Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish is Tom McCarthy's own selection of the best of the essays he has published over more than a decade in such places as The Believer and the London Review of Books. It includes essays on writers, of course (Laurence Sterne, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Kathy Acker among them), but also on Gerhard Richter, David Lynch, and Sonic Youth-and all of them are written with the same stylish and provocative flare that made McCarthy's Remainder such a hit. This is an indispensable introduction to the mind and work of one of today's most brilliant and controversial novelists.

“"McCarthy's fiction and nonfiction aim to skewer an ideology of authenticity that is fed and watered by a certain humanist conception of literature." --Simon Critchley "McCarthy's crisp, clean prose is stimulating, his concepts original and his visual imagery powerful." --Layla Sanai, The Independent”

“[Tom McCarthy] is one of the few writers who not only illuminates his subject matter but also takes our understanding down new paths. There is an enormously wide frame of reference here, from Aristotle to MC Hammer, and it never feels forced.” —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

"Perhaps only in a Tom McCarthy essay would profound philosophical insight be pulled from both William Faulkner and M.C. Hammer. Such is the brainy, playful and always subversive power of McCarthy's first collection, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish….[McCarthy is] an adept stylist, in the vein of Nabokov, and never fails to deliver dazzling twists of language and meaning. Each essay impresses with the author's preternatural intelligence. Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish will entice lovers of art and literature." —Scott Neuffer, Shelf Awareness

"Reading Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish is like receiving a map of all the space that art, literature, and culture have carved out for each other. . . . This is the kind of book that deepens your appreciation of the subjects you’ve previously encountered, and sends you to seek out the ones you haven’t." —Gabe Habash, Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Stimulating, intellectually exciting, and highly imaginative." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“McCarthy’s fiction and nonfiction aim to skewer an ideology of authenticity that is fed and watered by a certain humanist conception of literature.” —Simon Critchley

“McCarthy’s crisp, clean prose is stimulating, his concepts original and his visual imagery powerful.” —Layla Sanai, The Independent

Tom McCarthy is known in the art world for the reports, manifestos, and media interventions he has made as the general secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network. His previous books include Men in Space, C, Remainder, and Tintin and the Secret of Literature. In 2013 he was awarded an inaugural Windham-Campbell Literature Prize from Yale University. He lives in London.

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