International Necronautical Society

Tom McCarthy (born 1969) is an English writer and artist. His debut novel, ''Remainder'', was published in 2005 by Metronome. McCarthy has twice been nominated for the Man Booker, and was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Literature Prize by Yale University in 2013. He won a Believer Book Award for ''Remainder'' in 2008.

He has also written a critical study of Tintin called ''Tintin and the Secret of Literature,'' and published an essay collection, ''Typewriters, Bombs, and Jellyfish'', in 2017''.'' His most recent novel, ''The Making of Incarnation'', was published in 2021.

Life and work

Tom McCarthy was born in London in 1969 and lives in Berlin. He grew up in Greenwich, and was educated at Dulwich College (from 1978 to 1986) and later New College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He lived in Prague, where he worked as a nude model and in an American bar; Berlin, where he worked in an Irish pub; and Amsterdam, where he worked in a restaurant kitchen and reviewed books for the local edition of '' Time Out'' magazine in the early 90s, before moving back to London. McCarthy's time in Prague forms the basis for his novel ''Men in Space''."Tom McCarthy: How he became one of the brightest new prospects in British fiction" ''The Independent" 21 September 2007
/ref> McCarthy has also worked as a television script editor, and co-edited ''Mute'' magazine. Prior to his success he lived and wrote in a tower block flat on the Golden Lane Estate beside the Barbican.

Writing and publishing

McCarthy's debut novel ''Remainder'' was written in 2001 and rejected by mainstream UK publishers. It was published in November 2005 by the small Paris-based art publisher Metronome Press and distributed through gallery and museum shops, but not in chain bookstores and then received widespread critical attention in the literary and mainstream press, with one of its first reviews, in December 2005, on ReadySteadyBook who called it "one of the most important novels written in a long, long time." The ''London Review of Books'' called it "a very good novel indeed" and ''The Independent'' claimed that "its minatory brilliance calls for classic status". The novel was re-published by the independent publisher Alma Books in the UK (2006), and the Bertelsmann subsidiary Vintage in the US (2007), where it ranked as an Amazon top one-hundred seller and entered the ''Los Angeles Times'' Bestseller list. On its American publication the ''New York Times'' dedicated the front cover of its book section to the novel, calling the book "a work of novelistic philosophy, as disturbing as it is funny". In 2008 ''Remainder'' won the fourth annual Believer Book Award. Zadie Smith wrote in the ''New York Review of Books'' that it was "one of the great English novels of the last ten years", suggesting it showed a future path that the novel "might, with difficulty, follow". It has since been translated into fourteen languages, and a film adaptation directed by Omer Fast was released in 2015. Several big publishing houses who had rejected the novel returned to him with enthusiastic offers, which McCarthy rejected, commenting that "it's the same book as it was two years ago."

A work of literary criticism by McCarthy, ''Tintin and the Secret of Literature'', was released by Granta Books in June 2006, with French (Hachette Littératures), Spanish (El Tercer Nombre), Italian (Piemme) and American editions (Counterpoint) following in 2007-8. The book attempted a reading of Hergé's ''The Adventures of Tintin'' books through the prism of structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory. It divided reviewers, with some critics disliking the book's references to Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. Killian Fox in ''The Observer'' praised "its author's obsessive approach, his breathtaking grasp of the oeuvre and the sheer exuberance with which he tackles his subject". However, in ''The Guardian'', Kathryn Hughes criticised its methodology and style: "McCarthy's text has that pleased-with-itself smirk that was so characteristic of the early 90s, when journalists started purloining critical theory from the academy, liking the way it made them feel clever". McCarthy commented: "Granta asked if I wanted to write a book on Freud or Derrida or someone like that, and I said: 'Well, if I write about Hergé I can write about Freud, Derrida and whole bunch of other people, plus it'll be much more fun.' It was received well for the most part. There were one or two hilarious English reviews in which you could virtually see the reviewer's veins bursting with little-England rage at the book's continental bent."

In 2007, Alma Books published his second novel, ''Men in Space'', much of which was written prior to ''Remainder''. It has since been published in many languages including Greek and French. McCarthy has also published numerous stories, essays and articles on literature, philosophy and art in publications including ''The Observer'', ''The Times Literary Supplement'', ''The London Review of Books'', ''Artforum'' and ''The New York Times'', as well as in anthologies such as ''London from Punk to Blair'' (Reaktion Books), ''Theology and the Political'' (Duke University Press), ''The Milgram Reenactment'' (Jan van Eyck Press) and ''The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth'' (Serpent's Tail).

In 2004 he published an essay on excrement in the work of James Joyce in the online literary journal ''Hypermedia Joyce Studies''. In 2008 an essay by McCarthy on Alain Robbe-Grillet, an author he has often expressed an admiration for, was published in the new Oneworld Classics English edition of Robbe-Grillet's ''Jealousy''. In February 2015 McCarthy published a new novel titled ''Satin Island'' which was shortlisted for that year's Man Booker Prize; when he began it, he said, "It's going to have a leitmotif of a parachutist falling to earth, having realised that his parachute has been sabotaged: his relation to the landscape, death, technology."

Art

Since 1999 McCarthy has been 'general secretary' of a 'semi-fictitious organisation' he co-founded with his friend the philosopher Simon Critchley called the International Necronautical Society (INS) "devoted to mind-bending projects that would do for death what the Surrealists had done for sex". Having failed to interest publishers in his novels in 2001-2, he made art projects under the INS name. McCarthy handed out his International Necronautical Society or INS manifestos at a mock art fair organised by artist Gavin Turk. The INS operates through publications, live events, media interventions and more conventional art exhibitions.

In a 2007 interview with the website Bookninja, McCarthy explained the circumstances that led to the formation of the INS: "I was quite well integrated into the art world in London by the late nineties, and on top of that I'd for some time had an interest in the modes and procedures of early twentieth century avant-gardes like the Futurists and Surrealists: their semi-corporate, semi-political structures of committees and subcommittees, their use of manifestos, proclamations and denunciations".

Despite his initial claim that the INS was 'not an art project', McCarthy has accepted invitations to show work in his capacity as INS general secretary at art institutions around the world, including Tate Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Moderna Museet Stockholm, the Drawing Center New York, Kunstwerke Berlin, Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund, and Substation Gallery Singapore.

The INS has been described by ''Art Monthly'' as "a group of wayward literati and sweet-talking parodists", and as "obscure" by ''The Australian''. In 2003 the INS hacked the BBC
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