So I gave Mathews' first novel,
The
Conversions, a kind of
mutedly
positive review, but in reading his second,
Tlooth,
I started to think that I hadn't quite given Mathews his due.
Because this kind of sort of anti-novelistic thing, filled with
digressive shaggy dog stories, religious arcana, and postmodern
conspiracy theories really seems quite groundbreaking. He is, as I
noted, doing a somewhat similar thing to what Pynchon did in
The
Crying of Lot 49, but I think it's most likely more a case
of convergent evolution than anyone consciously copying anyone.
Whatever the case, as far as I know, there was really nothing like it
at the time, in English, at least (what do you want to bet there was
some never-translated thing in some Eastern European language?). I
don't know what you would've made of this at the time, and the
influence on Perec--which perhaps should've been obvious from the
tribute I noted--is really enormous. Also, while I complained about
the kind of bland, matter-of-fact style at the time, that style
combined with all this bizarreness really does create an Effect. No
denying it. Very impressive.
So the story of Tlooth,
such as it is, is that the narrator is a former violinist whose
career was cut short by having had part of his hand cut off by a
doctor to provide meat for a cannibalistic deli. Currently, the both
of them are in a Soviet prison camp with sections divided according
to obscure religious sect. After several failed Rube-Goldberg-esque
assassination attempts fail, the doctor, Roak, escapes, our narrator
and some others in hot pursuit (okay, "hot" would be
pushing it). They traverse Asia and many strange tales of
questionable relevance are related. The narrator ends up in Italy,
where there are several unbelievably obscene fantasias that turn out
to be the scenario that he(?)'s been hired to write for a
pornographic movie. He chases Roak some more, to India and Morocco.
Things end very inscrutably and anti-climactically. And that is
that.
Here's the thing: as I said, I feel
like I really started to appreciate Mathews more as I read this
novel, but that appreciation does not, in this case, translate into
actually liking him any more. His writing remains
very dry and alienating, and even if that's the intent, it fails to
fascinate me. Don't get me wrong; I love Mathews
in theory. It's just that when we get to praxis, things start to get
a little more dicey.
