Surplus Matter

I’m interested in people’s readings of the books. A novel doesn’t end when it’s written; in a way, that’s just the beginning: the ‘meaning’ isn’t enclosed within it but emerges from its meeting with other texts, other moments — all textbook deconstruction stuff, I know, but no less true for that. Having said that, some readings are much more productive than others. Ones that interpret Remainder, for example, as a straight allegory or ‘solve’ it by suggesting that the hero’s dead but doesn’t know it yet are interesting but limited. The critic Andrew Gibson, who’s just put out a book on Beckett and Badiou, told me that my work is about ‘the radical death of the world,’ adding that this is the theme of twenty-first century philosophy. I’m not sure I understand what he means but it sounds really good.

Mark Thwaite interviews Tom McCarthy in ReadySteadyBook.

In the UK, the mainstream publishing industry has almost purged itself of what should be the ‘literary’ in literature,” he says. “Most mainstream houses are publishing competently written, ultimately quite banal, middlebrow books, nicely packaged, that maybe ask the odd question and make us think a bit. The mode of experiencing literature has moved elsewhere: into the art world.”

Tom McCarthy argues that “Literature is always premised on its own impossibility” in Boyd Tonkin’s profile/interview (from today’s Independent).

What’s interesting beyond the specific historical event, the collapse of communism, is that it’s the collapse of totality. Once totality’s gone, what happens next? Both my books are about failed transcendence and the ways in which we inhabit the world; the way the world disappoints us by making promises which it then doesn’t fulfill.

Tom McCarthy is interviewed in this week’s Time Out.

Tom McCarthy video in which the author holds forth on the best French novel ever written in English…in French!

Tom lists his favourites at Pulp.net

Zinovy Zinik in Conversation with Tom McCarthy
Mediator: Oliver Ready
 
The International Necronautical Society was launched in 1999 with a manifesto distributed at a London art fair. Since then it has enjoyed an ambivalent existence, drawing from the worlds of literature, art, philosophy and journalism but situating itself in none of these, attracting a mixture of attention […]

Tom McCarthy interviews Ken Hollings.  Heady conversation on aleatoric music and William Blake ensues.
Ken Hollings Testimony Transcript

AUTHOR Q & A
Q. In France and England, REMAINDER was a success story for smaller publishers. What do you think about the book being published by a large company in the US?
A. I think things are different in the US. In the UK, the corporate presses have gone so dumbed-down that if you’re a new […]

ILLICIT FREQUENCIES, OR ALL LITERATURE IS PIRATED: AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM McCARTHY
“So much of the very best literature opens up illicit frequencies so that meaning can travel along channels other than the obvious or rational. The Tintin books are full of these frequencies, these channels; they even dramatise their setting up, hunting down, rumbling and […]