Singular Pleasures

Illustrated by Francesco Clemente

Paperback
Price: $12.95 $10.36 Save $2.59 (20%)

The subject of this unique book of short fiction is masturbation, a practice both universal and virtually taboo. In sixty-one vignettes, Mathews records the imaginative varieties of this solitary activity in prose that is playful, intimate, urgent, quirky, and humane.

Details

ISBN-10 1-56478-233-6

ISBN-13 9781564782335

Publication Date Nov 1999

Nb of pages 144

Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5 in.

Onix

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Reviews

Press Reviews

New York Press

Quietly, with gentle and all-embracing humanism, these prose poems refute the taboos . . . As a literary device the focus on that singular moment inspires Mathews to bravura feats of compression

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Cups

Singular Pleasures is wonderfully shocking and a joy to read, and gives a new meaning to 'reading for pleasure.'

Kirkus

Some of the vignettes are silly, some exotic, some satiric, some erotic, most poetic, some neutral, and some . . . touchingly lovely.

Artforum

There is nothing pornographic, in the strict sense, about Mathews' text, since it does not seek to arouse the reader: its tone is cool, humorous, and affectionate. His intention is to leave us

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Semiquasi Press

This very aesthetic manual offers to the willing reader (or should I say dreamer) a beautiful, unintentional alternative to achieving bliss in this day of epidemie d'amour and collective fear.

Small Press

There is something deliciously voyeuristic about Singular Pleasures (perhaps the most aptly titled book of the year). Only a verbal master of Marry Mathews' dimensions could make of Onan's preoccupation something elegant, witty and even wise.

Quotations

Like seeds of closeness, like some always penultimate leisure to make it up out of an alphabet of selves, these glimpses yield a gentle, conspiring privacy.

-Joseph McElroy

A great ecumenical work.

-Georges Perec

Harry Mathews is a playful, precise writer, a modernist with a singular sense of humor, a stylist whose subject matter often seems irrelevant next to the beauty of his language.

-Michael Perkins

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