survey: two question

1. Favorite Dalkey titles? Since the whole point is most of what Dalkey prints is fairly obscure or foreign, it's often overwhelming trying to wade through their catalog and guess which titles one might like best.

2. Other publishers you recommend. It's silly to recommend publishers like a brand name loyalty, of course, but still. Seeing the logo of some publishers (or lines within bigger publishing houses, even) tends to be a good indicator.

I'll answer my own questions here too, but I gotta run right now! Look forward to answers from people...

1. Louis Ferdinand Celine's Castle to Castle, North, Rigadoon--though they were published elsewhere originally. I would also mention that Dalkey has done several of Raymond Queneau's titles and I'm a huge fan of his. The hive--Camilo Jose Cela. Arno Schmidt--great great writer. Louis Paul Boon--Chapel Road, Summer in Termuren.

2. New Directions--is a great publisher. Sun and Moon which I think went belly up--but left a lot of titles. City Lights. NYRB.

1. I haven't read half of the Dalkey titles I own. They're one of those publishers whose judgement I trust enough, though, to usually buy the book based on their recommendation. I got most of mine from Daedalus, which is an overstock bookstore in MD so I didn't pay full price for them. Generally about $4 per title.

I've read and enjoyed Flann O'Brien, Aldous Huxley (especially Crome Yellow), David Markson and some novellas by Arno Schmidt. Looking forward to Nicholas Mosley and Aidan Higgins.

2. The other big one for me is the NYRB Classics. I also like Green Integer and Sun and Moon Classics. If I had endless amounts of money to spend, I'd buy everything from the Loeb Classical Library.

My Dalkey Archive favourites include just about anything they've published by Harry Mathews, Ann Quin's Berg, AVA by Carole Maso, The Inquisitory by Robert Pinget, Janice Galloway's The trick is to keep breathing and Jacques Roubaud's extraordinary interactive novel, The great fire of London : a story with interpolations and bifurcations.

I'm another fan of Green Integer, Sun and Moon and, of course, New Directions. I've also enjoyed quite a few books issued by Twisted Spoon, Dedalus Books and Serpent's Tail.

marietherese......I'd love to hear what you think of Carole Maso. I've been reading & rereading her for years. AVA is an exceptional story.

On # 4. The Inquisitory--a great book. I have considered a writeup of it and Perec's Life: A user's manual in the Books compared group. I think my copy is a Grove Press though--or I certainly would have included it in my list above. I've read an Ann Quin--another title and liked that a lot as well.

1. Favorite Dalkey Archive book I've read so far is Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic.

2. Other small publishers that I enjoy collecting: NYRB and Small Beer Press.

Sun and Moon (essentially) became Green Integer.

my ultrasuper favorite yummy dalkey title is 20 lines a day by (harry mathews)... then The Case of the Persevering Maltese also by (Harry Mathews)...and then The Journalist by Mathews

I'm just reading "The third policeman", but in a different edition (Folio Soc.); I have still to read any of my Dalkey books... I think. And I meant to check out their catalogue before I posted here, for other books I may have read, but it wasn't downloading, and I thought it was high time I thanked for the invitation, catalogue or no catalogue.

I'm liking "The third policeman" a lot. I keep thinking someone ought to write de Selby's books...

1. All the David Markson, but especially Wittgenstein's Mistress.
2. I second NYRB Classics and New Directions. It's funny, I don't follow publishers as avidly as I do record labels... I don't know why. Dalkey Archive is one of the few.

1. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on AVA, and Wittgenstein's Mistress, which are definitely two of my favorites, but anything by either author, really. I also love Jacques Roubaud, and all of the other Oulipans.

2. All of the presses mentioned above are wonderful, and the only two I can think to add are Burning Deck and Lost Roads, the latter of which is run by C. D. Wright and Forrest Gander.

Dalkey Archive is one of those presses that remains reputable and because of it fairly consistent. So as long as the premise and overall synopsis is intriguing, holding some degree of promise, I blind-buy them, often direct from the archive as a sign of support.

However, if I had to choose one, it would be MAN IN THE HOLOCENE.

awesome, i blind-bought Man in the Holocene a few months ago with a bunch of other Dalkey books!now i'm even more excited to read it...

The first pages of Holocene in the Amazon/Google preview impress.

The use of spareness in MAN IN THE HOLOCENE work well in creating tension and cultivating that mystery surrounding the entire piece; at-large, the main character's threat isn't something natural or alive... and we come to associate with this omnipotent eventuality as we do with any circumstances of our own when kinship and personal kindness run a thin paltry red.

Favorite Dalkey titles?

The Tunnel by William H. Gass
Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes
Women and Men: A Novel by Joseph McElroy. I have the original Knopf hc, but I know Dalkey has since kept it in print.
and ditto to Ava mentioned above

Other publishers?

Ditto Green Integer. Never pass up a title of theirs. I could live and read quite contentedly for the rest of my life if all other books beside the Dalkey Archive's, suddenly became extinct.

#17--I don't know about that. Dalkey is excellent but New Directions, Archipelago are just two other great publishers out there. Need to keep up on all the Bolano's and NYRB is putting out a new Manchette.

For the holidays I did pick up Arno Schmidt's--School for Atheists (Green Integer) though I'm not sure I'm going to be getting to that one soon.

If I remember you're a bit of an Oulipo fan--also picked up a rare Queneau poetry collection--Pounding the pavements, beating the bushes and other pataphysical poems. I suspect anyway you'll eventually read yourself out of Dalkey's catalog.

Need to check in here more often. Oh, I'm probably being a bit cheeky re. the Dalkeys, though there are so many, and they tend to be experimental and challenging to read, thus slowing down one's pace of reading. But yeah, I love New Directions and NYRB and Green Integer and Penguin Classics and Grove Press just like anybody, I suppose. Like any book geek, I mean.

I will always be grateful to Dalkey for publishing Donoso's The Obscene Bird of Night.