There aren’t many critics who would make a convincing case for the brilliance of Belgian writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint by highlighting a 10-page essay on French footballer Zinedine Zidane. But then, that’s Tom McCarthy’s entire career in microcosm. His novels revel in the tangential, so it’s no surprise that his essays on literature and culture, 15 of which are gathered here, are similarly in thrall to the way seemingly disparate elements of the mainstream and avant garde speak to each other.
If these explorations of, for example, the importance of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (a novel, of course, about digression itself), or James Joyce’s Ulysses can trip over into dense critical theory, there’s also a poetry and wry beauty in his short piece about the life of a “dodgem jockey”. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in London, the oldest essay – about the capital city’s weather “caught at the confluence of systems moving over from the States and from the Middle East” – seems impossibly wise.
• Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish by Tom McCarthy is published by the New York Review of Books (£10.99). To order a copy for £9.34 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
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