Tom McCarthy (writer)

Infobox Writer
name = Tom McCarthy


imagesize = 60
caption = Tom McCarthy
pseudonym =
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birthdate = 1969
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occupation = Novelist, Artist
nationality = British
period = 2002–present
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notableworks = "Remainder", "Men in Space", "Tintin and the Secret of Literature"
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website =

Tom McCarthy (born 1969) is an English novelist, artist and literary theorist.

Biography

Tom McCarthy is a writer and artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in London. McCarthy grew up in Greenwich, south London, and studied English at New College, Oxford. After spending a couple of years in Prague in the early 1990s, he worked in Amsterdam as literary editor of the local "Time Out".His debut novel "Remainder" was first published in November 2005 by Paris-based art publisher Metronome Press. After becoming a cult hit, "Remainder" was republished by Alma Books in the UK (2006) and Vintage Books in the US (2007), garnering considerable critical acclaim [http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/gbx/mccarthy.htm] . It has since been translated into nine languages, and an adaptation for cinema is currently being undertaken by Film4 Productions. [http://www.3ammagazine.com/buzzwordsblog/2006/10/re-enactments-re-enacted.html] In June 2008, the novel won the fourth annual Believer Book Award. [http://www.believermag.com/issues/200806/?read=believer_book_award]

A work of literary criticism by McCarthy, "Tintin and the Secret of Literature", was released by Granta Books in June 2006, with French (Hachette Littératures), Spanish (El Tercer Nombre), Italian (Piemme) and American editions (Counterpoint) following in 2007-8. McCarthy’s second novel, "Men in Space", came out in 2007 (Alma Books). Several foreign editions are forthcoming. McCarthy has also published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including "The Observer", "The Times Literary Supplement" and "The London Review of Books", as well as in anthologies such as "London from Punk to Blair" (Reaktion Books), "Theology and the Political" (Duke University Press), "The Milgram Experiment" (Jan van Eyck Press) and "The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth" (Serpent’s Tail). In 2004 he published an essay on excrement in the work of James Joyce in the online literary journal "Hypermedia Joyce Studies".

His ongoing art project, the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network that surfaces through publications, proclamations, denunciations and live events, has been described by "Untitled Magazine" as “the most comprehensive total art work we have seen in years” [http://www.necronauts.org/untitled_04.htm] and by "Art Monthly" as “a platform for fantastically mobile thinking”. [http://www.necronauts.org/art_monthly_04.htm] In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source code [http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/164871] . The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from which more than forty “agents” generated non-stop poem-codes which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.McCarthy has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He is currently teaching a course on “Catastrophe” with Marko Daniel at the London Consortium.

Novels

"Remainder"

"Remainder" tells the story of an unnamed hero traumatized by an accident which “involved something falling from the sky”. Eight and a half million pounds richer due to a compensation settlement but hopelessly estranged from the world around him, "Remainder"’s protagonist spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting vaguely remembered scenes and situations from his past, such as a large building with piano music in the distance, the familiar smells and sounds of liver frying and spluttering, or lethargic cats lounging on roofs until they tumble off them. These re-enactments are driven by a need to inhabit the world "authentically" rather than in the "second-hand" manner that his traumatic situation has bequeathed him. When the recreation of mundane events fails to quench this thirst for authenticity, he starts re-enacting more and more violent events, including shoot-outs and a bank heist.

"Men in Space"

Set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of Communism, "Men in Space" follows a cast of dissolute Bohemians, political refugees, football referees, deaf police agents, assassins and stranded astronauts as they chase a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and beyond. The icon's melancholy orbit is reflected in the various characters' ellipses and near-misses as they career vertiginously through all kinds of space, be it physical, political, emotional or metaphysical. McCarthy uses these settings to present a vision of humanity adrift in history, and a world in a state of disintegration.

Forthcoming Novel

Tom McCarthy is currently at work on his third novel, entitled "C", which he has described in interviews as dealing with technology and mourning. [http://surplusmatter.com/interviews/interviews-with/watch-that-space-or-literatures-proper-territory/] [http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307278357&view=qa] [http://www.readysteadybook.com/Blog.aspx?tag=tom+mccarthy]

Themes

Repetition and Duplication

One of the main themes pervading McCarthy’s work is that of repetition and duplication. The novelist himself has discussed the importance of this subject in interviews [http://bookninja.com/magazine/fall2007/mccarthy.htm] . The repetition in "Remainder" takes the form of re-enactments of events carried out by the wealthy post-traumatic hero in a process that some critics (such as Joyce Carol Oates in the "New York Review of Books" [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20399] ) have seen as allegory for art itself [http://www.shorttermmemoryloss.com/words/2005/11/about-accident-itself-i-can-say-very.html] . In "Men in Space" it takes the form of duplication of an artwork, and a set of patterns repeating over several centuries. In McCarthy’s art projects it has taken the form of repeating sets of messages over radio in the style of Jean Cocteau’s "Orphée" [http://www.necronauts.org/caa.htm] [http://www.necronauts.org/art_monthly_04.htm] . Boyd Tonkin, in his "Independent" profile on McCarthy, picks up on the notion that literature itself is a series of repetitions and duplications. [http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tom-mccarthy-how-he-became-one-of-the-brightest-new-prospects-in-british-fiction-464502.html]

