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.

This is textbook post-traumatic territory, and textbook literary alienation. The necessity — and impossibility — of watching yourself from the outside is what drives The Picture of Dorian Gray, or Frankenstein, or the films of David Lynch. To watch yourself from outside is, according to the textbook, to watch yourself as dead — and both Hall and his hero understand this all too well.

Tom McCarthy reviews Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts in the London Review of Books.

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.

Remainder is a deeply philosophical novel of the best kind — the kind without any philosophy in it.

Antoine Wilson on philosophy and physiotherapy in Remainder.

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.

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

Remainder is “different and compelling, and definitely worth discussing”.

“Rebuilding of life forgotten is a story to remember.”