The Case of the Persevering Maltese: Collected Essays

by Harry Mathews

A companion to The Human Country: New and collected Stories, this volume collects all of Harry Mathews's non-fiction, including an astonishing range of essays which discuss everything from complex literary and musical forms to the works of Lewis Carroll, Raymond Roussel, Italo Calvino, Joseph McElroy, George Perec and the OuLiPo. Throughout the collection, Mathews examines the relationship between form and literature in a lucid, intimate voice, arguing with erudition, grace and humour for the importance of artifice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Jean Bosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the best writing on writing, reading and language that I've come across - though Robbe-Grillet and Zamyatin aren't too shabby either. Mathews' essays are intelligent, insightful, interesting, fun, and just plain practical. He discusses strange, difficult works in such a way as to bring them down to earth so that we may rub elbows with them rather than merely admire them incomprehensibly from a distance - and where this closeness only deepens my interest in them rather than feeling a door close upon them. I am especially appreciative of the essay on Laura Riding whose work was unknown to me before but is now up there with my favorites.

Highly recommended to all readers and writers. I really think several of these essays should be required reading for students so that they might become more open to the potential and possibilities of literature. But, as is often the case, the sort of person who is likely to read this collection is already heading in that direction.

[Al Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has anybody heard me go on and on about this book?

I don't think I'll read it c-to-c very soon, but I'm obsessed with portions of it. Note especially title essay re: Kafka.