My Life in CIA [Paperback]

In 1973 Harry Mathews was an American writer living in Paris. With sufficient means so he did not have to work, Mathews's days were apparently filled with operas and ballets, erudite conversations with the local literati, the occasional bit of writing, and innumerable sexual encounters with any number of women, some of them married, who seem to have fallen on him after little more than a handshake. The picture that emerges is part Somerset Maugham, part Austin Powers, the expatriate shedding his "snug black velvet bell bottoms" for the odd sexual romp.

Mathews explains that he had a reputation in Paris for being gay, rich, and CIA--none of which was true. The last misconception particularly irked him, and he habitually attempted to convince people that he wasn't an agent. Finally, unable to quell the rumor, he tried a different approach: he pretended that he was CIA. He took every opportunity to behave mysteriously, going so far as to fake dead drops and to adopt as cover the job of secretary in a fictional travel agency for which he had stationery made up. Mathews took the whole spy game rather further than was sensible or ethical, and he wound up exciting the attention of people who ultimately decided that he'd be better off eliminated.

Mathews's adventure is certainly an interesting one--the sort of thing one might like to try oneself--but one reads the book not knowing whether it is fact or fiction, or rather, how much of the story is fact and how much fiction. That, apparently, is the point: the book, billed oxymoronically as an "autobiographical novel," plays with truthfulness and credibility. Certainly some of what Mathews has to say seems impossible, as for example his account of one particular sexual escapade in an Oriental rug emporium: when he and the woman are interrupted, she rolls him in a carpet to hide him, and he is then carried off by ostensibly unwitting laborers, who load him in a truck and deliver him across town; emerged from the carpet some time later, he insinuates himself into a dinner party and soon runs off for another bit of (unfortunately also interrupted, but in its early stages interpedal) intercourse on a nearby church altar with a woman he's just met. Part of the game for readers is deciding whether and when to believe what the authors is telling us.

Mathews's book is not all as compelling as the above story would suggest: the author writes a lot about the little engagements that made up his (character's) life in those days, down to guest lists and meals consumed, and these slow down his narrative--though they add to the story's verisimilitude, which, again, may be the point. In short, My Life in CIA is an odd but interesting book about an unlikely game that became--maybe--for a time disturbingly real.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

It's also the funniest spy novel since Our Man In Havana. And like Peter Cary's "My Life As A Fake," the book is a thrilling exploration of what happens when fictions take on a life of their own. Matthews is known as a literary avant gardiste, but there is nothing mannered about his prose. It is lean but elegant and never gratuitiously calls attention to itself. The story on the other hand demands, deserves, and gets a reader's attention. It starts off in a light and chatty vein. We learn about Mathews' friendships with George Perec and other members of the Oulipo literary movement. Mathews' economically but effectively evokes political and cultural scenes of the early 1970s: the overthrow of Allende in Chile, Cold War paranoia, the singers and movies and ballet performers who were in the news back then. For the longest time the story seems like a pleasant trip through Paris circa 1973 with a witty and literate tour guide constantly on hand to help with the translating and the recommending of restaurants and wines. But as Mathews' masquerade as a CI agent becomes more and more outlandish, ironically it becomes more convincing, until he finds himself the target of a potentially deadly manhunt (unless of course it is all just a joke perpetrated by his Oulipo friends). The irony, of course, is that Mathews began impersonating a CI agent specifically for the purpose of convincing people that he wasn't CIA. Surely no one in the CIA would be stupid enough to behave like a CIA agent in public -- would he? The ending is both thrilling and beautiful. Every word of it is true, even if it turns out to be nothing more than fiction.

I became aware of Harry Matthews when I heard his "Country Cooking from Central France" on Selected Shorts. Before the reading, there was some discussion of this title, and made me want to read it. Looking at the jacket, the book is described as "An Autobiograpical Novel," What the heck does that mean? His life as he imagines it?

The book is set in 1972 at the height of the cold war, and the paranoia of that time. The protagonist is an American ex-pat living in Paris. His friends make frequent suggestions that he is really a covert operative for the CIA. As a joke, or on a lark, the protagonist decides to foster this image of himself and keep his friends guessing. Not being an actual agent, he has no idea how to go about this task, but starts acting strangely or mysteriously. He soon attracts the attention of the various covert agencies who do not know what to make of this odd character, and are highly suspicious of his activities. There interest in him and his affiliations soon causes real drama.

I could not put down this book. It is a funny tale on the state of paranoia in the world at that time. Even though this is set in a particular time, we still live in a fearful society and the book easily translates to modern readers.

Highly recommended