Dalkey Archive's specialty lies within curating and bringing forth names in literature that are often left out of the conversation. Many of these titles fall under avant garde, while others are titles that have been forgotten about, or never translated for the English speaking world. Founded in Chicago in the mid 1980s, and now with a new home at the University of Houston-Victoria, Dalkey has continually expanded the much needed world of quality translations for works that yearn for the proper attention. With a heavy focus on the modernists and post-modernists, many a title in their catalog are not standard narratives, but rather works that experiment with the linearity of storytelling, or works that try to capture the underbelly of human psychology.

Not only does Dalkey serve as an archive, but they keep up with the contemporary scene as well, with fiction, non-fiction, theory and more. With many different series, and partnerships with other cultural institutions in various countries, Dalkey is keeping a vision committed to connecting literature across oceans. They are a vital press in a sea of homogenized literature, and keep coming out with titles well worth reading.  

Prairie Style; Here; Giscome Road by C.S. Giscombe

C.S. Giscombe writes for identity, writes for location, and writes to create wisdom. As a black poet, Giscombe also writes to share his own vision of the black aesthetic and in his own way, the experiences that he had and has, as being a black voice being published. Whether through references to other artists, or through himself, one cannot help but feel that Giscombe is intent on sharing; his thoughts, his ideas, his metaphors, his words.

 

"Location's what you come to; it's the low point, it usually repeats."

 

So says the author in the second line from the first poem ("Downstate") in the first section ("Nameless") of C.S. Giscombe's wonderful poetry collection Prairie Style. 

 

It is this line which represents the heart of Prairie Style, a collection of locations, dreams, stories, whispers and writings through history. Where once, being concrete was a measure of value, we now recognize the worth of a fleeting motion and the change that accompanies time.

 

"Property's a measure of elimination." Giscombe states with confidence and ease, passing down and "Tempting for the voice to locate its noise, to speak of or from." His poems wander, his titles will sometimes repeat, leaving you to trace his steps and locate the differences. 

 

In Here, Giscombe created a single poem, which takes place in three settings, once again, drawing on the power and notions of geography. We get dates, locations, questions, statements. Trains, transportation, place, language used as if it were a flowing river, time continues, and yet we have a constant reminder that the past continually remains open. 
 

Broken up into three parts this historical narrative brings us to the 50's and 60s in the South, to paintings from the 1850s by a black painter Robert S. Duncanson to the present, all in seeking to show continuity and difference. Giscombe's poems can be read trance-like and with emotion, or on the other side of that, can be read with an in-depth quality, one that seeks to discover, to look further in and to get all that Giscombe wants us to get. 
 

For me, the poetry is (more than) double sided, and in this way Giscombe's poetry presents us with poetry that on the surface reads beautifully, and yet is filled with meaning as if it was a philosophy reader. Giscombe writes with an ability to define experience and yet leaves open just enough space for ourselves to find ourselves and our daily realities being surrounded by his words as well.

Finally, Giscome Road, a large book in size, though only 60 or so pages long, which is dealing with the travels of explorer John Robert Giscome, and as such, focuses on historical documents, maps, and other documents to help us discover and explore on our own the differing rationales in life. Giscombe employs the same techniques that W.G. Sebald uses in his novels, which as well are used to create a preservation of the past, and relate that past to the modern day, providing a genuity through self-exploration, in which we are forced to discover meaning on our own. 
 

Giscombe is on another level with Giscome Road and unlike the rest of his poetry books on Dalkey which eschew the maps, and the roads, and the roadblocks, this poetry collection is powerful gestures that reach out. This collection is made for those that want to read a good book and those that put that book down so that they can write their own narratives; those that talk to themselves while stumbling down a road and wishing they had a notebook.
 

Poetry, symbols, conversations, texts, searching for meaning, whether meant by Giscombe or a cursory wisdom that we stumble upon through our own readings, sketches, a figure in the sand, a knowledge when we figure out the wisdom that we always held,

 

This and the rest of his collection of poetry are must reads in my world, and not generally being a person that reads and re-reads, we can add him to the shelf of re-reads, to figure out  how rainy days change our ideas in relation to his words, how a bright sunny day can effect the readings of Giscombe.

