Surplus Matter

The ending is a tribute to Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy, as the fevered writer continues to emit while anticipating his own (resisted) end (”Soon I will stop. Soon . . .”). Like Beckett’s “unnameable”, he remains suspended between two worlds, hovering over the abyss. Tom McCarthy has drawn intelligently on his literary antecedent; but Men in Space is an original work in its own right, a confident and intelligent meditation on failed flights of transcendence.

Toby Lichtg reviews Men in Space in the Times Literary Supplement.

McCarthy’s characters trace elliptical orbits around each other, as if locked into flight patterns beyond their control — for instance, the dissolute routines of the artistic subculture enjoying the liberating oxygen of Vaclav Havel’s new government, or the unnamed radio surveillance operative doggedly carrying out his job long after his paymasters have been smothered by the Velvet Revolution — giving age-old themes of predestination and self-determination a crisply contemporary twist.

Dan Fox reviews Men in Space for Frieze Magazine.

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.

What is it that actually lies at the heart of this bewildering universe of signs? It is worth pointing out that Hergé’s final, incomplete volume, Tintin and Alph-Art, was a story about international art fraud which stands as the greatest enigma in the canon. Could it be that Men In Space is McCarthy’s coded conclusion to Hergé’s unfinished work?

Alfred Hickling reviews Men in Space in the Guardian.

But, really, the novel works best when viewed as a study of displacement and isolation, suggesting that we are all trapped within our own skulls like prisoners left to moulder in oubliettes. Few of the characters ever connect with one another. There are repeated images of planets hurtling through space, their orbits rarely intersecting with those of other celestial bodies.

Alastair Sooke reviews Men in Space for the Daily Telegraph.

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.

He places his copies next to the original, one on each side. They’re both perfect. When they’re waxed all three should look exactly the same. He’ll phone Anton, then sleep, then varnish the paintings and collect his money. The phone’s been unplugged from its socket and placed in the room’s corner, by the plant. Did he do that? He should move over and phone Anton. But he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to take his eyes off the three images – four if you count the mirror in which he’s framed, standing, wrapped in a sheet stained the same crimson as the saint’s robe, with his grooved, waxed hair, his gaping mouth.

Read the exclusive extract from Tom McCarthy’s Men in Space published by 3:AM Magazine

Tom McCarthy’s second novel is an inspired shift from the cold, unidentified narrator’s voice that was central to the success of Remainder, his startling debut of last year. In Men in Space we are treated to a cacophony of voices, accents, languages and dialogue in myriad forms. It is a novel that practically rattles with noise. Just like his debut, though, it is a studied novel of ideas that is unlike many others we might read this year.

Lee Rourke’s review of Men in Space in The Observer