Miami Herald // My Life in CIA by Harry Mathews
FICTION
An American in Paris turns out to be a spy -- or does he?
This clever novel is amusing even amid the turmoil of early-'70s international relations.
By Andrew Ervin
MY LIFE IN CIA: A Chronicle of 1973. Harry Mathews. Dalkey. 203 pages. $13.95 in paper.
Harry Mathews doesn't spoof the espionage-novel tradition as much as tear it down and rebuild it in his own image. He does so by smuggling himself over the border between fiction and memoir and by casting himself as the story's leading man.
You can call My Life an autobiographical novel or a memoir, but rather than getting hung up on genres, keep in mind that the elusive quality is precisely what makes this book so much fun. You're never sure what to believe, and whether Mathews actually worked for the U.S. government is finally irrelevant.
It's worth noting that Mathews is the only American member of the Oulipo, otherwise known as the formalist collective Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle or ''Workshop for Potential Literature.'' As avant-garde literature's answer to the Super Friends, the Oulipo was founded in France 1960 for the purpose of resuscitating out-of-service literary forms and to create new ones intended to restrain the author. (The most famous example is George Perec's 300-page novel A Void, written entirely without the letter e.) That group's playfulness comes across on every page.
The story goes like this: As a well-heeled American living in Paris, Mathews was widely rumored to be a member of the CIA. The idea of agency, as in the ability to exert power, becomes a sort of theme. A natural troublemaker, Mathews decides to play the part and pretend he's a spook. But he makes an unlikely spy: ``It was laughable to think I could plan and effectuate a bomb-killing. Whenever I poured a drink I'd be doing well to just spill it and not break the glass.''
As cover, he establishes a fake travel agency but actually gets hired, inexplicably, to lead a seminar for people who suffer from travel-related dyslexia. His lecture is the book's most Oulipean episode, which I won't ruin for you here. Let's just say that his hilarious spiel comes to the attention of some real spies and before long Mathews finds himself caught in a tug-of-war between local Communists, fascists and real CIA agents.
As the suspense builds, so too does the farce. Mathews arranges to have a fake map of secret Soviet locations woven into a rug, which he intends to sell to other (possibly fake) agents of one government or another. When a romantic encounter at the rug shop goes awry, he gets rolled up into a carpet and delivered across town to the home of some extremely dangerous people. Neither shaken nor stirred by the situation, he joins the party in progress.
Overall, the novel -- if it can be called that -- is devilishly clever and always amusing even amid the turmoil and tension of early-'70s international relations. Mathews seems to poke fun at himself first and the espionage thriller tradition second. Getting the girl, for instance, isn't his problem, but keeping her around long enough for any real fun proves next to impossible.
In comparison with Mathews' other works -- short story collection Country Cooking from Central France, The Dialect of the Tribe, the captivating novel Cigarettes -- My Life in CIA comes across as Mathews-lite; if you haven't read him before it may not be the best place to start. But there are enough Oulipean flourishes to satisfy even his most ardent devotees, those who rightly understand that Mathews' is among our time's most inventive artistic voices.
An American in Paris turns out to be a spy -- or does he?
This clever novel is amusing even amid the turmoil of early-'70s international relations.
By Andrew Ervin
MY LIFE IN CIA: A Chronicle of 1973. Harry Mathews. Dalkey. 203 pages. $13.95 in paper.
Harry Mathews doesn't spoof the espionage-novel tradition as much as tear it down and rebuild it in his own image. He does so by smuggling himself over the border between fiction and memoir and by casting himself as the story's leading man.
You can call My Life an autobiographical novel or a memoir, but rather than getting hung up on genres, keep in mind that the elusive quality is precisely what makes this book so much fun. You're never sure what to believe, and whether Mathews actually worked for the U.S. government is finally irrelevant.
It's worth noting that Mathews is the only American member of the Oulipo, otherwise known as the formalist collective Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle or ''Workshop for Potential Literature.'' As avant-garde literature's answer to the Super Friends, the Oulipo was founded in France 1960 for the purpose of resuscitating out-of-service literary forms and to create new ones intended to restrain the author. (The most famous example is George Perec's 300-page novel A Void, written entirely without the letter e.) That group's playfulness comes across on every page.
The story goes like this: As a well-heeled American living in Paris, Mathews was widely rumored to be a member of the CIA. The idea of agency, as in the ability to exert power, becomes a sort of theme. A natural troublemaker, Mathews decides to play the part and pretend he's a spook. But he makes an unlikely spy: ``It was laughable to think I could plan and effectuate a bomb-killing. Whenever I poured a drink I'd be doing well to just spill it and not break the glass.''
As cover, he establishes a fake travel agency but actually gets hired, inexplicably, to lead a seminar for people who suffer from travel-related dyslexia. His lecture is the book's most Oulipean episode, which I won't ruin for you here. Let's just say that his hilarious spiel comes to the attention of some real spies and before long Mathews finds himself caught in a tug-of-war between local Communists, fascists and real CIA agents.
As the suspense builds, so too does the farce. Mathews arranges to have a fake map of secret Soviet locations woven into a rug, which he intends to sell to other (possibly fake) agents of one government or another. When a romantic encounter at the rug shop goes awry, he gets rolled up into a carpet and delivered across town to the home of some extremely dangerous people. Neither shaken nor stirred by the situation, he joins the party in progress.
Overall, the novel -- if it can be called that -- is devilishly clever and always amusing even amid the turmoil and tension of early-'70s international relations. Mathews seems to poke fun at himself first and the espionage thriller tradition second. Getting the girl, for instance, isn't his problem, but keeping her around long enough for any real fun proves next to impossible.
In comparison with Mathews' other works -- short story collection Country Cooking from Central France, The Dialect of the Tribe, the captivating novel Cigarettes -- My Life in CIA comes across as Mathews-lite; if you haven't read him before it may not be the best place to start. But there are enough Oulipean flourishes to satisfy even his most ardent devotees, those who rightly understand that Mathews' is among our time's most inventive artistic voices.
posted by Andrew Ervin at
8/14/2005
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