Tom McCarthy (writer)

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Tom McCarthy
Born 1969 (age 42–43)
Occupation Novelist, Artist
Nationality British
Period 2002–present
Notable work(s) Remainder, Men in Space, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, C
www.necronauts.org

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

Contents

[edit] Life and work

Tom McCarthy is a writer and conceptual artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in central London. McCarthy grew up in Greenwich, south London and was educated at Dulwich College (1978 to 1986) and later New College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He lived in Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam in the early nineties before settling back in his native London. McCarthy's time in Prague would form the basis for his novel "Men in space".[1] McCarthy has also worked as a television script editor, co-editing Mute magazine. Prior to his success he lived and wrote in a tower block on the Golden Lane Estate beside the Barbican.[1]

McCarthy's debut novel Remainder initially made no impact on larger UK publishers. It was eventually published in November 2005 by small Paris-based art publisher Metronome Press and distributed through gallery and museum shops, but not in chain bookstores [1] and then received widespread critical attention in the literary and mainstream press. The London Review of Books called it "a very good novel indeed" and The Independent claimed that "its minatory brilliance calls for classic status".[2] The novel was re-published in a much larger UK print-run by the more conventional English publisher Alma Books (2006), and in the US by Vintage (2007), where it ranked as an Amazon top one-hundred seller and entered the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list. On its American publication the New York Times dedicated the front cover of its book section to the novel, calling the book "a work of novelistic philosophy, as disturbing as it is funny".[3] In 2008 Remainder won the fourth annual Believer Book Award.[4] Zadie Smith wrote in the New York Review of Books that it was "one of the great English novels of the last ten years", suggesting it showed a future path that the novel "might, with difficulty, follow".[5] It has since been translated into fourteen languages, and an adaptation for cinema by Film4 Productions was begun in 2008.[6][7] Since the success, several big publishing houses who had turned it down originally returned to him with enthusiastic offers, which McCarthy rejected, commenting that "it's the same book as it was two years ago."[1]

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.[8] The book, which attempted a reading of Hergé's Tintin books through the prism of structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory divided reviewers, with some critics reacting adversely to the book's unabashed celebration of divisive literary figures such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. McCarthy commented: "Granta asked if I wanted to write a book on Freud or Derrida or someone like that, and I said: 'Well, if I write about Hergé I can write about Freud, Derrida and whole bunch of other people, plus it'll be much more fun.' It was received well for the most part. There were one or two hilarious English reviews in which you could virtually see the reviewer's veins bursting with little-England rage at the book's continental bent." [9] Killian Fox in The Observer praised "its author's obsessive approach, his breathtaking grasp of the oeuvre and the sheer exuberance with which he tackles his subject".[10] However, in The Guardian, Kathryn Hughes criticized its methodology and style: "McCarthy's text has that pleased-with-itself smirk that was so characteristic of the early 90s, when journalists started purloining critical theory from the academy, liking the way it made them feel clever".[11]

In 2007, Alma Books published his second novel, Men in Space, much of which was written prior to Remainder. It has since been published in many languages including Greek and French.[12] McCarthy has also published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, Artforum and The New York Times, 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. In 2008 an essay by McCarthy on Alain Robbe-Grillet, an author he has often expressed an admiration for, was published in the new Oneworld Classics English edition of Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy.[13] McCarthy's novel Satin Island will be released in Spring 2012 from the Knopf Publishing Group.