Failed Transcendence

Several critics have noted the centrality of failed transcendence to McCarthy's work, particularly when discussing "Men in Space" [http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,2165228,00.html] [http://jonathanderbyshire.typepad.com/blog/2007/09/men-in-space.html] . McCarthy himself has used this term in interviews [http://www.edrants.com/segundo/bss-155-tom-mccarthy-part-two/] to describe the collapse of the idealist project in philosophy, art and literature. The notion of failed transcendence also forms a central tenet of 'The New York Declaration on Inauthenticity', an INS talk delivered in the style of a propaganda statement by McCarthy and the philosopher Simon Critchley in 2007 in the Drawing Center, New York. [http://canopycanopycanopy.com/1/state_of_inauthenticity]

Matter

In relation to failed transcendence, the notion of matter seems to play a central role in McCarthy’s work. "Remainder"'s hero is obsessed with “surplus matter”: the residues and traces of events. In his INS publication 'Navigation Was Always a Difficult Art', McCarthy discusses figures such as Dorian Gray, whose image becomes material (so much so that it rots), the work of Francis Ponge (which is preoccupied with the materiality of messy objects such as oranges and oysters), and most importantly the fat, blubbery whale of "Moby Dick", who frustrates Ahab's idealistic attempt at self-projection. In a discussion with the artist Margarita Gluzberg, held in 2001 in London's Austrian Cultural Forum, McCarthy cites Georges Bataille's description of matter as “that non-logical difference that represents in relation to the economy of the universe what crime represents in relation to the economy of the law”. [http://www.necronauts.org/interviews_margarita.htm] In a lecture delivered to the International James Joyce Symposium in 2004 in Dublin, McCarthy again cites Bataille, drawing on his notion of “base materialism” to throw light on the scatological sensibility displayed in Joyce's novels. [http://www.geocities.com/hypermedia_joyce/mccarthy.html]

Transmission

Another recurring theme in McCarthy’s work is that of transmission. The detective in "Men in Space" clearly embodies this concern: he is a radio surveillance operative who starts out boasting he “can always get a strong signal”, but ends up losing the signal and then becoming deaf, cut off from all communication. In one interview, McCarthy has discussed this character’s similarity to Coppola's Harry Caul in "The Conversation" [http://blogs.raincoast.com/index.php/weblog/in-conversation-with-tom-mccarthy-3] .Transmission is also central to Cocteau's "Orphée", around which McCarthy created an art project at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 2004, which consisted of forty assistants cutting up text, projecting it onto the walls and then re-assembling it into cryptic messages which were transmitted around London and the world by FM and internet. This project was indebted to William Burroughs's notions of viral media [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1971187.ece] and to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's notions of the "crypt", a space both of burial and encryption.

Press Coverage

Extensive overviews of reviews of and articles on Tom McCarthy's work can be found at [http://surplusmatter.com/category/reviews/ Surplus Matter] and [http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/gbx/mccarthy.htm Complete Review ("Remainder")] and [http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/gbx/mccarthy2.htm Complete Review ("Men in Space")] .

Editions in English

Tom McCarthy, "Calling All Agents" (London: Vargas Organization, 2003). ISBN 0-9520274-8-8

Tom McCarthy, "Men in Space" (London: Alma Books, 2007). ISBN 978-1846880339

Tom McCarthy, "Navigation Was Always a Difficult Art" (London: Vargas Organization, 2002). ISBN 0-9520274-5-3

Tom McCarthy, "Remainder" (Paris: Metronome Press, 2005). ISBN 2-9162620-0-8

Tom McCarthy, "Remainder" (London: Alma Books, 2006). ISBN 978-1846880414

Tom McCarthy, "Remainder" (New York, NY: Vintage, 2007). ISBN 978-0307278357

Tom McCarthy, "Tintin and the Secret of Literature" (London: Granta, 2006). ISBN 978-1862078314

Tom McCarthy, "Tintin and the Secret of Literature" (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2008). ISBN 978-1582434056

Editions in Other Languages

"Remainder"

Tom McCarthy, "Απομεινάρια" (Athens: Papyros, 2007). ISBN 978-9606715266

Tom McCarthy, "Déjà-vu" (Milan: ISBN Edizioni, 2008) ISBN 978-8876380952

Tom McCarthy, "Et ce sont les chats qui tombèrent" (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2007). ISBN 978-2012372597

Tom McCarthy, "Residuos" (Madrid: Lengua de Trapo, 2007). ISBN 978-8483810200

"Tintin and the Secret of Literature"

Tom McCarthy, "Tintin e il segreto della letteratura" (Milan: Piemme, 2007). ISBN 978-8838486685

Tom McCarthy, "Tintin et le secret de la littérature" (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2006). ISBN 978-2012372580

Tom McCarthy, "Tintín y el secreto de la literatura" (Madrid: El Tercer Nombre, 2007). ISBN 978-8496693111

External links

* [http://www.surplusmatter.com SurplusMatter.com - a site dedicated to the work of Tom McCarthy]
* [http://www.almabooks.com Alma Books - Tom McCarthy's UK publisher]
* [http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage Vintage - Tom McCarthy's US publisher]
* [http://www.necronauts.org/index.htm INS Official site]
* [http://www.indigestmag.com/booklam6.htm A Review of Remainder] from InDigest Magazine
* [http://colinmarshall.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=361846 An interview with Tom McCarthy] on "The Marketplace of Ideas"