The Journalist

by Harry Mathews, Jonathan Lethem (Introduction)

Overview

A blend of postmodern metafiction and old-style bedroom farce, The Journalist explores the elusive, sometimes illusive, boundaries between facts and the fictions we weave around them.

The novel's protagonist, living at a time that might be the present in a city that might be anywhere, has decided for reasons of mental hygiene to keep a detailed record of his thoughts, words, and deeds. Very quickly, however, the project begins to absorb his entire life, as the increasingly meticulous recording of experience threatens to supplant experience itself. To make matters worse, what he records offers its own grist for worry: his devoted wife suddenly grows secretive, his equally devoted mistress turns evasive, his frustratingly independent son might or might not be visiting that same mistress behind his back, and his closest friend begins acting in mysterious ways (and is it just his imagination, or is this friend having clandestine meetings with his wife?). His ever more convoluted perceptions breed a dark muddle of suspicion, leading to a climax that is at once intensely funny and excruciatingly poignant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628976090
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	06/17/2025
Pages:	275
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Born in New York in 1930, Harry Mathews settled in Europe in 1952 and then lived in Spain, Germany, Italy, and (chiefly) France. When Mathews published his first poems in 1956, he was associated with the so-called New York School of poets, with three of whom (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler) he founded the review Locus Solus in 1961. Through his friendship with Georges Perec, he became a member of the Oulipo in 1972.

What People are Saying About This

Walter Adish

The calm with which Harry Mathews represents the elusiveness of the self in this riveting, masterful, is like the calm in the eye of a hurricane. The Journalist will take your breath away!

Editorial Reviews

"Mathews is one of American literature's great idiosyncratic figures."—Susannah Hunnewell, The Paris Review

From the Publisher

This low-key novel is not, as one might expect, about a member of the press. Instead, its unnamed protagonist is a middle-aged manic-depressive who, encouraged by his wife and doctor, begins to keep a journal. Before long, he's off his medicine and taking the diary entirely too seriously-ignoring the needs of home and work in order to better index his entries. He also starts to notice suspicious behavior all around him: by his wife and best friend (whom he believes are having an affair), and by his mistress (whom he suspects of seducing his son). Mathews (Cigarettes) writes lucidly and with a great deal of sensitivity, but his form betrays him. The journal scheme sounds good but doesn't work well on the page, and at least half the text concerns the protagonist's diet, clothing or endless indexing efforts. Had Mathews allowed himself a more introspective narrator who could make the occasional astute perception about what it means to keep a journal, this would be a much better book. Yet it is by no means an unrewarding read, since Mathews depicts his forlorn protagonist with ironic humor. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Mathews's journalist is a diarist, not a newspaper reporter. Recovering from a mysterious nervous collapse, he begins to record everyday events in a notebook, including what he ate for lunch, how much he spent on movies and books, and the number of pills he took. At first the diary puts him more in touch with his surroundings, but as he becomes more observant, the entries increase in length. Soon he is experimenting with elaborate classification and indexing schemes to bring some order to the unwieldly manuscript. The more time he devotes to organization, the further behind he gets in his entries, and he finds himself trying to recollect events that occurred days before. To avoid unnecessary distractions, he begins to withdraw from family and friends. More focused and accessible than Mathews's highly experimental early works (e.g., Tlooth, LJ 12/1/66), The Journalist is essentially a reworking of Michel Butor's classic nouveau roman, Degrs (1960). Recommended for most collections of serious fiction.-Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Library Journal