The Sinking of The Odradek Stadium - Softcover

Mathews, Harry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564782077 ISBN 13: 9781564782076

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1999

Synopsis

Composed of a series of letters between a husband and wife, ?"The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium"?is a brilliant comedy about love and longing, dashed hopes and frustrations, and trying to make connections. Newly wedded Zachary McCaltex (a librarian in Miami) and Twang Panattapam (originally from the Southeast-Asian country of Pan-Nam, but residing in Italy) try to trace the whereabouts of a treasure supposedly lost off the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century, while navigating a relationship separated by an ocean as well as their different cultures. In the end, the postal service may be responsible for what gets lost (including Zachary's sanity) along the way.

About this title

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).

Reviews

This comic novel unfolds through correspondence between Zachary McCaltex, a librarian, and his wife, Twang, who is living apart from him in Italy. The two are trying to unearth the exact location of a 16th-century treasure somewhere off the Florida coast. As the story develops, it is evident that more than water separates these two.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1564782077
• ISBN 13: 9781564782076
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200