[edit] Art and The International Necronautical Society (INS)

With no formal training in the visual arts, McCarthy stated that he became an artist by accident after he handed out his International Necronautical Society or INS manifestos at a mock art fair organized by artist Gavin Turk. He claimed that although his first love is literature, "art has one advantage in that it provides an active space, a space of becoming-active. You can actually do the thing rather than just represent it."[14] Since 1999 McCarthy has operated as 'General Secretary' of a 'semi-fictitious organisation' called the International Necronautical Society (INS) "devoted to mind-bending projects that would do for death what the Surrealists had done for sex".[1] [15] The INS operates through publications, live events, media interventions and more conventional art exhibitions. In a 2007 interview with the website Bookninja, McCarthy explained the circumstances that led to the formation of the INS: "I was quite well integrated into the art world in London by the late nineties, and on top of that I’d for some time had an interest in the modes and procedures of early twentieth century avant-gardes like the Futurists and Surrealists: their semi-corporate, semi-political structures of committees and subcommittees, their use of manifestos, proclamations and denunciations".[16] Despite his initial claim that the INS was 'not an art project',[17] McCarthy has accepted invitations to show work in his capacity as INS General Secretary at art institutions around the world, including Tate Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Moderna Museet Stockholm, the Drawing Center New York, Kunstwerke Berlin, Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund, and Substation Gallery Singapore.[1]

The INS has been described by Art Monthly as "a platform for fantastically mobile thinking." [18] In 2003 the INS broke into the BBC website and inserted propaganda into its source code. The following year, they set up a broadcasting unit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from which more than forty assistants generated non-stop "poem-codes" which were transmitted over FM radio in London and by internet to collaborating radio stations around the world.[19] In 2008 a more mechanical version of this piece was displayed at Stockholm's Moderna Museet, in which an aeroplane Black Box transmitter sent out a stream of similar messages.[20] In 2007, after McCarthy and INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley had delivered the 'INS Declaration on Inauthenticity' at New York's Drawing Center, the critic Peter Schwenger alleged in Triple Canopy (online magazine) that the two men who appeared in the gallery were not in fact Critchley and McCarthy.[21] Taking his claim as an inspiration, McCarthy and Critchley did indeed replace themselves with actors when delivering the Declaration one year later at Tate Britain.[22] When invited to deliver the Declaration a third time at the 2009 Athens Biennial, they announced that the Declaration would henceforth be outsourced to any institution who wanted it, and commissioned a Greek translation, which was subsequently delivered by Greek actors in Athens.[23]

McCarthy has also made artworks outside of his role as INS General Secretary. In 2005 he exhibited, at The Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, the multimedia installation piece 'Greenwich Degree Zero', produced in collaboration with artist Rod Dickinson, which (in a tribute to Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent), depicted the Greenwich Observatory burning the ground. The piece was subsequently purchased by the Arts Council England's permanent collection.[24] In 2006 he collaborated with French artist Loris Gréaud to produce an 'Ontic Helpline' for a fictitious 'Thanatalogical Corporation' - a black telephone that transfers callers through an endless loop of pre-recorded messages. The telephone was displayed in the FiAC collection in Paris, and purchased by gallerists/collectors Solene Guillier and Nathalie Boutin. McCarthy wrote the script for Johan Grimonprez's feature film Double Take (2009). The script consists of a short story, loosely based on Borges's 'August 25, 1983', in which Hitchcock meets his double on the set of one of his films.[25] The film won the Black Pearl award (MEIFF, Abu Dhabi) in 2009. McCarthy has also tutored and lectured at various institutions including the Architectural Association, Central Saint Martins School of Art, the Royal College of Art, London Consortium and Columbia University.

[edit] Novels

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] C

Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world. After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he’s recruited for a mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of which eventually carries Serge to a fitful—and perhaps fateful—climax at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb . . .

McCarthy's novel C was released in late 2010 - in the US with Knopf, in the UK with Jonathan Cape. McCarthy has described this novel in previous interviews as dealing with technology and mourning. The book was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.[26][27]

Leo Robson in the New Statesman review describes the book as "full of familiar delights and familiar tedium", with "Protracted descriptions of a pageant and a seance [that] drain the reader's will to live." It continues "After a certain point, most sentences go something like this (not a parody): "Everything seems connected: disparate locations twitch and burst into activity like limbs reacting to impulses sent from elsewhere in the body, booms and jibs obeying levers at the far end of a complex set of ropes and cogs and relays.""[28]

[edit] Themes

[edit] 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 an interview.[16] 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 [29]) have seen as allegory for art itself.[30] 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 [1].[18] Boyd Tonkin, in his Independent profile on McCarthy, picks up on the notion that literature itself is a series of repetitions and duplications.[31]

[edit] Failed Transcendence

Several critics have noted the centrality of failed transcendence to McCarthy's work, particularly when discussing Men in Space.[32][33] McCarthy himself has used this term in interviews [34] 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.[21]

[edit] 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”.[35] 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.[36]

[edit] 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 Francis Ford Coppola's Harry Caul in The Conversation.[37] Transmission is also central to Cocteau's Orphée, around which McCarthy created an art project at the Institute of Contemporary Arts 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 S. Burroughs's notions of viral media [38] and to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's notions of the "crypt", a space both of burial and encryption. The art-piece Black Box, originally displayed in Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 2008, also involved constant radio transmissions. McCarthy has insisted that radio technology can be regarded as a metaphor for writing, comparing T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" to a radio programme.[39]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Tom McCarthy: How he became one of the brightest new prospects in British fiction" The Independent" 21 September 2007
  2. ^ the complete review - all rights reserved. "Remainder - Tom McCarthy". Complete-review.com. http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/gbx/mccarthy.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  3. ^ Schillinger, Liesl (2007-02-25). "Play It Again". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/books/review/Schillinger.t.html. 
  4. ^ "The Believer - The Believer Book Award". Believermag.com. http://www.believermag.com/issues/200806/?read=believer_book_award. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  5. ^ More by Zadie Smith (2008-11-20). "Two Paths for the Novel | The New York Review of Books". Nybooks.com. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22083. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  6. ^ Part 3: Interview with McCarthy. The view from here journal. March 2008
  7. ^ Editions have been published, or are scheduled to be published, in Chinese (Shanghai Translation Publishing House and Ten Points Publishing House), Croatian (Oceanmore), Dutch (Prometheus), French (Hachette Littératures and J’ai Lu), German (Diaphanes), Greek (Papyros Publishing Group), Hebrew (Achuzat Bayit), Italian (ISBN Edizioni), Japanese (Shinchosha Publishing Company), Korean (Minumsa), Portuguese (Editorial Estampa), Russian (Ad Marginem), Spanish (Lengua de Trapo) and Turkish (Encore Yayınları).
  8. ^ Tom McCarthy, Tintin e il segreto della letteratura (Milan: Piemme, 2007). ISBN 978-8838486685; Tintin et le secret de la littérature (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2006). ISBN 978-2012372580; Tintín y el secreto de la literatura (Madrid: El Tercer Nombre, 2007). ISBN 978-8496693111
  9. ^ Part 1: Interview with McCarthy. The view from here journal. March 2008
  10. ^ Killian Fox (2006-07-16). "Observer review: Tintin and the Secret of Literature by Tom McCarthy | Books | The Observer". London: Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/16/booksforchildrenandteenagers.features. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  11. ^ Kathryn Hughes (2006-07-14). "Review: Tintin and the Secret of Literature by Tom McCarthy | Books". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/15/highereducation.news. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  12. ^ Tom McCarthy, Men in space (Ανθρωποι στο διαστημα) (Athens: Papyros, 2008). ISBN 978-9606715600; Les Cosmonautes au paradis (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2009). ISBN 978-2012374065
