Surplus Matter

Tom McCarthy will be talking at the Goethe-Institut in New York on 5 December as part of a series entitled “What is the Good of Work?”

On Tuesday 10 November, Tom McCarthy will be taking part in a debate “exploring the relevance of contemporary photography for the investigation and interpretation of the city as a complex cultural phenomenon” at the Architecture Foundation in London.

The British premiere of Johan Grimonprez’s Double Take, written by Tom McCarthy, takes place at the BFI London Film Festival (15, 16 and 19 October).

A Tom McCarthy picture gallery.

Tom McCarthy will give a talk on David Lynch’s work at Tate Modern on Halloween.

Tom McCarthy interviewed about the International Necronautical Society in French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

Remainder was one of the finest novels of the decade. But C surpasses it — playful, razor sharp, thrilling. I’m delighted that he’s with us for at least two books and am convinced that his voice will become one of the most influential and distinctive in English fiction. This is a very, very special deal for Cape. We’re taking on so few new acquisitions, but we had to have Tom McCarthy. It completes the list.

Tom McCarthy signs a two-book deal with Jonathan Cape who will publish C and Satin Island.

You can now watch a video of Tom McCarthy’s “How Marinetti Taught Me to Write” talk delivered at the Futurism and the Avant-Garde symposium at Tate Modern on 27 June 2009.

“Trying to beat death isn’t interesting — any dumb Christian thinks that’s possible.” Tom McCarthy, General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), firmly believes in the virtues of demanding the impossible: “What was interesting was launching an absurd, metaphor-laden conceit and using it as a tool and structure to make meaning happen.” The absurd conceit in question — “death is a type of space which we intend to map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit” — was contained in the organisation’s founding manifesto drafted ten years ago. The sheer barminess of such a mission statement placed it squarely “in the zone of silence and impossibility from which,” according to the INS, “all good art stems”.

Andrew Gallix on the International Necronautical Society in the summer 2009 issue of Flux Magazine.

On Thursday 2 July 2009, Roger Malbert and Tom McCarthy will talk about the Parades and Processions: Here Comes Everybody exhibition, and the imaginative and cultural implications of processions and parades.