September 5th, 2012 / 2:41 pm
 Snippets
—

At the Quarterly Conversation, “Ed Park, Laird Hunt, Dan Visel, Jeremy Davies, A D Jameson, John Beer, and Daniel Levin Becker each discuss one of [Harry] Mathews’s books… from The Conversions (a novel worthy of William Gaddis, as Dan Visel puts it) to Cigarettes (Mathews’ most conventional, and only truly Oulipian, novel, says Jeremy Davies) to Mathews’ poetry (discussed by award-winning poet John Beer) and his unclassifiable Selected Declarations of Dependence (discussed by his fellow Oulipian Daniel Levin Becker).”

5 Comments

  1. September 5th, 2012 / 8:45 pm BeThought—

      Sausage party.

  2. September 5th, 2012 / 8:56 pm A D Jameson—

      Thanks, Blake! My own essay (on Cigarettes) is here.

  3. September 5th, 2012 / 11:42 pm bartleby_taco—

      have you ever read any cesar aira? i feel like you would find him interesting re: plot and experimentation. he’s probably one of the most (to me) interesting contemporary writers doing something genuinely exciting/experimental/etc with plot. i think there’s a lot of room for innovation at the macro (plot/character) level in fiction — most of the newer ‘experimental’ literature (at least the kinds i’ve read) seems to be focused on other things to experiment with.

  4. September 6th, 2012 / 7:39 pm reynard—

      can someone please tell me which of his books is the least boring

  5. September 8th, 2012 / 5:12 pm A D Jameson—

      I’d say start with Cigarettes. Or Singular Pleasures.