Plus, Joseph McElroy

Signed First Edition w/ Review Slip and Publicity Photo

I posted a McElroy book about a month ago, but just got this gem in and had to share it. Joseph McElroy, born in 1930, is an American writer of novels, short fiction, and essays. He's work is not particularly to read, with some putting him in the postmodern camp, along with Pynchon, DeLillo and Gaddis due to the difficult, encyclopedic nature of his novels. He defies conventional narrative styles and expectations of character and plot, in an effort to enhance narrative realism by abandoning the requirements of the linear story, which has its own distortions in attempting to represent the world “accurately.” He's won numerous awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, twice.

Plus was McElroy's fifth novel, published in 1977. It takes place in an unspecified future and concerns a disembodied consciousness in space. What is interesting here is McElroy's use of language to attempt to describe something beyond language. Per Kirkus Reviews – "The gradual derangement of Imp Plus ... is observed with the lurid precision of brilliant microphotography. McElroy's slow, demanding traceries of awareness do not always escape tedium; it is the price of the strange and valuable task he has set himself. An exhausting, disorienting work of discovery." This is the first softcover edition, issued simultaneously as the hardcover, signed by McElroy. Laid in is a review slip from Knopf and a publicity photo to be used for promotion and review of Plus.

More info here: