or of the literary world. In fact, I daresay that Martone has found some of his most powerful material yet in these protean riffs on his life so far.
Perhaps a short selection will say it best:
"But all of this is to say that Martone has found the contributors' notes sections of magazines and journals often the most interesting part of the magazine or journal. He flips there first, usually in the back pages though sometimes in the front and even more rarely adjacent to the work itself either as a footnote or headnote. In a way it is like a party, Martone thinks, and when he receives his contributor's copy with his contribution and his contributor's note in its pages, Martone most often proceeds directly to the contributor's's notes section to see who is attending the affair. Martone likes the feeling of being thrown together with these other writers and enjoys immensely reading about their lives. The party metaphor is really not accurate. It is more like a family of sympathetic souls partaking in the mysterious rituals of literary publishing. Any particular combination flares brightly for the moment, held together for the prescribed length of time by the periodical. Years later, Martone likes to look back to his old publications, especially the ones no longer in production. Reading through the contributors' notes of those long out of date publications is like convening a reunion of sorts--all the names, all the lives, all the words. Martone thinks of Virgil Suarez as a brother, though he has never met Virgil Suarez anywhere save in the contributor's notes sections of magazines to which they had both contributed."
Although I often hear Martone compared to John Barth (with whom he studied at Johns Hopkins), I personally find his literary experiments more akin to those of Italo Calvino. I'm thinking of books like Cosmicomics, or Invisible Cities. Barthelme also comes to mind. But then he often comes to my mind, so I can't exactly be sure.
Composed of forty-two Contributor's Notes, an Acknowledgement, an About the Author, and a Vita, Michael Martone by Michael Martone gives a partial composite picture of Michael Martone, the man (or, if not quite that, then Michael Martone, the inside of head). This is a very funny book, but decidedly not a parody or satire of either contributors' notes or of the literary world. In fact, I daresay that Martone has found some of his most powerful material yet in these protean riffs on his life so far.
Perhaps a short selection will say it best:
"But all of this is to say that Martone has found the contributors' notes sections of magazines and journals often the most interesting part of the magazine or journal. He flips there first, usually in the back pages though sometimes in the front and even more rarely adjacent to the work itself either as a footnote or headnote. In a way it is like a party, Martone thinks, and when he receives his contributor's copy with his contribution and his contributor's note in its pages, Martone most often proceeds directly to the contributor's's notes section to see who is attending the affair. Martone likes the feeling of being thrown together with these other writers and enjoys immensely reading about their lives. The party metaphor is really not accurate. It is more like a family of sympathetic souls partaking in the mysterious rituals of literary publishing. Any particular combination flares brightly for the moment, held together for the prescribed length of time by the periodical. Years later, Martone likes to look back to his old publications, especially the ones no longer in production. Reading through the contributors' notes of those long out of date publications is like convening a reunion of sorts--all the names, all the lives, all the words. Martone thinks of Virgil Suarez as a brother, though he has never met Virgil Suarez anywhere save in the contributor's notes sections of magazines to which they had both contributed."
Although I often hear Martone compared to John Barth (with whom he studied at Johns Hopkins), I personally find his literary experiments more akin to those of Italo Calvino. I'm thinking of books like Cosmicomics, or Invisible Cities. Barthelme also comes to mind. But then he often comes to my mind, so I can't exactly be sure.
July 26, 2016
A game of hide and seek where the reader is "it," and where Michael Martone chooses the most whimsical of hiding places. I'm sure there is truth here beyond that which is philosophical, but it hardly matters. Even when the author spins out such ludicrously banal biographical notes as the one that recounts an abridged history of ex-wives, ex-pets, and the accompanying oddball living arrangements (such as having resided for a time with his second wife in a remodeled congregational church), only to wind up an amateur archaeologist on the slopes of Vesuvius-- all this and more in roughly two pages-- Martone's fictional biographies are somehow warm and earthbound. For all its inventions and disguises, this collection of vignettes is never unduly fantastic. Even when Martone transforms into a giant insect in a riff on Kafka, the result is very human.
My first (literal?) foray into the author.
My first (literal?) foray into the author.
December 20, 2012
The entire book is a series of contributor's notes, all of which introduce a version of Michael Martone, although no one but the author really knows which of these notes would be the most accurate. Some directly contradict others; some seem to be in agreement with others...yet perhaps those may be the further from reality? It is impossible to know and even that becomes part of the charm. The fascination of watching while someone constantly retells their life...what details are important to which outcomes, what futures are desired, what undesired events bring result in better outcomes... You could read and re-read this and have a different picture of the author every time. I'll definitely be checking out his other fiction & nonfiction works (although I'm assuming most are more clearly in one camp than the other, compared to this book).
