Unsung Heroes
Dalkey Archive Press has all those "other novels."

BY MICHAEL S. STRICKLAND

My first visit to a bookstore in Philadelphia was a memorable one: There, on the bookshelf's normally desolate terrain between "Mann" and "Maugham"—plump in its torn, black dust jacket graced by a pink-and-green Jim Dine heart—was the book whose unforgettable opening I'd first read in a pristine copy at a Texas library: "... confidence in words, Twang. I suck my tongue for your chervil-and-lavender flavor."

Harry Mathews' epistolary The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium and Other Novels, published in 1975 by Harper & Row, had been unsung and out of print in America for nearly two-thirds of my life by the time I discovered it.

As a fledgling Philadelphian, I naively assumed on the basis of this find that the city was fertile Mathews country, and that soon the rest of his magical beasts would flank the one I'd chanced upon. But his book languished in solitary, and shop owners' responses became frustratingly familiar: the raised eyebrows of disdainful incomprehension ("Are you sure that's spelled with one 't'? And we do, by the way, have plenty of Mann"), or the proffering of the latest Harry Crews remainder. As consolation, I found myself constantly repeating Odradek's last line: "Alone I cannot bear this burden of joy, and doubt."

"If someone is interested in Harry Mathews," says John O'Brien, founder of the Dalkey Archive Press—which has just issued a reprint of Odradek, along with a paperback release of his lush, ecumenical ode to private love, Singular Pleasures—"they're interested in all of his work." Which is why the press plans to reprint—and keep in print—the works of the author that this reviewer, at least, considers the most exciting, intelligent and entertaining of living American scribes.

Four of Mathews' major works, out of print until Dalkey Archive stepped in, have already been released: the two "other novels," The Conversions and Tlooth; the Jane Austen-like Cigarettes; and the 1994 winner of the prestigious Lannan Foundation America Award, The Journalist.

"Each year, a whole new generation of readers comes along," says O'Brien, "and so you never know when that 23-year-old will hear about Mathews, and when they do, whether they'll only be able to track down one of his books--and that with great difficulty. Will they feel isolated, feel themselves to be a community of one?"

In 1981, feeling himself to be such a community of one because of his interest in writers ignored by the critical establishment—underrated simply because they didn't sell, because they didn't cater to received notions of style or subject—O'Brien founded the Review of Contemporary Fiction. "There's a very strange form of censorship based on the marketplace," O'Brien explains, "which doesn't obtain in the other arts. It's a tricky relationship between commercialism and culture. Certain writers and literary movements are ignored because they are not commercially viable. An author's status depends on staying in print."

The Review soon generated great interest in the books it exalted, but the books weren't there to be had. So in 1984, O'Brien launched Dalkey Archive Press with a reprint of Gilbert Sorrentino's Splendide-Hôtel. The Dalkey list soon grew to include a generous mix of experimental fiction by young (or old) writers whose work fell outside the conventional bounds of the commercially acceptable. It also offered translations from select European and Latin American avant-gardists (for lack of a better word to describe writers for whom language is an infinitely plastic medium rather than a petri dish of platitudes) who were not generally recognized by larger presses.

As O'Brien discovered, his unconventional lineup met an unfulfilled need in contemporary publishing; in the last few years, reprints have become the press' mainstay. Rather than scouring the back shelves of second-hand bookshops, readers now have access to many underappreciated, out-of-print greats.

Marguerite Young's Miss Macintosh, My Darling, for which I paid a whopping 50 bucks back in the '80s, can now be had for a mere $30 (two volumes at $15 a piece). Three novels by Ishmael Reed, who many consider to be among the greatest 20th-century African-American authors—The Free-Lance Pallbearers, The Terrible Twos and The Terrible Threes—were recently put back into print by Dalkey Archive. And the press now carries 11 of Sorrentino's handcrafted literary labyrinths, including his magnificent parody of the publishing world, Mulligan Stew.

"I modeled the press on James Laughlin's press, New Directions," says O'Brien. "The philosophy is that once a writer's work is published, it stays in print, indefinitely, even if it sells only 20 copies a year. New Directions, of course, was an aberration in the publishing world. I want to take that world and put it into another context in which sales do not influence what is available."

All of which means exercises in literary futility need no longer be repeated. Yes, diehards can still scan the shelves for first editions. And Philadelphians with enough time can visit West Philly's contribution to the Ivy League, which recently acquired 150 items by, about, or inscribed to Harry Mathews. But if you want your own baker's half-dozen of this underrated literary stylist—or of Raymond Queneau, Chantal Chawaf, Jacques Roubaud, Julián Ríos, Julieta Campos, Arno Schmidt, Piotr Szewc and so many exquisite others—simply log onto the Dalkey Archive website. There, where the motto is "Preserving Literature for Future Generations," that long-lost book can now be alchemically transferred, through credit card catalysis, to your shelves.

True, the offerings of Dalkey Archive Press will not appeal to everyone—but then, reading is a private affair, so why not read for yourself, rather than for the public?