Cigarettes


 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Contents
 Epigraph
 Allan and Elizabeth
 Oliver and Elizabeth
 Oliver and Pauline
 Owen and Phoebe: I
 Owen and Phoebe: II
 Allan and Owen
 Lewis and Morris
 Lewis and Walter
 Louisa and Lewis
 Irene and Walter
 Priscilla and Walter
 Irene and Morris
 Pauline and Maud
 Maud and Priscilla
 Maud and Elizabeth
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Contents
 Epigraph
 Allan and Elizabeth
 Start to Contents
 
 
 
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 Praise for Harry Mathews
 
 “A brilliant and unsettling book.… Mathews weaves into each of his several story-threads more unexpected twists than you’ll find in the average multi-volume Victorian novel.”
 —Tom Clark, LA Times Book Review
 “Cigarettes has the delicate yet rigorous architecture of latticework: if we concentrate on the light streaming through its apertures we are still attentive to its carpentry; if we focus on its geometry the light is, of needs, a constant presence. It is a triumph of the imagination.”
 —Gilbert Sorrentino
 “In Cigarettes, Mathews takes us more interestingly than ever into that unfinished work of art, the self, exposing powerful dependencies and subtleties in a cast of characters distinct and poised yet half-goping toward others and themselves. The plot, the tale, the laying bare, are intriguingly staged and timed in a novel as imaginative as it is disturbing.”
 —Joseph McElroy
 “Mathews has perfected a witty, supple, and aphoristic style, capable of many effects.… An odd and gratifying novel.”
 —New York Review of Books
 “There is a relentless quality of incident, but Mathews runs the whole sequence without a hiccough of implausibility or forced conjunction.”
 —Times Literary Supplement
 “A brainteasing game that is both absorbing and exhilarating.… As a stylist, Mathews manages to tinge familiar objects and places, such as New York, with a delectable strangeness.”
 —Publishers Weekly
 “Like a clever gamester, Mathews teases the reader with plot twists and jokes as he subtly but seriously examines the nature of perception.”
 —Booklist
 
 
 
 Other Books by Harry Mathews
 
 
 FICTION
 The Conversions
 Tlooth
 Country Cooking and Other Stories
 The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium
 The American Experience
 Singular Pleasures
 The Journalist
 
 
 POETRY
 The Ring
 The Planisphere
 Trial Impressions
 Le Savior des rois
 Armenian Papers: Poems 1954-1984
 Out of Bounds
 A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991
 
 
 MISCELLANIES
 Selected Declarations of Dependence
 The Way Home
 Ecrits Français
 
 
 NONFICTION AND CRITICISM
 The Orchard
 20 Lines a Day
 Immeasurable Distances: The Collected Essays
 Giandomenico Tiepolo
 
 
 
 Harry Mathews
 
 CIGARETTES
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 1987 by Harry Mathews
 First Dalkey Archive edition, 1998
 First Dalkey Archive Essentials edition, 2022
 All rights 
 In Memory of Georges Perec
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 
 Allan and Elizabeth
 Oliver and Elizabeth
 Oliver and