Dalkey Archive Press

If I were picking things at random from just the American list of the Dalkey catalog I might include David Markson's Reader's Block, Harry Mathew's The Conversions, Joseph McElroy's Women and Men, Curtis White's Memories of My Father Watching TV. But it just goes on and on!

I recently read one I liked a lot called Television by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint, about a man who is quitting watching television and at the same time is trying to finish,or more precisely, start his paper on Titian (He can't get started because he can't decide on the correct spelling of the artist's name). Might sound pretentious, but it was really pretty funny.

Oh, you're the one.

david markson, 'reader's block'

I have "This Is Not A Novel" but I've never gotten around to reading it. It seems like "Reader's Block" all over again.

I didn't know that Paul Eater was a Mylesian!

Also: unlike the Yanks, I have never seen a Dalkey Archive book remaindered. In fact, I think I have never seen one.

I saw and bought Yves Navarre's Sweet Tooth and Barthes' Letters on remainder recently. Seen Stein, Barnes' Ryder, Sorretino's Red the Fiend but passed on them.

Couple of others bought as bday presents...

More Search and Destroy you all - looking at the Latin American series yesterday, but need any golden nuggets as xmas is coming soon...

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/catalog?order_by=Series

For what it's worth, I just did an interview with the chap who's designing their lovely new covers:
http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2008/10/interview-with-nicholas-motte.html

Is he related to Warren Motte?

OK, I clicked. He is.

Ok, so I picked the 10 books for $60 dollars option. I've always wanted to check out "Christ Versus Arizona" and Toussaint's books are going on my list. Anybody got any suggestions? I'm open to all types of books, would love some interesting Lit Crit. I love Dalkey.

The above post refers to the Holiday sale Dalkey is having now.

this one looks good

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-stanley-crawford14-2008sep14,0,2805562.story

also

David Markson--Reader's Block, Wittgenstein's Mistress
Flann O'Brien--Third Policeman, At Swim Two Birds

Stefan Themerson- Tom Harris. I bought the other two but haven't read them yet.
Gilbert Sorrentino- Aberration of Starlight, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things.

Anne Carson - Eros The Bittersweet. I had to read this for a class in college and was surprised how much I ended up liking it. It's kind of like Barthes' Lovers' Discourse, but grounded in classics and lot better imo.

If you love Dalkey, you've probably read Harry Matthews, but if not pick-up Cigarettes or My Life in CIA. They're both atypical for him and I think a lot more interesting than his OULIPO texts.

Has anybody hear read the Dalkey edition of Bouvard and pecuchet? How does the translation compare to the old Penguin one?

that crawford book is great!

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/images/book/cover/166/things_in_the_night.jpg?1207918638

this was a pretty good book.

i'm gonna have maria buy me the four ann quin novels that dalkey has reissued (for christmas). i need to read those.

Thanks. I just put in my order, here are my 10:

1. Christ Versus Arizona , Cela
2. Oulipo : A Primer of Potential Literature , Motte
3. Theory of Prose , Scklovsky
4. The Counterfeiters , Kenner
5. Flaubert, Joyce, Beckett: The Stoic Comedians , Kenner
6. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things , Sorrentino
7,8,9,10 Arno Schmidt's four volume catalog

I'm excited, but I got the Schmidt stuff on a complete whim. I know NOTHING about him.

Aww, US-only offer. I wanted to buy a hundred books when they had that amazing offer a while back, but was too slow to build up a list of titles.

Is Gass too obvious to be mentioned here? "The Tunnel" is fantastic. I just got a copy of the essay-collection "Temple of Texts", which looks really good too. (I recently ordered nearly all the Gass books I don't have, in a moment of materialistic exuberance)

Would love to hear the audio book where he reads the novel himself, but that probably won't happen. Turns out not a single Norwegian library even has a printed copy of the book.

!!

"Turns out not a single Norwegian library even has a printed copy of the book."

How did you check on this?

Get yer library to buy them - like I do sometimes...

There are a couple of online national library database aggregate searches. That's an idea though.
Now that I've actually looked it up, I see the audio book is much, much cheaper than I expected; it's just $15.96 at the moment.

I'd recommend Max Frisch's "I'm Not Stiller", but I have hardly any memory of it at all, except that I really liked it. Sheesh.

2008: The Year I Officially Lost My Edge!

I'm Not Stiller is pretty good but by the halfway point I thought it really lost its momentum

Dalkey publishes the actinic Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus ("the antiperson"). Sample it on google books.

I didn't know they had finally put out more by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. Four in total now! Those are definitely worth checking out.

Briefly looking through my shelves for something not mentioned, I seem to remember enjoying Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic.

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/catalog/show/593

Well, being a small firm who might require some voluntary effort for the love of the work is one thing... actually sounding like an angry cult leader in your job posting is another...

https://twitter.com/DalkeyIntern/

id like to think the advert was vaguely meta or at least viralbait

i think on some level that would be more depressing than it being totally sincere

more than vaguely meta but still illjudged tbh

three, two, one....