 

Camilo Jose Cela
The Family of Pascal Duarte.

In what starts as the telling of a memoir by Pascual Duarte, shifts into a nightmarish story of one man, writing from his cell awaiting execution. Through his writings, Duarte tells about the world around him, being impoverished, with a series of horrors happening, which had caused him to lead a life of being an outsider towards the law, a cold-hard criminal and a justification laden crime spree. Cela is capable of creating life as an existential nightmare, in which meaning and chaos combine to provide absolute meaninglessness that traps us all in a sort of void. 

 

We are first introduced to the story as being a story transcribed from papers found at a pharmacy, and though the transcriber has worked out the "rough pages" that were written on maniacally by Duarte, they also left out some of the more grotesque parts, or so they say. Leading us to already imagine of how severe this book could be, but also the reliability of the story on its own. The book starts with an ending, "Be the opposite of this man." this man being Pascal Duarte as the man waiting to die at the hands of the law, he is a god fearing man, relying on the forgiveness of Don Jesus and the Lord. What this book calls into question, is who creates the morals of society, who decides them, and who gets away. Will blind acceptance lead you towards forgiveness?  

 

This book is extremely well written and a thrilling read, but does fall back on a narrative that we have seen too present in society, which is the "man" and his role, the idea of the horrible women in a man's life which lead him to start being a psychotic and depraved individual. While nobody in Duarte's life is without fault, including himself, it is the women in the book who drive his lunacy, and it is this, which is unfortunately too common a perception.  This for me is the only draw back of the story.

 

Without diving too deep in this deconstruction, save that for another blog post, I will say that this book remains an important reminder of how devious and impacting literature can be. This book has squeamish moments, it has moments we want to look away and yet the book provides a momentum that only wants you to continue moving forward. Not only in 1942 when this book was first published, but now, when the world is filled with books that try to speak towards the psychologies of humans, but end up as a fluff narrative, this book is a story that seeks the depths of human lives and reactions.

 

Waltz by Francesc Trabal

Catalonian. Exiled. Writer. A bit of a common storyline for Catalan writers in the early half of the 1900s. 

 

Structured in five parts, Waltz is an absurd comedy of our young, almost callous, lover and wanderer, Zeni, a bourgeois idealist floating from one prospective lover to another showing our young romantic engaging in "deep friendships" which denounce societal expectations and the farce that accompanies them. 

 

Written in a both comic and emotional tone, Trabal has engaged with us in a modernistic effort to radiate ideals of trust, love, and fortune, as well as the loss of them all. Yet while he might be writing of the Catalan middle class, he negotiates their existence through a surrealistic mirror to convey the life of our young coming of age narrator. His themes are timeless, and conveyed on a border between the highly comic and the almost over done, film-like reality, presented in a way to avoid a repetitive and overzealous narrative plunder by trying to answer or tell. Our coming of age story we get here, merely observes and relates. 

 

Zeni distrusts his teachers and authority, which is not to say he is a rebel, but he is more a character of experience, of being immersed in the pleasures of life, dancing, talking endlessly, wandering through the different dimensions. When reading books with such a tone, and an emotional reality, we search within ourselves, struggle to find our lives within the context that the author is writing about, how do we associate ourselves with Zeni, or are we mirrors of the self-struggles and the conceit that appears with this character. Trabal did not craft a story that we are a character in, but a story that we can invest in, and it is where we find our complex selves forming. Trabal broke the border between middle class familial story and the story of living in the world. It is a driving, funny and emotional plot that plays as a maturely written coming of age story, one that Dalkey Archive has made sure will remain in print.

 

As far as I know, Waltz is the only book by Trabal translated into English, it is hard enough finding any more information out about him in English, yet we can remain hopeful that the future will hold more translations of this wonderful author. I read Waltz, while focusing on the premise "Should I care about bourgeois life in Catalan in the early 1900s?" Ultimately, the answer was not whether I should care about middle class existence, but rather I should care about Trabal's writing.