In this week’s magazine, Leo Robson reviews C, the new novel by Tom McCarthy. As Robson notes, McCarthy makes something of a fetish of his not having read many (if any) contemporary novelists writing in English. His elective affinities are mostly with European modernists — Kafka or Robbe-Grillet, for instance. In this video clip, McCarthy declares his “new favourite author” to be the Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914), who also happened to be a favourite of both Wittgenstein and Heidegger.
Words in pictures: Tom McCarthy
The novelist declares Georg Trakl his new favourite author.