  13. ^ "Tom McCarthy's top 10 European modernists | Books | guardian.co.uk". London: Guardian. 2008-07-22. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/08/top10s.modernists. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  14. ^ http://www.readysteadybook.com/Article.aspx?page=tommccarthy
  15. ^ Published: 12:01AM BST 13 Sep 2007 (2007-09-13). "Lost in the orbits of spies and mobsters". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3667868/Lost-in-the-orbits-of-spies-and-mobsters.html. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  16. ^ a b "In The Magazine". Bookninja. http://bookninja.com/magazine/fall2007/mccarthy.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  17. ^ "An Index to the work of Tom McCarthy". Surplus Matter. 2007-02-01. http://surplusmatter.com/interviews/interviews-with/its-impossible-to-think-of-writing-without-thinking-of-death-tom-mccarthy-on-the-necronautical-society/. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  18. ^ a b "The Necronautical Society - INS in the Press". Necronauts.org. http://www.necronauts.org/art_monthly_04.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  19. ^ Alma publishing profile.
  20. ^ mikejfrench. "Tom McCarthy om Black Box". YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm4379AkUb0. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  21. ^ a b "The State of Inauthenticity - Triple Canopy". Canopycanopycanopy.com. 2007-09-25. http://canopycanopycanopy.com/1/state_of_inauthenticity. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  22. ^ "Tate Channel: Tate Triennial 2009 Prologue 4: Borders". Channel.tate.org.uk. http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/27082994001. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  23. ^ "18192" (PDF). http://www.athensbiennial.org/AB2PressReleases&PreviewScheduleENGLISH.pdf. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  24. ^ "Greenwich Degree Zero, 2005-6". Arts Council. 2010-03-31. http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/collections/arts-council-collection/greenwich-degree-zero-2005-6/. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  25. ^ IMDb profile of Double take
  26. ^ "An Index to the work of Tom McCarthy". Surplus Matter. 2007-10-14. http://surplusmatter.com/interviews/interviews-with/watch-that-space-or-literatures-proper-territory/. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  27. ^ "Vintage / Anchor « Knopf Doubleday - Vintage / Anchor". Randomhouse.com. 2010-03-25. http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307278357&view=qa. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  28. ^ New Statesman article
  29. ^ More by Joyce Carol Oates (2007-07-19). "Lest We Forget | The New York Review of Books". Nybooks.com. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20399. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  30. ^ "short term memory loss ... a blog about books ...: About the accident itself I can say very little". Shorttermmemoryloss.com. 2005-11-14. http://www.shorttermmemoryloss.com/words/2005/11/about-accident-itself-i-can-say-very.html. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  31. ^ "Tom McCarthy: How he became one of the brightest new prospects in British fiction - Features, Books". London: The Independent. 2007-09-21. 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. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  32. ^ Lee Rourke (2007-09-08). "Review: Men in Space by Tom McCarthy | Books | The Observer". London: Books.guardian.co.uk. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,,2165228,00.html. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  33. ^ "Jonathan Derbyshire: Men in Space". Jonathanderbyshire.typepad.com. 2007-09-11. http://jonathanderbyshire.typepad.com/blog/2007/09/men-in-space.html. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  34. ^ "Tom McCarthy, Part Two (BSS #155) : The Bat Segundo Show". Edrants.com. 2007-11-30. http://www.edrants.com/segundo/bss-155-tom-mccarthy-part-two/. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  35. ^ "The Necronautical Society - INS interviews". Necronauts.org. http://www.necronauts.org/interviews_margarita.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  36. ^ Louis Armand. "Hypermedia Joyce Studies: Darren Tofts". Oocities.com. Archived from the original on 2009-10-26. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/hypermedia_joyce/mccarthy.html&date=2009-10-26+00:18:04. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  37. ^ "Blog | Raincoast Books". Blogs.raincoast.com. http://blogs.raincoast.com/index.php/weblog/in-conversation-with-tom-mccarthy-3. Retrieved 2010-04-15. 
  38. ^ Times 23 June 2007 "Publishing? It’s an art form"
  39. ^ Tom Vandeputte. "Radio, Archaeology, Literature: Tom Vandeputte in Conversation with Tom McCarthy". Perhaps (Perhaps). http://www.supplementmaterial.com/#8. Retrieved 2011-01-07. 

[edit] External links

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