Dalkey Archive’s Ten Must-Reads

 

 

When asked about the term 'experimental writing' during an interview with The White Review, the author Deborah Levy said, 'I respect what the founder of Dalkey Archive Press . . . has to say on this - he doesn’t like the word experimental because it suggests that a whole book is not finished, that it has not been achieved . . . he only publishes complete achievements, not experiments.'

 

Dalkey Archive was founded in 1981, when John O’Brien started the Review of Contemporary Fiction, a tri-quarterly journal that features critical essays on writers whose works have been overlooked, underappreciated or downright ignored: Nicholas Mosley, Gilbert Sorrentino, Hubert Selby Jr., Djuna Barnes and Aidan Higgins to name but a few. This selective dismissal is often a result of the nature of the authors' work, shoddily labeled 'experimental', a pseudo-genre, a generalization - often accompanied by a wry smile. These writers defied convention and resisted static categorization and were therefore sidelined. In 1984, Dalkey published its first book, with the aim to create a space for such writers and works - and 2014 sees the Press celebrate its thirtieth birthday. Its mission remains the same, almost 900 books later, bringing trans-genre fiction, poetry, translation and even some art to a global audience. Here are ten must-reads from the mammoth Dalkey Archive back list - some of the very best, if we should be so bold.

 

 

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Billy and Girl - Deborah Levy (1999)

Two children, of ages undefined, live together and alone somewhere in England. One searches for a mother who abandoned them door-to-door, addressing each woman that answers as 'mom'. The other dreams of a future somewhere else, money and success, and is now the award-winning author of Billy England’s Book of Pain. Their world resembles Eliot’s Waste Land (some years later), a bleak snapshot of greys and smog. The siblings’ relationship is sadistic: they torture each other both mentally and physically, yet each one is dependent on the other. Darkly comic, twisted and beautiful, Billy and Girl is one of Levy’s greatest novels.

 

 

Wittgenstein’s Mistress - David Markson (1988)

Through a series of carefully constructed sentences, witticisms and criticisms—a woman seeks (and may very well succeed) to convince the reader that she is the last human on the planet, whilst also giving said reader a verbal breakdown of her opinions on every Western cultural icon since Time began. Markson’s manuscript was rejected over 50 times before it was eventually published in 1988—David Foster Wallace described it as 'the high point of experimental fiction in this country.' (Salon, 1999)

 

 

Through the Night – Stig Saeterbakken (2013)

Translated by Seán Kinsella

Saeterbakken’s last novel, and the third to be published in translation by Dalkey Archive, Through the Night is a (fairy)tale of grief and loss. The protagonist, Karl Christian Andreas Meyer, attempts to punish himself for his many familial failures - most notably his recent extramarital affair, which he believes led to his son’s decision to end his own life. Meyer travels to the darkest places imaginable, both physically and mentally. Stig Saeterbakken’s portrayal of grief and mental unrest is utterly astounding, from one of Norway’s greatest writers.

 

 

Scenes from a Receding Past – Aidan Higgins (2005)

Pulling together images, conversations, memories and musings—Higgins presents Dan Ruttles’s life, from childhood (his time at Catholic school, and the eventual institutionalization of his brother) to adulthood (the second half of the book deals with his relationship with his wife). Higgins has been a victim of the 'too difficult' label for a while now, but his work has to be examined closer. He is one of Ireland’s most overlooked authors, a social realist with a deadly comic streak and complete mastery of the English language.

 

 

Nobodaddy’s Children – Arno Schmidt (1995)

Translated by John E. Woods

A novel in three parts, presenting three Germanys; pre-war, post-war and a third in the middle of World War Three. Schmidt has been described as the German Joyce, a recluse, an introvert and 2014 marked the centenary of his birth. Nobodaddy is a book of designs, word images, graphic illustrations of wartime and even more graphic illustrations of peace. His choppy, disjointed prose is unnerving at first; but the twisted and often ugly language mirrors the violent scenes it describes. 'With black human fish flopping about: a girl, naked from the waist up, burst toward us barking impudently, and the skin dangled at her shriveled breasts like curly lace; her arms fluttered back from her shoulders like two white linen ribbons.' (p83) Reading Schmidt is an experience, a German writer so unlike his contemporaries.

 

 

Autoportrait – Edouard Levé (2012)

Translated by Lorin Stein

Levé always sought to push the boundaries of the novel, and his autobiography is no different. It is a series of statements, thoughts, ideas, feelings, opinions—following no pattern, non-linear—spanning his first memories to things that happened five minutes ago. What at first glance seems like a cold, impersonal version of a life-story quickly reveals itself to be much more—mainly as a result of the nature of the statements. Levé holds nothing back in a truly remarkable piece of writing. Dalkey Archive publishes his other books Suicide (2011) and Works (forthcoming June ’14).

 

 

Chinese Letter – Svetislav Basara (2004)

Translated by Ana Lucic

When the order is given to write a statement of exactly 100 words, the narrator (already paranoid, and in a small existential crisis) panics. In an effort to fill the pages, he writes about his life; his conversations with his abducted mother; his conversations with his friend (who works in a hospital’s autopsy room). Bizarre, absurd, compared to Beckett in style, Basara is a celebrated Serbian author, who lends his name to the term 'Basarian', a word used to describe the unique style of writing that he revolutionized.

 

 

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things ­– Gilbert Sorrentino (2007)

A book of satire, from a man who was more than entitled to satirize, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things is a book about the Greenwich Village artists' scene of the 1950s/60s. Sorrentino describes eight characters and their tribulations with his own iconic voice - world-weary, cruel and mercilessly witty - scathingly whittling each character down to showcase their complete failure at, well - everything. Sorrentino even goes so far as to satirize his own satire throughout the book, with footnotes placed throughout. A prime example of a shamefully overlooked book (and author), Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things is a comic masterpiece.

 

 

J R – William Gaddis (2012)

William Gaddis did not write many books, but whenever one did surface, it was spectacular. A spritely novel (doorstop) at just 726 pages, J R is a crushing satire of capitalism and its effect on the psyche of the American male. 'JR' is an 11-year old who, after learning some basic capitalist principles, becomes a Wall Street success and the ruler of a paper empire. His preadolescence provides him with his greatest tool, an acute amoral complex; allowing him to deal somewhat unmercifully with anything and anyone. Gaddis’s writing is complex and dense but exceptionally rewarding, insightfully witty and disturbingly vivid. J R won the National Book Award in 1976. The New York Times pitched Gaddis as 'one of the most innovative and demanding of writers', and yet to most, he is still unknown.

 

 

The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien (1999)

Arguably Flann O’Brien’s greatest work, The Third Policeman is a tale of life, death and bicycles. After a botched robbery and subsequent murder, the narrator ends up in a police station, where he is schooled on eternal life, the importance of two wheelers, 'Atomic Theory' and the work of the great (fictional) philosopher, de Selby. Published after O’Brien’s death, The Third Policeman brings the reader to a place of stark differences, and yet sickening familiarity, with his signature comic flare. In a rare interview with RTÉ, when asked if he was a 'hostile observer' Brian O’Nolan (O’Brien’s real name) answered: 'I’m not a hostile observer . . . I’m a person who observes clearly, and can articulate clearly and can write, I hope, literate English.' The Third Policeman is a book that should have ensured O’Brien’s place among the other Irish literary greats, and yet to this day there is a generation who answer with blank stares the question, 'Who wrote The Dalkey Archive?'