The Human Country: New and Collected Stories

by Harry Mathews

Overview

Available For The First Time In One Volume, The Very Best Of Mathews's Short Fiction; This expertly designed original paperback presents a comprehensive collection of internationally renowned poet and novelist Harry Mathews' short prose. From the hilarious 'The Broadcast, ' in which the narrator learns from a radio program that everything he needs in life should fit into one sock, to 'Calibration of Latitude, ' which follows Sir Joseph Pernican on a meandering and seemingly aimless but deeply moving journey, this is a long-awaited addition to Mathew's beloved and masterful canon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564783219
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	09/01/2002
Series:	American Literature
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.54(h) x 0.53(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born in New York in 1930, Harry Mathews settled in Europe in 1952 and has since then lived in Spain, Germany, Italy, and (chiefly) France. When Mathews published his first poems in 1956, he was associated with the so-called New York School of poets, with three of whom (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler) he founded the review Locus Solus in 1961. Through his friendship with Georges Perec, he became a member of the Oulipo in 1972. The author of six novels and several collections of poetry, recent publications are THE NEW TOURISM (Sand Paper Press, 2010), Sainte Catherine, a novella written in French (Editions P.O.L, 2000), The Human Country: the Collected Short Stories (Dalkey Archive Press, 2002), The Case of the Persevering Maltese: Collected Essays (Dalkey Archive Press, 2003), OULIPO COMPENDIUM (co-edited with Alastair Brotchie; Atlas Press and Make Now Press, 2005), and My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005).

Table of Contents

I.	First Stories
	Tradition and the Individual Talent: The "Bratislava Spiccato"	3
	The Dialect of the Tribe	7
	The Novel as History	15
	Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)	19
	The Network	37
	Remarks of the Scholar Graduate	41
	The Ledge	51
	Their Words, for You	53
II.	The American Experience: Stories to be Read Aloud
	The Way Home	79
	Tear Sheet	95
	Letters from Yerevan	99
	The Chariot	105
	Franz Kafka in Riga	111
	Still Life	115
III.	Calibrations of Latitude
	Dear Mother	123
	Mr. Smathers	127
	Brendan	129
	The Broadcast	133
	Calibrations of Latitude	135
	The Taxidermist	153
	Soap Opera	155
	Journeys to Six Lands	159
	Clocking the World on Cue: The Chronogram for 2001	169
	One-Way Mirror	179

Editorial Reviews

"... a literary labyrinth that takes readers off the beaten path."--Publishers Weekly

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

Besides "Country Cooking," The Human Country reprints various parodistic early stories — a festschrift article, a send-up of music scholarship, an alumnus talking at his old school about his anthropological researches into the alphabet — and a good deal of the more recent work: oddball monologues, lists, prose poems, themes and variations. Most of these latter are too dry for my liking, despite their touches of fantasy and embedded wit. — Michael Dirda

The Washington Post