Mining the Dalkey Archive Podcast

Vince (A Book No One Wants) and Chad talk about Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s novella, The Dregs of the Day, translated from the Irish by Alan Titley. Dregs is available from from Yale University Press, who also published The Dirty Dust & Graveyard Clay—two very different translations of the same book, and the primary topic for a good chunk of this episode. In terms of The Dregs of the Day, it’s about a widower who doesn’t want to deal with the practicalities of his wife’s passing and instead drinks and bumbles his way through an Irish weekend . . . This episode’s music is “When I Was Done Dying” by Dan Deacon.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Vince (A Book No One Wants) and Chad talk about Ralph Cusack’s only novel, Cadenza, a semi-surreal trip on a train through time and space. They discuss the humor, the difficulty holding on to the prose, Anthony Cronin’s criticisms from Dead As Doornails, and then digress off into myriad topics . . . Next month Vince and Chad will be discussing The Dregs of the Day by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, transalted from the Irish by Alan Titley.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Ted McDermott (The Minor Outsider) comes on to talk about his time at Dalkey Archive as Chad’s marketing assistant back in 2005. They talk about the ethos of the “real Dalkey,” what was going on when the press started looking abroad for great literary fiction, what’s changed at the press over the past twenty years, the critical importance of reading and knowing how to talk about the books you publish and, yes, eventually, Mati Unt’s masterpiece, Things in the Night. This episode’s music is “Electricity” by Spiritualized.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Ross Ufberg (writer, translator, co-founder of New Vessel Press, and author of the new introduction to the forthcoming Dalkey Archive edition of Dead As Doornails) joins Chad and Vince Francone (author of A Book No One Wants) to talk about Anthony Cronin’s memoir of mid-century Ireland and the lives of Brendan Behan, Ralph Cusack, Paddy Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, and more. It’s a book loaded with a lotta booze and a lotta laughs, and is a wonderful portrait of a particular moment in Irish literary history. Next month Vince and Chad will be discussing Cadenza by Ralph Cusack.This episode’s music is “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Dan O’Brien (From Scarsdale, True Story, A Story that Happens) joins Vince Francone (A Book No One Wants) and Chad to discuss Dermot Healy’s Collected Plays. After discussing Healy’s life and other works (A Goat’s Song in particular), they focus on a handful of the plays, including “Blood Wedding,” “The Long Swim,” “Men to the Right, Women to the Left,” “A Night at the Disco,” and “Metagama.” A lively, fun conversation about the process of reading plays versus seeing them performed, writing across genres, creating community, being a writer’s writer, and much more. Next month’s book is Dead As Doornails by Anthony Cronin. A Dalkey Archive edition is coming soon, but in the meantime, this is available from Lilliput Press who is reissuing it on occasion of the book’s 50th anniversary. This episode’s music is “Blood Wedding” by Black 47.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode, Christopher Sorrentino (Sound on Sound, Trance, The Fugitives, Now Beacon, Now Sea) talks about his Substack, “Scarcely Human,” in which he documents his various writing projects playing around with LLMs, including an almost Oulipian experiment related to Raymond Roussel and Gilbert Sorrentino’s Under the Shadow . . . He also discusses the hypocritical stances of publishers, the impact of ChatGPT on literary creation, the value he’s found in using LLMs in his work, and much more. This episode’s music is “GPT” by Dan Deacon.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Rather than focus on a single book this month, Chad and Vince discuss a range of Irish titles (and one British one) that they’d like to read this year. Some of these are new, some old, some will be featured on the podcast, some won’t. But if you’re looking for some Irish books to check out, they’ve got you covered. Here’s the complete list of titles mentioned:Dead As Doornails, Anthony CroninBorstal Boy, Brendan BehanThe Great Hunger, Patrick KavanaghThe Keeper, Tana FrenchLet Me Go Mad in My Own Way, Elaine FeeneyCarn, Patrick McCabeMouthing, Orla MackeyThe Key and The Dregs of the Day, Máirtín Ó CadhainAfter Party, Dean BrowneThe Steps, Juliano Zaffino (not Irish!)Topographia Hibernica, Blindboy BoatclubKilloyle, Roger BoylanLibrary of Brothel, Anakana SchofieldThe Benefactors, Wendy ErskineFirst Book of Frags, Dave LordanBogmail, Patrick McGinleyNext month Vince and Chad will be discussing The Collected Plays of Dermot Healy. (For real this time.)This episode’s music is “Angoon” by Portugal. The Man.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

From now until 1/31/26, EVERY Open Letter title is 40% off! Shop now!!Last January, Matt Martinson started an approximately ten-year project of reading every single Dalkey Archive title (based on this spreadsheet) and writing a short poem about each one. On this episode, he talks about the project and how far along he is, trends he’s picked up on, and how he guides his reading, before a discussion Juan Goytisolo’s Exiled from Almost Everywhere (translated by Peter Bush) and Julián Ríos’s Procession of Shadows (translated by Nick Caistor), two books from two Spanish masters that pair together quite well.This episode’s music is “Bomb” by J Church.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Doyle (The Other Irish Tradition (ed.), Here Are the Young Men) joins Vince Francone and Chad to talk about his most recent book, Threshold, and to tease his forthcoming novel, Cameo. Through the lens of Doyle’s work, they talk about a host of topics: mushrooms, DMT, autofiction, narrative architecture, the search for spiritual enlightenment, John O’Brien, Flann O’Brien, (the always apostrophe-less) Finnegans Wake, and much more.The next book to be featured in this series is The Collected Plays of Dermot Healy. This episode’s music is “The Diamond Sea” by Sonic Youth. You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe

Given that Mark Polizzotti is publisher, author, translator, and literary executor for the Harry Mathews estate, this podcast covers a wide range of topics and authors. The conversation starts with information on the reissues of seven Harry Mathews titles (Cigarettes, The Journalist, and The Conversions are available now), then moves on to talking about Jean Echenoz (especially Chopin’s Move and Command Performance) and Jean-Philippe Toussaint (The Emotions), before wrapping with a focus on Polizzotti’s own books (Jump Cuts, Why Surrealism Matters, Sympathy for the Traitor). This episode’s music is “Works and Days” by Tortoise.You can subscribe to the Mining the Dalkey Archive podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and watch us on YouTube.And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Three Percent (Apple, Spotify) for more book talk! Get full access to Mining the Dalkey Archive at dalkeyarchive.substack.com/subscribe