Other Works
Mathews's shorter writings frequently cross or deliberately confuse genres. A case in point is the piece entitled "Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double)." Originally included in an issue of the literary magazine Antaeus devoted to travel essays, it is ostensibly a recipe with extended commentary, but was later used as the title story for a collection of the author's short fiction. Another example is the title section of Armenian Papers: Poems 1954 - 1984: actually prose, this purports to be (but evidently is not) a translation from a fragmentary medieval manuscript.
Among the more important collections of his miscellaneous works are Immeasurable Distances, a gathering of his essays; The Human Country: New and Collected Stories; and The Way Home: Selected Longer Prose. Other works of interest include Twenty Lines a Day, a journal; and The Orchard, a brief memoir of his friendship with Georges Perec.
Mathews is the inventor of "Mathews' Algorithm," a method for producing literary works by transmuting elements (for instance, a starting text) according to a predetermined set of rules.
Read more about this topic: Harry Mathews
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)
“Great works constructed there in nature’s spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)