A short life of the author
Joseph McElroy (born 21 August 1930) is an American novelist whose work represents the most intellectually ambitious and systematically complex fiction produced in the postmodern era. His novels — particularly Lookout Cartridge (1974), Plus (1977), and Women and Men (1987) — integrate systems theory, information science, ecology, and cognitive psychology into narrative structures of extraordinary density. He is routinely named alongside Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, and Don DeLillo as one of the major American postmodern novelists, but his readership is the smallest of the four — a circumstance that reflects the genuine difficulty of his work rather than any deficiency of talent.
Life
McElroy was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was educated at Williams College and Columbia University, where he earned a PhD. He taught English at Queens College, City University of New York, for many years. Unlike some of his postmodern contemporaries, he has lived a quiet academic life, avoiding the public performances and mythologies that surround figures like Pynchon or Gaddis.
A Smuggler’s Bible (1966)
McElroy’s debut novel establishes his method: a man named David Brooke, travelling by ocean liner, receives a manuscript consisting of eight chapters, each exploring a different person connected to him. The novel’s structure — multiple interpenetrating perspectives, the connection between apparently separate narratives revealed through structural rhymes — prefigures McElroy’s mature technique.
Lookout Cartridge (1974)
A filmmaker named Cartwright discovers that footage from a documentary he has been working on has been stolen. His investigation — through London, New York, and a network of connections that grows increasingly complex — becomes an inquiry into how information circulates, how surveillance operates, and how systems of knowledge constitute (and are constituted by) the people embedded in them.
Lookout Cartridge is McElroy’s most acclaimed novel. Its prose — long, recursive sentences that track the movements of consciousness through networks of information — requires sustained concentration but rewards it with passages of remarkable perceptual clarity.
Plus (1977)
McElroy’s most radical novel. A human brain, severed from its body and launched into orbit as part of a scientific experiment, gradually develops a new form of consciousness — learning to process solar radiation, to remember fragments of its former life, and to communicate with Earth in a language that evolves as the novel progresses. The prose itself transforms, beginning in broken fragments and developing increasing complexity as the brain’s consciousness grows.
Plus is a tour de force of linguistic invention — a novel that does not describe the growth of consciousness but enacts it at the level of the sentence.
Women and Men (1987)
At 1,192 pages, Women and Men is one of the longest novels in English and McElroy’s most ambitious attempt to create a total fiction — a novel that encompasses weather systems, urban planning, feminist theory, Native American mythology, journalism, and the daily lives of two people (a journalist and a feminist organiser) who live in the same New York apartment building but may never meet.
The novel took over a decade to write. Its structure resists summary: it moves between scales (the molecular and the global), between temporalities (geological time and the newspaper deadline), and between modes of knowledge (scientific, mythological, personal). It is, for those who can navigate it, one of the great achievements of postmodern fiction.
Critical Standing
McElroy’s critical reputation is extremely high among the writers and critics who have read him. Don DeLillo has praised his work. Harry Mathews called him “the most important living writer of English-language fiction.” His novels are discussed in every serious study of American postmodernism.
His readership, however, remains tiny. His books have frequently gone out of print, and his commercial sales have been negligible. The difficulty of his prose — not wilful obscurity but genuine cognitive complexity — limits his audience to readers willing to make a substantial investment of attention.
Collecting McElroy
A Smuggler’s Bible (1966, Harcourt Brace) in first edition brings $50–$150. Lookout Cartridge (1974, Knopf) firsts are $40–$100. Women and Men (1987, Knopf) in first edition is the key collectible — a massive book in small print runs, bringing $100–$300. Plus (1977, Knopf) firsts are $30–$80. McElroy’s small readership means that fine first editions are both scarce and undervalued — a classic situation for collectors willing to bet on future critical recognition.