1. Harry Mathews was an American writer, the author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.
13 Facts About Harry Mathews
1. 2.
Harry Mathews left Princeton in his sophomore year for a tour in the United States Navy, during the course of which he eloped with the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, a childhood friend.
3.
Harry Mathews's military service completed, Mathews transferred to Harvard University in 1950; the couple's first child, Laura Duke Condominas, was born the following year.
4.
Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Harry Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus from 1961 to 1962.
5.
Harry Mathews was the first American chosen for membership in the French literary society known as Oulipo, which is dedicated to exploring new possibilities in literature, in particular through the use of various constraints and textual algorithms.
6.
Harry Mathews considered many of his works to be Oulipian in nature, but even before he encountered the group he was working in a parallel direction.
7.
Harry Mathews was later married to the writer Marie Chaix, and divided his time among Paris, Key West, and New York City.
8.
Harry Mathews's novel concludes with two appendices, one being in German.
9.
Harry Mathews used proverbs in many creative ways in his book Selected Declarations of Dependence, which was based on the words found in 46 common English proverbs.
10.
Harry Mathews used them to write poems, following self-invented rules.
11.
Harry Mathews created "Perverbs and Paraphrases", complex riddles based on proverbs.
12.
Harry Mathews invented "Harry Mathews's Algorithm", a method for producing literary works by transposing or permuting elements according to a predetermined set of rules.
13.
Harry Mathews died on January 25,2017, in Key West, Florida from natural causes, aged 86.