As mentioned here twice, I ordered Miss MacIntosh, My Darling from Dalkey Archives. Here's the email I received:
We've received your order at Dalkey Archive Press. Unfortunately, one of the books you've requested MISS MACINTOSH MY DARLING v. 2 is out of stock both here and at our supplier's warehouse. If you'd like, I can substitute a book for equal or lesser value, I can refund that portion of your order, or I can refund the order in its entirety. Just let me know how you'd like to proceed.
I wrote back:
Is it something you anticipate receiving in near future or is it out for a good long time?
And received back:
I don't think it's scheduled foreseeable future, unfortunately.
I wrote back:
That's not surprising, actually, I'm probably the first person in a while to request Miss McIntosh. Can I get a copy of Elkin's Franchiser instead please?
And received back:
Sure!
So I ordered volume 2 from Amazon, it's been on my bookshelf since Tuesday. I didn't see the Dalkey package on the piano until this morning as I was walking out the door, stuff it in my backpack, get to work, rip it open - I've been thinking about reading this novel for more than a week now, I finished up another of the Maqroll novellas, finished up a Lispector novella, finished Sebald's Emigrants, cleared the fiction deck for this novel - I rip it open and find:
So like, fuck. I had woke up in a dark mood (it was due, I've had an unusual run of good moods lately), when I saw the package I thought it a good omen, my mood was brightening, so like, fuck. This remarkably self-important and self-indulgent post even by my standards of self-importance and self-indulgence intended to disperse and/or inflame a worse mood. Hope it works. Hope it doesn't. Links tomorrow.
UPDATE! Dalkey responds to my email of this morning:
UPDATE! Dalkey responds to my email of this morning:
Wow. My apologies for the mistake. Here's what we can do (if this is agreeable to you): If you can return the unwanted copy of vol. 2, we actually have one copy left of Miss MacIntosh 1 that I was able to find in the office. I can overnight in to you in exchange for the troubles, no extra charge. Let me know.
Good enough. I've got other aarghs that can keep the bad mood flowering.
COMMAND FILTER WITH NEGATIVE ENTAILMENT
Steve McCaffery
A bridge is a passage between two banks. On Saturdays both banks are closed. A well is located in a wall of sound. But space is not the stake and suddenly both travellers fall in. Now draw a line between some water and their eyes. Express it as the border of a reservoir. The term ears stands ready to attack. Attach it then repeat the phrase my body lives inside a closed shed. The nose with this noise invents a scale. The cottage is attempts and tries to break at random or at noon a forest hidden by a single tree. Narrative dilates sporadic or clairvoyant in a place where bed becomes the meaning of the rest. Now say embrace me. Motors trivialize. Eighty-six windows show the noun to be a house. The heart is now a hole in space that falls across and leaves a certain number. Forget the thirds in this and the silhouettes change place. You can no longer have a choice. You start at zero by the church called word in the forest by a beach beyond the sea between a fingernail at the moment logic begins. Basic liquids add a soup. Now change it. Write down I can no longer state a model is at work. Then make filters for each body. Draw all the composition off. Forbid readers to leave. This sea as a mixture and the sand relating questions to the horizontal movements of a prebiotic plan. You are now discovering that concrete form involves both circulation and the clinamen. Start to weave and you’ll connect this space. Now try to say the eye is paradoxical so that all future lines repeat a plate. Nothing is narrative. Now alter it. The equator drops and float upstream. A pluralist sidewalk remains. Go back to the start. The Saturdays stay close to a catastrophic separation. The bridge is now a son who kills the father at a crossroad. In the well of the week drops the son’s name. Add wings to it. Now set out all the other links to constitute a set of probable ideas. The crevice of the lip connects a writing that’s as still as ink. This final switch is exactly what’s happening. The constant factor in a cloud.
Hard to complain about their customer service.
ReplyDeleteJust got two Dalkey Archive books in the mail: Log of the SS the Mrs. Unguentine & The Age of Wire and String. Not finished the first yet, but I'm thinking it's required reading.
Yeah, they were fine. Was just all those days of good moods had to crash at some point and this was self-indulgent triggering.
Delete