My Life in CIA (Harry Mathews, 2005)
As an American writer living among the literary avant-garde of 1970's Paris, Harry Mathews aroused suspicion. Rumours began to circulate that he was a member of the CIA, but when he tried to dispel these accusations, it only seemed to intensify his reputation. With a playful gleam in his eye (which readers of his brilliant, underappreciated novels will be familiar with) he decided to act in a deliberately mysterious manner, thus building the myth.
My Life in CIA is a strange sort of autobiography - an "AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL", according to the back cover. I dove into the book as soon as I got it, expecting a straight autobiography - not noticing that the Library of Congress classification information inside the cover page read "1. United States. Central Intelligence Agency - Fiction." For the first 50 pages I was totally absorbed by the biographical aspects, and stunned when I realized that certain parts just HAD to be fictitious.
Those who have read Mathews early novels (The Conversions, Tlooth, and The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium) may find this prose surprising - this is a very straight-forward narrative. The cryptic constructions of his Oulipian reputation are largely absent, though the strange (and oddly beautiful) rhythms of his writing still flourish. His pacing is delicate; the events unfold over the course of just one year, pretty much (the subtitle is "A Chronicle of 1973"), though it feels like an entire decade passes.
Amid the political turbulence of the 1970's, Mathews stakes out a curious position. From the beginning we are aware of his sympathies for the underclass, despite his relative financial comfort. As an expatriate writer, his social circle unsurprisingly consists of left-leaning artists and activists, but he's willing to wine and dine with all sorts of people. Mathews emphasizes the finer proclivities of high culture - dinners seem to take a central role in the book, recalling the food fascination of his "Country Cooking" short story - but with a bit of a mocking attitude towards the spoils of the wealthy. This type of self-effacing humour is carried through the entirety of the novel, eventually resembling a parody of spy narratives.
Containing mysterious sexual encounters, false businesses and coded messages, My Life in CIA certainly works as an espionage novel. While reading it, I began to question Mathews' own innocence (accepting the ruse of the novel. that is) and eventually he gets in over his head. It's no great insight that one can be snared into a sinister system unwillingly, but in this farcical setting it's an enjoyable type of sinister. In reading this, I must admit that I became jealous that I didn't get to participate in the confusion myself. When he turns up the weirdness, it's hard to accept that it's (probably) fiction - because you want so much to live in it's reality.
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