Harry Mathews, and James Schuyler, eds.
Cover proof for Locus Solus I.
November 1960.
Mathews met John Ashbery (1927-2017) in 1956; he wrote that it was Ashbery who “started me on the way at last to writing fiction.” In a 1958 letter to Mathews, Ashbery calls Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus “staggeringly beautiful, a Himalayas of literature—each peak higher than the last—I seem to be getting nowhere ...”
Interestingly, Mathews himself wrote in his autobiography: “Meanwhile I had begun reading Roussel: a hard task, one that first amused me, then convinced me that Roussel was a thoroughly nutty eccentric, until I at last emerged onto the vast, coldly illuminated plateau of his sovereign genius.” Where Ashbery found an impressive but unconquerable mountain range, Mathews found an enormous and habitable plateau—and the procedures that could serve as the model for his own techniques of writing.
With John Ashberry, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, Mathews founded the journal Locus Solus in Paris in 1960 and edited it through four issues. The little magazine was named after the Roussel novel that was so influential to the founders and the first issue included Mathews translation of the book's first chapter.
Mathews funded this journal with money inherited from his grandfather. The first issue was printed in La Palma, Spain; the three others (one a double issue) were printed in Geneva. It became an important publication for the New York School of poets. The community of writers and editors associated with it were also important to Mathews’ literary life.
