Book review: Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays, by Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy is one of the few novelists whom I would not just describe as good, but significant. He is a game-changer, rather than someone playing the game. This collection of 15 essays offers an insight into his various concerns and complexities. It is about flickering signals and what systems leave behind (detritus is a major theme), about the difficult legacy of the 20th century and the possibilities still to be gleaned, about how there might yet be the possibility of radicalism in both aesthetics and politics.