Harry Mathews
Harry Mathews
Harry Mathewsis an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays. He is also a translator from the French...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth14 February 1930
CountryUnited States of America
american-author disliked half harvard leave princeton spent year
I went to Harvard because I disliked Princeton so much - I spent a year and a half there. I didn't leave Harvard early; I actually finished.
american-author attraction happened initial student visit
I have to say my initial attraction to France, which happened on my first visit when I was a student at eighteen, was inexplicable.
long written long-time
There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.
princeton harvard left
I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.
football dream school
My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me - nobody, like the football coach.
dream able france
I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.
running thinking vocabulary
Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.
summer spring years
After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.