The human country : new and collected stories / Harry Mathews.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mathews, Harry, 1930-2017.

Contributor:

Harry Mathews Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Social life and customs--20th century--Fiction.

United States.

Manners and customs.

Genre:

Fiction.

Short stories.

Physical Description:

186 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : Dalkey Archive Press, 2002.

Summary:

The only American member of the Oulipo -- a literary movement whose members have included major European figures such as Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Roubaud, and Italo Calvino -- Harry Mathews has distinguished himself among his contemporaries as a stylist whose prose is both elegant and inventive, erudite and hilarious, sophisticated yet lucidly drawn. The Human Country collects all of Mathews's shorter fiction, including the early stories from Country Cooking, the mid-career stories from The American Experience, and ten recent, previously uncollected pieces that are every bit as brilliant and surprising. These stories include "The Broadcast," in which the narrator learns from a radio program that everything he needs in life should fit into one sock; "Clocking the World on Cue," an Oulipian story that employs the centuries-old literary form of the Chronogram; and "Calibrations of Latitude," which follows Sir Joseph Pernican on a meandering and seemingly aimless journey (through the city and through his imagination) that in the end proves not aimless at all, but It her -- like all of Mathews's work -- purposeful and deeply moving.

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.

ISBN:

1564783219

OCLC:

50004468