ARE THEY DEAD YET or is there...

Last night--- though it could be any night--- I had my second taste of the posthumous at St Marks Bookstore when I looked into Dalkey Archive’s publication of Charles Newman’s last novel, IN PARTIAL DISGRACE.  At the back of every Dalkey Archive book is a listing of their books in print and my name and GOING TO PATCHOGUE had disappeared.  The night before I had also been in the bookstore and looked into Peter Dimock’s new novel GEORGE ANDERSON as I had only read the advance bound galleys and there I had my first taste of the posthumous as my name and GOING TO PATCHOGUE had not been listed in the back of the book.  In the most recent Dalkey Archive book that I received from them, MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY SWISS POETRY, my name and GOING TO PATCHOGUE had been listed.

Something happened.

The first paragraph is of course mired in vanity, but I hope it is not personal vanity as I well know that there are fewer years in front of me than behind.  It is from a concern for GOING TO PATCHOGUE which had originally been published in hardcover in 1992.  To the publisher’s chagrin (a nice old word) he had to reprint the book as it received very good reviews and unexpected attention.  A full page in the Chicago Tribune and in The Village Voice, good reviews in  The New York Times, Newsday and in the Los Angeles Times.  Both Newsday and The New York Times ran articles about the book and the Newsday profile went on from the cover to two full pages with very flattering photographs of my younger self.

There were discussions of the book is several academic books and then and then… I awaited a paperback version which finally appeared in 2010 from Dalkey Archive.   18 years before and earlier Dalkey usually published their books in hardcover as that was the fashion and expected. 

So GOING TO PATCHOGUE exists and this time there were oonly reviews in the local newspapers on Long Island and follow up on the websites of the papers.  The major newspapers no longer think it newsworthy when a book appears in paperback reprint and even the Los Angeles Times for whom I have written a great deal did not find space on their blog Jacket Copy for a paragraph of mention.

My concern is not for myself but for the sake of GOING TO PATCHOGUE and for my other books.  In 1987, Dalkey Archive published THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV which received a startlingly good review from Andre Codrescu in The New York Times.  After the fall of the communism in Bulgaria the book appeared in translation in the best “thick” journal in Bulgaria, Svremenik and in 2000 Northwestern University Press did a paperback version of the book.  Both the paperback and hardcover editions remain in print.

You will notice that I do not write about the content of these books or what I make of them.  That is not my concern as I know I have not read these books before and I have not read them since…  for my purpose was not t write a book that had been or would have already been read many more times since most of the vast number of books in the world are imitations, echoes, fakes of…

AND I know that next year Dalkey Archive is supposed to be contractually publishing ST. PATRICK‘S DAY Dublin 1974 and my dread, the foreboding as its success might allow for more books to appear--- the one thing every publisher fears…more books from…  but JUST LIKE THAT, NOTHING DOING, EMPTY AMERICAN LETTERS, FORGET THE FUTURE…

HOWEVER.

HOWEVER, the word posthumous arrived via hearing it from Edward Dahlberg in 1970 when he was able to say he had been living posthumously for generation. 

While known in Dublin and to a very few discerning…  Dahlberg’s fate always weighs upon me. 

I open his THE CONFESSIONS OF EDWARD DAHLBERG and read the inscription, FOR THOMAS, WHOM I LIKE VERY MUCH AND WHO, I HOPE, WILL BE MY FRIEND.  EDWARD DAHLBERG DEC., 21. ’70 N.Y.C.  The book will be reviewed on the front page of The New York Times by Anthony Burgess and in 1972 Dutton will publish Dahlberg’s anthology of travels, myths and legends of the New World, THE GOLD OF OPHIR.  A few books will appear from some small presses and in 1976 Thomas Crowell (Established 1834) will publish two books THE OLIVE OF MINERVA OR THE COMEDY OF A CUCKOLD and BOTTOM DOGS, FROM FLUSHUBG TO CALVARY, THOSE WHO PERISH AND HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED AND UNCOLLECTED WORKS. 

Both books will be buried, dumped into the grave with hardly any public mention.  Edward himself will soon join those books in the earth.

TED Klein told me of hearing from Leslie Gardiner--- who has gone on to be a powerful agent in London--- of her having seen a memo from within Crowell that nothing was to be done with these books.  They had to be printed and that was it. Dahlberg had been a difficult writer and…

Something had happened.

And most people would find it unbelievable that a publisher would pay for and actually print two books and then as they say, do nothing. 

I too would have joined in that idea except I had known of the case of Michael Breslow who had published with Viking in 1978 a novel LIFE LINE which had wonderful blurbs from both Hannah Green and Anthony Burgess.  Burgess went on to pay a sort of homage to Breslow by naming a character after Michael in the novel EARTHLY POWERS…

Paperback rights had been sold to Bantam and Michael rejected a garish dumb cover and he was told we are going to doom—that is the word they used doom--- your book with a tasteful cover which will only have typeface and no illustration.  Good luck…

So while the posthumous always awaits us, we cling to the dumb hope the books will outlast… though  Lawrence Durrell told me in New York in the spring of 1970 when I asked him if  he ever thought of the future of his books, No, what has posterity done for me?...

When was the last time you read in Durrell’s Alexandrian Quartet or that great monument THE AVIGNON QUINTET?

   
Everyday my eye passes from The AVIGNON QUINTET, to THE DEATH OF VERGIL to ULYSSES to ON THE ROAD… and so from Broch inside Vergil:  “He had become a rover, fleeing death, seeking death, seeking work, fleeing work, a lover and yet at the same time an harassed one, an errant through the passions of the inner life and the passions of the world a lodger in his own life…

AFTER:  my first thought  for  the title of this post: AM I DEAD YET...