Singular Pleasures (American Literature) - Softcover

Harry Mathews

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564782336 ISBN 13: 9781564782335

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

Synopsis

The subject of this unique book of short fiction is masturbation, a practice both universal and virtually taboo. In sixty-one vignettes, Mathews records the imaginative varieties of this solitary activity in prose that is playful, intimate, urgent, quirky, and humane.

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).

Review:

Harry Mathews is a playful, precise writer, a modernist with a singular sense of humor, a stylist whose subject matter often seems irrelevant next to the beauty of his language. -- Michael Perkins

Like seeds of closeness, like some always penultimate leisure to make it up out of an alphabet of selves, these glimpses yield a gentle, conspiring privacy. -- Joseph McElroy

Quietly, with gentle and all-embracing humanism, these prose poems refute the taboos. . . . As a literary device the focus on that singular moment inspires Mathews to bravura feats of compression. . . . So that brief as these glimpses are, they're more than character 'sketches.' You see something more like a whole person in the snap of Mathews' shutter. -- John Strausbaugh, New York Press, 4/28/93

Singular Pleasures is wonderfully shocking and a joy to read, and gives a new meaning to reading for pleasure. -- Alexander Laurence, Cups , 9/93

There is nothing pornographic, in the strict sense, about Mathews' text, since it does not seek to arouse the reader: its tone is cool, humorous, and affectionate. His intention is to leave us deeply impressed by the ingenuity, tenacity, and inventiveness with which humans in all places and at all ages have pursued their own pleasure. He succeeds completely. -- John Ash, Artforum, Summer 1993

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1564782336
• ISBN 13: 9781564782335
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200
• Illustrator: Francesco Clemente