20 Lines a Day

For a period of just over a year, Harry Mathews set about following Stendhal's dictum for writers of "twenty lines a day, genius or not." What resulted is a book that is part journal, parts writer's manual, and part genius. First undertaken as a kind of discipline, the work molds itself into a penetrating reflection on daily events in Mathews's life, his friends, himself, and the act of writing.

Details

Title 20 Lines a Day

Author Harry Mathews

Title First Published 1988

Format Paperback

Nb of pages 134 p.

ISBN-10 1564781682

ISBN-13 9781564781680

Publication Date 1988

Nb of pages 134

Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5 in.

List Price $10.95

Onix Version 2.1

Reviews

Press Reviews

San Francisco Chronicle

20 Lines a Day might be considered an exercise in constrictive form. . . . Though written in the self-preoccupied, matter-of-fact voice of everyday mulling, it has the irony and symmetry of a parable.

American Book Review

Weighted by sadness, 20 Lines is caliginous, edgy, and worrisome. . . . Mathews frequently is wise, as when he peers inward at the fluttery life of his own mind. Out of the pattern of one's routines comes clues to how life might best be lived.

New Pages

We all may see moments of ourselves here, as well as many revealing glimpses of Mathews' day-to-day life, but what we can only get a feel for—and . . . get it here as nowhere else—is how a man

...more

Hollins Critic

Despite the fact that these lines are exercises, they are more than simple jottings. They offer the reflections of genius; they will be read (and reread) for more than one day, for more than one year. They are 'lasting.'

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