From Library Journal
Taking his title from Stendhal's practice of writing "20 lines a day, genius or not," Mathews produced this book over a year and a half while working on several other projects. Although its ostensible purpose was to overcome the anxiety of each day's new blank page, this practice helped Mathews confront certain personal concerns, including illness, travel, home, and relationships. Perhaps its most significant fucntion was to allow him to mourn the loss of his friend, the novelist Georges Perec. While Perec is mentioned only briefly at the beginning and end of these selections, it is clear that these lines commemorate Perec by examining the issues raised by his death.Mollie Brodsky, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Irving Malin, Hollins Critic 2-89
"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.'"


Bill Bamberger, New Pages #14
"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 elseis how a man, living a day like any of us, can generate wild, mysterious fictions in the midst of it all. We are carried beyond telephone, through letter, past thought, to sensibility, all at the easy pace of 20 Lines a Day."


George Myers, Jr., American Book Review March-April 89
"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."


San Francisco Chronicle 8-28-88
"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."


Thomas Disch
"I cannot express the extent of my admiration for Harry Mathews, which is well-nigh evangelical. There are now, here and there, other zephyrs blowingJohn Barth, Susan Sontag, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchonbut none so strong as this."


Book Description
diaristic "20 lines a day, genius or not"

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

"I cannot express the extent of my admiration for Harry Mathews, which is well-nigh evangelical. There are now, here and there, other zephyrs blowing—John Barth, Susan Sontag, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon—but none so strong as this." (Thomas Disch)

"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." (San Francisco Chronicle 8-28-88)

"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." (George Myers, Jr., American Book Review March-April 89)

"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, living a day like any of us, can generate wild, mysterious fictions in the midst of it all. We are carried beyond telephone, through letter, past thought, to sensibility, all at the easy pace of 20 Lines a Day." (Bill Bamberger, New Pages #14)