Tlooth (original 1966; edition 1988)

by Harry Mathews

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
160	4	171,128	(3.71)	9
This novel begins in a Russian prison camp at a baseball game featuring the defective Baptists versus the Fideists. There is a plot (of sorts), one of revenge surrounding a doctor who, in removing a bone spur from our narrator, manages to amputate a ring and index finger, a significant surgical error considering that the narrator is, or was, a violinist. When Dr. Roak is released from prison, our narrator escapes in order to begin the pursuit, and thus begins a digressive journey from Afghanistan to Venice, then on to India and Morocco and France. All of this takes place amid Mathews's fictional concern and play with games, puzzles, arcana, and stories within stories.… (more)

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Member:	dizziest
Title:	Tlooth
Authors:	Harry Mathews
Info:	Carcanet Press (1988), Paperback, 175 pages
Collections:	Your library
Rating:
Tags:	oulipo, not yet read

Work Information

Tlooth by Harry Mathews (1966)

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Audaciously eccentric storytelling, splendidly composed, vast but contained, motley and wry. Mathews makes a great go of it, from hints of a medieval medical feud in the faux footnotes of a forged letter, to an Afghan mustard bar to the soothsaying mudbogs of pornographic Venice and beyond. There’s probably something here for everyone, but too much for most.

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MusicalGlass | Sep 14, 2019 |

DmENTAL
Written in short chapters, the narrative of TLOOTH is awash with absurdist digressions and surreal imagery. Halfway through I was somewhat confused. By the end I was pleasantly bemused. All in all I enjoyed the author's limpid style and the many dreamlike happenings. The point of writings like this isn't necessarily the story, more the incidental side-stepping and strange instances that occur along the way, and this novel is loaded with such deviations - "play with games, puzzles, arcana, and stories within stories" as it says on the back cover. I'd define it as elegantly mind-boggling. A curious creation. (

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BlackGlove | Jan 20, 2018 |

Read my review at: http://www.thetruthasiseeit.com/2009/06/tlooth-some.html (

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TTAISI-Editor | Jul 2, 2009 |

Extremely hard to review, especially as I read in ms so long ago. I don't recall a word of it. But that's no reflection on Harry. It's a reflection on me. I was hiding in it at the time.

StephenG | Jan 29, 2009 |

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American Literature Series

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Canonical title

Tlooth

Original title

Tlooth

Alternative titles

Original publication date

1966

People/Characters

Evelyn Roak

Important places

Important events

Related movies

Epigraph

It is a mistake to regard one disease as more divine than another, since all is human and all divine.

Hippocrates

Dedication

First words

Mannish Madame Nevtaya slowly cried "Fur bowls!" and the Fideist batter, alert to the sense behind the sound of her words, jogged toward first base.

Quotations

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Disch, Thomas M.

Vidal, Gore

Original language

Canonical DDC/MDS

Canonical LCC

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Wikipedia in English (1)

Harry Mathews

▾Book descriptions

This novel begins in a Russian prison camp at a baseball game featuring the defective Baptists versus the Fideists. There is a plot (of sorts), one of revenge surrounding a doctor who, in removing a bone spur from our narrator, manages to amputate a ring and index finger, a significant surgical error considering that the narrator is, or was, a violinist. When Dr. Roak is released from prison, our narrator escapes in order to begin the pursuit, and thus begins a digressive journey from Afghanistan to Venice, then on to India and Morocco and France. All of this takes place amid Mathews's fictional concern and play with games, puzzles, arcana, and stories within stories.

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