Dalkey boss now trying to pass it off as Jonathan Swift-style comedy.

You can see the defence here: http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/pursuedbyabear/2012/12/13/dalkey-archive-responds-to-that-job-advertisement/

The first bit (The advertisement was a modest proposal) could theoretically wash if he didn't follow it up with shit like this:

I’ve seen so many applications to Dalkey in which CVs list upwards of six internships, which tend to smack of ‘we looked, we evaluated, and didn’t think the person was good enough to keep’

Some of those could be because the candidate wasn't good enough, but an awful lot of those will be because shitheads like you force people into internships and will only offer a job if they become estranged from family, friends and their own soul.

Employers do not offer internships out of the goodness of their heart

Lol, no shit. Dude, you offer internships so you can get free labour.

interns aren’t employees

So you don't have to pay them.

they have to do something worthwhile for the company or why else have them around; but, at the same time, they don’t have much to offer because they don’t have the knowledge or experience to do very much

Maybe try looking at some with multiple placements, then? That sounds like experience to me. Oh, but no, you might have to pay them at the end.

Fucking internships are such a con. As far as I know we don't have them in Australia. Slave labour bullshit.

I've never been sure as to how legal they are. I was under the impression that if you were "shadowing" someone who is working, you don't need to be paid but if you are doing actual work you have to get minimum wage but idk.

"Dalkey Archive" is such an awful name for a publisher anyway, also comparing that joblisting to O'Brien etc on a satirical level is just awful (it does kinda read like it was meant that way, but clumsily fails to hide a basic "we're a gigantic bunch of pretentious cocks" tendency), good riddance again

Could be good.

https://dalkeyarchive.substack.com/

Yeah

This is very much my thing. Chad Post is great.

One of these days I’ve gotta get around to reading Miss Macintosh My Darling.

Did anyone read that novel Dodge Rose they put out a few years back? I read about 20 pages and found it completely impenetrable, saw some people online discussing whether it was an elaborate hoax.

Nope. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hoax. I haven't bothered with Dalkey's new releases for years, and Chad talks about the decline of Dalkey so I'm very interested.

The publisher sounds like one of those colourful figures, which basically tells me there are scars to heal for a lot of ppl.

Which goes back to the Dalkey intern business...

Didn’t he pass away recently?

Yes, a couple of weeks ago. Chad and Deep Vellum are taking over at Dalkey to maintain its books in circulation, I think.

Hence this side-project.

Chad has made a lot of allusions to abusive behaviour at Dalkey over the years.

I hadn’t noticed. Just found this
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2020/12/chad-w-post-on-the-complicated-honesty-of-dalkey-archives-john-obrien-19452020

Which links to this

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/remembering-john-obrien-dalkey-archive-chad-post

Just got an email from Chad.

Me too. A fascinating read!

At one point I had both versions of Splendide-Hôtel.

Looking forward to reading the latest missive which I just received

Amazing!

Latest one arrived today.

And another one. Really good.

Is anyone else reading these but me?

I haven't been but I might have a read over soon. Are there any particularly good ones?

I've read most of them. If you read any then read the first one.

https://t.e2ma.net/webview/0lq5ii/9cffabafe0a497b406320c176535faee

Letter on the relaunch

Dalkey is back.

https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/marshland

They are also reissuing writing like this.

Miss MacIntosh, My Darling pic.twitter.com/DGsHX86CYe

— Shannon Burns (@sjaburns) January 7, 2022

!

Ugh, that’s been on my bookshelf unread for so long.

I want to hear the promised stories about publishing Omega Minor, translated from Dutch by the author!

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/more-is-more/

…and another post from Chad.

What’s going on with these upcoming Dalkey Archive Essentials? Don’t think he mentioned in his newsletter.

Stoked for newly translated Michal Ajvaz https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/journey-to-the-south

Is it just me or is this a bit fucked?

For anyone who didn’t see it, we’re looking for a dozen or so people willing to proof part of MISS MACINTOSH MY DARLING. If you’re interested (we’ll give you a finished copy as payment), DM or email. Can get you the PDF and assignment this weekend!!

— Chad W. Post (@chadwpost) March 23, 2023

Proof stuff for free (one book = not free?)

Guess they never did fill that one intern position.

It is a bit fucked, but from memory they're a non-profit with him and one other half-time staff member, so they're not exactly swimming in cash.

I know...feel for Chad I suppose, he has done some good work.

And I would like to read that book. I thought it came out last year..

https://dalkeyarchive.substack.com/p/special-edition-podcast-the-history

https://open.substack.com/pub/dalkeyarchive/p/nathalie-sarraute-and-england-by

That's a sweet piece, a lot of love in it.

Exactly