Saturday, September 10, 2016

THE FUTURE: I DON'T KNOW I KNOW

The first copies of ST PATRICK’S DAY another day in Dublin arrive here on East First Street in Manhattan on August 8, 2016. 
In my mind the book began on the day I arrived in Dublin on the over-night ferry from Glasgow in September, 1964.  That is not to say I began writing the book on that sunny day, as I remember, stepping from the ferry and finding my way to Upper Gardner Street that first morning to find the bedsit where I would spend the first two days in Dublin…
I want this writing to be a record of both that moment in Dublin and what is happening to the now printed version of those years of days of minutes. 
Since 8 August, 2016… a reading has been arranged for at 192 Books at 192 Tenth Avenue on 28 September 2016  at 7pmhttp://www.192books.com/wednesday-september-28-7pm/   
I will also be at the bookshop at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana on 9 November and I am said to be meeting with students and faculty on the 10th of November.
And Marek Waldorf commented on the book at Good Reads:  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29936748-st-patrick-s-day?ac=1&from_search=true#other_reviews
Reminding me that we had talked digitally about his book and my book when his book was published by Turtle Point Press
AVAILABILITY.   As far as I know  McNally Jackson on Prince Street in Manhattan and 192 Books are the only bookstores in the world to carry ST. PATRICK’S DAY another day in Dublin.    It is available from Amazon (around the world it seems) and Barnes and Noble  and some other commercial websites. I hope it will one day be available at the University of Notre Dame bookstore.   
REVIEWS.   To date there have been no advance reviews in Publishers Weekly Library Journal of Kirkus.  At a later date I will describe the likely reason for that as my previous book GOING TO PATCHOGUE was reviewed in these places.   But that was a long time ago as was pointed out to me by Tom Whalen who reminded me that it is rare indeed for an author to have in my case a book published 24 years after my previous book, GOING TO PATCHOGUE--- though a paperback of that book was rather reluctantly published by Dalkey Archive in 2010 and is still in print as is my first book THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV published in 1987 in hardcover by Dalkey Archive and later released in paper back by Northwestern University Press in 2000.  A Bulgarian version of PETKOV appeared in the “thick” journal SVREMENIK in Sofia in 1991.  There is sometimes talk of an actual book version of it in Sofia, but nothing comes of this.
FUTURE.  I KNOW I KNOW.  Things have changed.  Both of my previous books were reviewed in the New York Times.  Articles have been written about me and the books in both the New York Times and Newsday… but that is my impersonation of the aging actress or actor looking at his clippings collection as the house grows dusty.  A familiar figure.  Back then there were three bookstores within a brief drive of Patchogue.  St Marks Bookstore is gone…
I wait.  I look to the un-published books:  EMPTY AMERICAN LETTERS.
JUST LIKE THAT.
NOTHING DOING. 
SITTING WITH WESLEY…
WITH ELIZABETH. 
DIPTYCH BEFORE DYING

PARTY OF PICTURES

1 comment:

springandall said...

Don't despair (even though serious readers appear to disappear at an algorithmic rate). I hope some, if not all, of those books will eventually be published. Since there appears to be a Wasteland of boring sugar-coated novels, yours may eventually stand out. KTM