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November 14, 2016If you're looking for something purely whimsical, and if you're a fan of the flash fiction or short-short fiction form, take a look at this book. It's a little hard to find - I obtained a used copy in good shape from Powell Books - but it does quite a caper. The premise, a sequence of made-up Contributor's Notes for Martone, is delightful. Each piece - and there are forty-two - starts largely the same way ("Michael Martone was born in Ft. Wayne, Indiana"), and quickly goes off in a digressive direction that can become a short story by itself. In one, for example, he asserts the attending physician at his birth to be Frank Burns (of M*A*S*H fame); in another, he describes taking jobs as a circus roustabout, stenographer for a the NLRB, etc. I enjoyed the pieces for pure fancy, and the book inspired me to try a few pieces of my own along the same lines, as an exercise.
January 3, 2008
Here Martone is extremely clever, and I like clever writing (yes, I'm serious). And since he is my teacher, I especially love the piece about him killing John Barth's lawn (although I was disappointed that he didn't read that particular piece when he and Barth read at AWP in Atlanta in 2007). Anyway, I love the seemingly endless permutations of the life Martone has lived and the lives Martone could've lived as told through contributor's notes (although, for the most part, actual contributor's notes are pretty scant, and tell you almost nothing about the person).
April 18, 2008
Clever in a low-key sort of way. Not much in the way of verbal pyrotechnics or plot twists. Basically what you'd expect from someone who writes obsessively about the Midwest. It's warm, it's comfortable, and it's a little quirky. All of the pieces have something very likable about them, but they tend to (predictably) blur together due to their similar structure, length, and tone. Not something I'd recommend reading all in one day, as I did.
I have a feeling it's a collection I'll remember for quite a while, though. It's just such a good idea.
I have a feeling it's a collection I'll remember for quite a while, though. It's just such a good idea.
October 20, 2008
Divorced from their original contexts of the actual "contributor's note" sections of literary magazines, Martone's semi-biographical fictions lose their pleasant surprise nature and instead take on a fascinating accrued effect. The constant reinvention of self here seems to be both a clever means of exploring new media's obsession with multiple selves and a method by which to rebuild the author's identity. Great stuff.
November 1, 2008
my teacher thinks this isn't a one trick pony, but i would have to disagree. the novel, if you want to call it that, is a series of contributors notes of the sort one gives to a journal as biography. and each separate note is creatively written, with both pathos and humor. the thing that bothers me is that you never really get, to my mind, a sense of accumulation between the notes, so it never feels to me like it's really growing.
December 4, 2008
Michael Martone is a quirky, clever idea that actually works as a full-length book. While there's little dramatic tension and dialogue, I found myself eager to continue reading, which surprised me. I'm torn as to whether this would work better as nonfiction, though, so that I'd know I could believe it all. I also understand possible turnoffs about this book--repetitive, too long, ugly cover art--but I liked it.
September 16, 2007
MIchael Martone was my favorite professor at Syracuse University well over a decade ago, and this unique short story collection reminded me of why he was so popular. It's clever, witty, entertaining, warm and vaguely eccentric, just like him. Each story is in the guise of a Contributor's Note, a fun device for fiction.
February 19, 2008
I read this book when the author came to speak on campus. He was a great and lively speaker and friendly. The book, which gives a series of "author's notes" about Martone himself (some of which are fictional and some of which are sort-of-true) is intertersting for someone who studies autobiography (me), but perhaps less so for others. Many of the "author's notes" are funny.
March 31, 2009
Here I was going to write: "If all of the works of a writer can be thought of as one big serial work-in-progress, this would be the index of Michael Martone's Big Story Collection," but then I realized that it would, of course, be his "About the Author".
May 25, 2020
Martone mines the rich seams of memory and imagination within the confines of the author profile format. These self-imposed confines paradoxically give his ideas space to breathe and it's an amusing and even exciting read. Close to 5 stars.
January 2, 2016
This book started out really good but 10 contributor's notes in, the form was tired and I wanted some additional deviation. The idea is interesting. Would love to see the pitch of this book and conversation that followed.
February 14, 2009
Simple, beautiful, brilliant.
December 6, 2008
Hilarious book of book blurbs written about and by Michael Martone. I heard him read in Vermont. He was fabulous.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews