{"product_id":"typewriters-bombs-jellyfish-isbn-9781681370866","title":"Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish","description":"\u003cb\u003eEssays on literature, pop culture, and more from the cult novelist and critic Tom McCarthy\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eFifteen brilliant essays written over as many years provide a map of the sensibility and critical intelligence of Tom McCarthy, one of the most original and challenging novelists at work today. \u003ci\u003eTypewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish\u003c\/i\u003e explores a wide range of subjects, from the weather considered as a form of media, to the paintings of Gerhard Richter and the movies of David Lynch, to Patty Hearst as revolutionary sex goddess, to the still-radical implications of established masterpieces such as \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e (how do you write after it?),\u003ci\u003e Tristram Shandy\u003c\/i\u003e, and the unsung junky genius Alexander Trocchi’s darkly beautiful \u003ci\u003eCain’s Book\u003c\/i\u003e. The longer “Recessional” examines the place of time in writing—how writing makes a new time of its own, a time apart from institutional time—while the startling “Nothing Will Have Taken Place” moves from Mallarmé and Don DeLillo to the ball mastery of Zidane to look at how art, whether that of a poet, novelist, or athlete, destroys given codes of meaning and behavior, returning them to play. Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s \u003ci\u003eRoyal Road Test\u003c\/i\u003e, a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?\u003cb\u003eProvisional Table of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 1          18 Semiconnected Thoughts on Michel de Certeau, On Kawara, Fly Fishing, and Various Other Things\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 13       From Feedback to Reflux: Kafka’s Cybernetics of Revolt\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 23       Get Real; or, What Jellyfish Have to Tell Us About Literature\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 35       The Prosthetic Imagination of David Lynch\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 43       On Dodgem Jockeys: A Suggested Alternative Career for Writers\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 45       Meteomedia, or Why London’s Weather is in the Middle of Everything\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 56       Nothing Will Have Taken Place Except The Place\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 71       Recessional – or, the Time of the Hammer\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 87       Richter Article\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 94       Stabbing the Olive\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 106     The Geometry of the Pressant\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 117     On Balls and Planes: An Introduction to \u003ci\u003eThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman\u003c\/i\u003e by Laurence Stern\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 135     Kool Thing, or Why I Want to Fuck Patty Hearst\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 139     Why \u003ci\u003eUlysses \u003c\/i\u003eMatters“[Tom McCarthy] is one of the few writers who not only illuminates his subject matter but also takes our understanding down new paths. There is an enormously wide frame of reference here, from Aristotle to MC Hammer, and it never feels forced.” —Nicholas Lezard, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Perhaps only in a Tom McCarthy essay would profound philosophical insight be pulled from both William Faulkner and M.C. Hammer. Such is the brainy, playful and always subversive power of McCarthy's first collection, \u003ci\u003eTypewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish\u003c\/i\u003e….[McCarthy is] an adept stylist, in the vein of Nabokov, and never fails to deliver dazzling twists of language and meaning. Each essay impresses with the author's preternatural intelligence. \u003ci\u003eTypewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish\u003c\/i\u003e will entice lovers of art and literature.\" —Scott Neuffer, \u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Reading \u003ci\u003eTypewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish\u003c\/i\u003e is like receiving a map of all the space that art, literature, and culture have carved out for each other. . . . This is the kind of book that deepens your appreciation of the subjects you’ve previously encountered, and sends you to seek out the ones you haven’t.\" —Gabe Habash, \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Stimulating, intellectually exciting, and highly imaginative.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McCarthy’s fiction and nonfiction aim to skewer an ideology of authenticity that is fed and watered by a certain humanist conception of literature.” —Simon Critchley\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McCarthy’s crisp, clean prose is stimulating, his concepts original and his visual imagery powerful.” —Layla Sanai, \u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eTom McCarthy\u003c\/b\u003e's work has been translated into more than twenty languages His previous books include \u003ci\u003eRemainder\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eC\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSatin Island\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eTintin and the Secret of Literature\u003c\/i\u003e.  He is the founder and general secretary of the International  Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network In  2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction by  Yale University. He lives in Berlin.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301443064037,"sku":"NP9781681370866","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681370866.jpg?v=1767743101","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/typewriters-bombs-jellyfish-isbn-9781681370866","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}