Dalkey Archive Press, an imprint of Deep Vellum Publishing, will reissue 10 works of fiction and nonfiction by American writer Harry Mathews over the next five years. The publishing program will kick off with the novels Cigarettes and The Journalist, both slated for June 17, followed by a reissue of Mathews’s 1962 debut novel The Conversions, set for November 4.
The remaining seven titles in the series—Singular Pleasures, The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, My Life in CIA, 20 Lines in a Day, Tlooth, The Case of the Persevering Maltese, and The Human Country—comprise novels, essays, story collections, and memoirs and span more than four decades of Mathews’ career. The reissued editions will feature new cover designs and never-before-seen archival photographs of the author, as well as introductions by such writers as Jonathan Lethem, Lucy Sante, and Ed Park.
Mathews, who died in 2017, was the author of more than two dozen works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In 1961, he cofounded the journal Locus Solus with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, and was the first American chosen for membership in the Oulipo, the French literary consortium dedicated to the innovation of literary form through constraint. He also translated the work of such French writers as Georges Bataille and Georges Perec.
“Harry Mathews is one of Dalkey Archive Press's foundational authors—and one of the authors through whom I personally learned about the press,” said Chad Post, editorial director of Dalkey Archive. “It's wonderful to be able to introduce his oeuvre to a new generation of readers who will get to experience his joyful wackiness and formal inventiveness for the first time.”
