Surplus Matter

A novel is something that contains its own negation, right? So a novel is not a novel without an anti-novel lodged in it. It’s like an oyster: it isn’t interesting unless it has got a bit of grit in it as well — that not-oyster bit that kind of produces the pearl. In Tristram Shandy, this is precisely what produces the drama: the central drama of that book is its own undermining. And I think, in a way, this is what every book should be, in one way or another.

Tom McCarthy talks about Tristram Shandy in BBC Four’s Birth of the Novel.

Tom McCarthy introduces “a new radio poem using techniques which inspired him to write his Man Booker shortlisted novel C on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb.

Tom McCarthy talks about his discovery of Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina in The Millions.

Tom McCarthy interviewed by Richard Wolinsky on KPFA (Berkeley), November 2010: “If you’re plagiarising five things at once, it’s not plagiarism anymore”.

A link to Tom McCarthy’s CBC Radio interview from November 2010.

“It comes straight from Freud. Trauma is the condition of our identity. Trauma is the most basic condition of our existence,” McCarthy explains. The unnamed narrator in Remainder struggles to escape from an accidental trauma, an object which falls from the sky and almost kills him. The trauma in C is more psychological. “It’s a dual trauma, Serge’s seduction by Sophie his sister and then the loss of the sister,” McCarthy adds.

Tom McCarthy interviewed in Canada’s National Post.

Tom McCarthy interviewed by Michael Silverblatt on LA’s KCRW radio station.

Realism is just a literary convention like any other. For me where it does break down is the question of liberal humanism or sentimental humanism on the one hand, and on the other a writing that’s informed and inspired by modernism and you know a rainbow coalition of psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, the avant-garde, all these exhilirating things that happened in the last 100 years. Lots of things contemporary fiction seems determined to ignore.

Tom McCarthy interviewed by Michael Slenske in Interview.

A few pictures of Tom McCarthy from Friday’s Review Show.

McCarthy asks if I’ve read Story of The Eye. I say I tried once with a boyfriend to reenact the scene of Simone breaking eggs. I unfortunately contracted salmonella vaginally. McCarthy runs his hand up my leg, admiring my stockings.

Anne K. Yoder interviews Tom McCarthy in The Millions.