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Joseph McElroy: Ancient History: A Paraphase

Note the clever subtitle – paraphase, not paraphrase. No idea what it means but it obviously means something for McElroy. Dom has apparently killed himself in an apartment building. Cy enters Dom’s apartment shortly afterwards. Who is Cy? It is not clear but he is clearly trying to establish those old connections between himself, Dom, Al and Bob, none of whom has met the other, except for Cy. This time McElroy takes it a bit farther, as he tries to establish the mathematical connections between the four and not just between their positions but their relative position to him as each one fades in and fades out. It all reminds me of Samuel Beckett or, perhaps, Brian Aldiss‘ Report on Probability A but it does not make for exciting reading.

Publishing history

First published 1971 by Knopf