Thank you for compiling these lists. I'll be interested to see how many DA titles I own. I've tried to buy almost every title since the late '90s (except for the scholarly series), and used to subscribe to the RCF, until it just. stopped. arriving.
You know, there are 3 completed issues of RCF ready to roll. But we need to rebuild the entire infrastructure—there are no records, no list of subscribers—and install someone, preferably at a university, to edit it and oversee its future. If we could find that, it would be marvellous. RCF was such a key part of my literary education.
I pulled ALL the Korean books from my shelves last night because I believe someone entered these wrong into the Dalkey metadata and I’m going to research and fix this.
Lynch was on “Every Edition” and “Paparrback,” but not the “Individual Titles”—thank you!!!!
Lunar Follies is a Coffee House book, btw. John and Gil had had their falling out by then.
Haven't looked too carefully at the lists but did notice you have Luis Goytisolo's "Recounting: Antagony, Book I" (from when it was going to be four books) under Juan Goytisolo's name and for Alf Mac Lochlainn's "The Corpus in the Library" Alf's first name is listed as Alf Mac, which severs it from the other Mac Lochlainn books (at first I thought it was missing). Also "John Barth" by Charlie Harris is actually a Festschrift he co-edited with Gabrielle Dean called "John Barth: A Body of Words", one of my favorite layout jobs. Too bad so few people know about it. That book also came with a secret link to an audio recording of Barth giving a reading in Champaign, Illinois sometime in the late sixties. I did a list like this when the press was moving from Champaign to Texas and came up with a number similar to yours: will see if I still have a copy of that spreadsheet to compare. JOB frequently remarked (to me, anyway) that he wanted to hit 1,000 books before he died and then his successors would carry on publishing reprints from the back catalogue; I'd always figured he hit that 1,000 mark but maybe not.
Oh! I forgot to mention in the post, that I’ll have to update later w co-authors and the like, since that information was all scattershot. Missed the two Alf Mac Lochlainn books being screwed up, but I’ll fix that as soon as I can. Planning on going through my library tonight to see what I have and what I don’t. (Which should clear up some other errors that slipped through since I’ll be looking at all the listings for the third time.) The Goytisolo slipped by but all four books are part of ANTAGONY. Rather than do the last 3 six years after part 1, we just did one giant volume
Probably I am missing something, but i am confirmed in my impression that in Dalkey there are no African titles, except one from Tunisia, and no Arabic language titles. No China or India. Almost half of the world is not represented. Is it a choice or just … chance? Just a matter of time and the fact that simply the fact that one editor cannot publish everything? Of course this is not Olympic Games, but still … I find it a big awkward.
It’s a mixture of things—which I will dig into in the book itself. It’s funding—which will be one of the biggest topics in the book as a potential good and a potential restraint—its access to information, it’s a specific interest in a particular aesthetic that is more prevalent in Western European writing and that from the Americas. There is the New Japanese issue, a ton of Japanese books, and the Korean Library, but you’re not wrong about Africa, India, the Arabic world being blind spots, being overlooked. I would argue you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water, that the project is still valuable. And maybe look to Deep Vellum and Open Letter as supplements to John’s particular vision and its various quirks and oversights and specificities. (When we get there, the male-female ratio of authors will also stick out. And again, to be addressed in more detail!)
I just compared my Dalkeys to your list and came up with these additions/corrections….
Brian Lynch, Winner of Sorrows (2009)
Gilbert Sorrentino, Lunar Follies (2005)
Sound on Sound is by Christopher Sorrentino, rather than Gilbert
Also, about half of the Korean authors need to have their given/family names reversed.
Glad you did this!
Thanks a lot for your reply, it's really eye-opening on the complexity of an editorial project
Bless you! Been wanting to do this using the back page lists but obviously that only gets you so far.
Thank you for compiling these lists. I'll be interested to see how many DA titles I own. I've tried to buy almost every title since the late '90s (except for the scholarly series), and used to subscribe to the RCF, until it just. stopped. arriving.
