Ten Favorite Works of ’Pataphysical Fiction
(The spoof side of metaphysics, ‘pataphysics treats the effort to investigate the puzzles of being as an essentially comic endeavor. Alfred Jarry, who coined the term, described it as “the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of the general. 'Pataphysics will examine the laws which govern exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously, will describe a universe which can be—and perhaps should be—envisaged in place of the traditional one, since the laws which are supposed to have been discovered in the traditional universe are also correlations of exceptions, albeit more frequent ones.” More succinctly, Christian Bök describes it as “a genre of science fiction which shows science itself to be a fiction.” The ‘pataphysical approach may be comic, but the effect isn’t wholly so, since by dedicating itself to the minute particulars of a contingent universe, it insinuates or reminds us that this universe is just as contingent, just as unlikely. Here are ten books I associate with the movement, organized alphabetically by author.)
The Musical Brain and Other Stories by César Aira
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
The Crab Nebula by Éric Chevillard
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
The Room by Jonas Karlsson
Atlas Inutilis by Hervé Le Tellier
Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli
The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
The Afflictions by Vikram Paralkar
The Neighborhood by Gonçalo M. Tavares
— November 23, 2020