A companion to last season's The Human Country: New and Collected Stories, this volume collects all of Harry Mathews's nonfiction. These astonishing essays range from discussions of complex literary and musical forms to the works of Lewis Carroll. Raymond Roussel, Italo Calvino, Joseph McElroy, Georges Perec, and the Oulipo. Throughout the collection Mathews examines the relationship between form and literature in a lucid, intimate voice, arguing with erudition, grace and humor for the importance of artifice.
