CASE OF PERSEVERING MALTESE PA

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.

Harry Mathews was born and raised on New York's Upper East Side, but left America for France in 1952 shortly after graduating from Harvard University. French culture has played a big role in his writing, especially the Oulipo -- the Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature) -- of which Mathews is the only American member. He is the author of over a dozen books