Corona/Samizdat discussion
After Wake Up
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Pardon the interruptus
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Pardon the interruptus
Yesterday I paid the loan I took to pay for that printing. So now the press has a bitover 20€ towards the next book. It's a race between WD Clarke's She Sang to Us, She sang, and several other books, including a new catch, Tendrilopolous, (an epistolary novel) by Vesna Radić of Novi Sad. We met years ago at an event in Slovenia, where she was one of three friendly writers. I wrote her about the press and she replied that she needed to translate this short novel but that if we wanted the English version we could have it. I looked her up on Google to see what she had published and found absolutely nothing. That led me to look up another writer I met, Lidija Dimkovska, a Macedonian living in Slovenia, and found she had a fat book successfully published. She told me she had a good relationship with her publisher, so we'll get nothing from her. I wrote Vesna and asked why she was invisible and she said that maybe people would mistake her for Pynchonesque. In other words, she has not published anything at all and has more and has left Academia. She didn't say more other than to suggest that the nature of Tendrilopolous was racier than something she would like her name on--so we are using a pseudonym. I guess it's all right to tell you that. We also have a self translation of a book by the Portuguese writer Joao Reis, who actually lives on Pessoa Street I believe, who is translating Bedraggling Grandma with Russian Snow (Portuguese cultural folk contributed 600€ to the project. I read the first 15 pages or so of that and told him we'll take it. Particularly intriguing is America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots, by Phillip Freedenberg of Buffalo, illustrations by Jeff Walton, transmissions by Eddie Vegas, which at least begins about someone waiting for The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas to come in the mail. I've read portions he's sent and they are spectacular. Bori Praper's Cynicism Management is the first of a trilogy; the second is Pendulum Pet, which is finished, but needs another run through he says; the third is in process. Of my own books, the most urgent is Wandering Stone: the Streets of Old Izola, a rambling photo essay published three years ago, and sold out rapidly. 300 Slovene copies sold and 100 English. Three tourist seasons have passed with it out of print, which is a shame as it is the only book specifically about Izola in English. The book describes or at least mentions every street of the old island part of Izola (some 50 streets). I've also got a novel called The Appearance of Death to a Hindu Woman that I think requires some revision before publishing. It was going to be published in India in 2002, but two short editing sessions ended that relationship. And of course there is Brossard's As the Wolf Howls at My Door, which will be as expensive as Wake Up. as we don't have an electronic copy and so our printer will be photocopying it as is. We'll use the same cover, but put Brossard's own description that is now on the back on the leaves and Steven Moore's, now inside, on the back. We should have an introduction by Zach Tanner for that one as well. That leaves potention further volumes of Olof Palme and whatever else we come across.