You know, there are 3 completed issues of RCF ready to roll. But we need to rebuild the entire infrastructure—there are no records, no list of subscribers—and install someone, preferably at a university, to edit it and oversee its future. If we could find that, it would be marvellous. RCF was such a key part of my literary education.
I pulled ALL the Korean books from my shelves last night because I believe someone entered these wrong into the Dalkey metadata and I’m going to research and fix this.
Lynch was on “Every Edition” and “Paparrback,” but not the “Individual Titles”—thank you!!!!
Lunar Follies is a Coffee House book, btw. John and Gil had had their falling out by then.
Imagine this! In the slick DA Essentials, you reissue RCF but include 3 per edition. It would be ridiculously hot.
Reviewed the sheet in your latest post with the most recent fixes and noticed these errors:
Karla Marrufo's last name is misspelled; and unless it's like the Toussaint issue, both
Eloy Urroz and Luisa Valenzuela have split series, Mexican/American and Argentinian/American, respectively.
Again, thanks Chad for this invaluable resource.
Haven't looked too carefully at the lists but did notice you have Luis Goytisolo's "Recounting: Antagony, Book I" (from when it was going to be four books) under Juan Goytisolo's name and for Alf Mac Lochlainn's "The Corpus in the Library" Alf's first name is listed as Alf Mac, which severs it from the other Mac Lochlainn books (at first I thought it was missing). Also "John Barth" by Charlie Harris is actually a Festschrift he co-edited with Gabrielle Dean called "John Barth: A Body of Words", one of my favorite layout jobs. Too bad so few people know about it. That book also came with a secret link to an audio recording of Barth giving a reading in Champaign, Illinois sometime in the late sixties. I did a list like this when the press was moving from Champaign to Texas and came up with a number similar to yours: will see if I still have a copy of that spreadsheet to compare. JOB frequently remarked (to me, anyway) that he wanted to hit 1,000 books before he died and then his successors would carry on publishing reprints from the back catalogue; I'd always figured he hit that 1,000 mark but maybe not.
Oh! I forgot to mention in the post, that I’ll have to update later w co-authors and the like, since that information was all scattershot. Missed the two Alf Mac Lochlainn books being screwed up, but I’ll fix that as soon as I can. Planning on going through my library tonight to see what I have and what I don’t. (Which should clear up some other errors that slipped through since I’ll be looking at all the listings for the third time.) The Goytisolo slipped by but all four books are part of ANTAGONY. Rather than do the last 3 six years after part 1, we just did one giant volume
Probably I am missing something, but i am confirmed in my impression that in Dalkey there are no African titles, except one from Tunisia, and no Arabic language titles. No China or India. Almost half of the world is not represented. Is it a choice or just … chance? Just a matter of time and the fact that simply the fact that one editor cannot publish everything? Of course this is not Olympic Games, but still … I find it a big awkward.
It’s a mixture of things—which I will dig into in the book itself. It’s funding—which will be one of the biggest topics in the book as a potential good and a potential restraint—its access to information, it’s a specific interest in a particular aesthetic that is more prevalent in Western European writing and that from the Americas. There is the New Japanese issue, a ton of Japanese books, and the Korean Library, but you’re not wrong about Africa, India, the Arabic world being blind spots, being overlooked. I would argue you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water, that the project is still valuable. And maybe look to Deep Vellum and Open Letter as supplements to John’s particular vision and its various quirks and oversights and specificities. (When we get there, the male-female ratio of authors will also stick out. And again, to be addressed in more detail!)
You forgot the Liechtenstein Literature series. One book. Author not from Liechtenstein. Book not set in Liechtenstein
Patrick Boltshauser’s “Rapids”? It’s there! As part of the Liechtenstein Literature Series!
Great list to have I did spot that you've Muharem Bazdulj down as Bolivian its a Bosnian novel
Fixed! Thanks for catching that.