Spring 2010:
*Brian Dillon Future anterior
The time-travelling art of Gerard Byrne [review-essay]
*Molly McCloskey Axel’s entourage
A strong man in Vietnam [personal history]
Colin Murphy Ireland’s looming water crisis
Why a modern, sparsely populated country with high rainfall struggles to supply drinking water [report]
Denis Sampson Occasional McGahern
A master’s other voices [review-essay]
Ian Sansom Diminishing returns
A diary for 2009 [diary]
Robert Anthony Welch Meeting Bruchmann
A couple in mourning, and a young man with a strange story [short story]
Molly McCloskey is the featured speaker at the first Some Blind Alleys Summer Reading Series event. The Series, entitled, Issues in Contemporary Autobiography, begins with McCloskey on Friday, April 23.
Brian Dillon is the featured speaker at the second event in the series.
What of this sudden interest in the absence of novels about office life?
The essayist Alain de Botton… recently called for a new literature “that can proclaim the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the workplace.” – NYT
The literary silence is puzzling and regrettable, for it denies us the chance collectively to honor the excitement of work as well as to reconcile ourselves (through laughter and tragedy) to its inequities. – Alain de Botton
I’d say it’s more obvious than puzzling. What in the world do award-winning novelists know about the peculiarity and horror of the workplace? They want to talk about outrage, and baseball, and the seaside, and mountains, and old people. A new direction for the novel – a fiction of office life – could only come from a generation of writers currently taking shit from imbecile middle managers, and nobody’s in a rush to find and publish these voices.
March 12 – 27: Special price St Patrick’s Day
Mercier Press is looking for a Senior Editor: The successful candidate will have experience in editing and typesetting history and current affairs, have an understanding of the current challenges facing the publishing business and have strong attention to detail and commitment to excellence. Finally, the successful candidate will thrive on the excitement of working with a values driven team, building a legacy for Irish cultural life.
Duties & Responsibilities
Overseeing manuscript and content development for all new titles
Controlling incoming manuscripts and managing author relationships
Editing and/or proof reading all books, both copy edit and structural edit as necessary
Contracting new titles and managing the backlist
Managing freelancers
General Administration
Essential Skills
Demonstrated copy editing and proofreading skills
Mastery of English grammar and punctuation; strong writing skills
Computer skills: Adobe Creative Suite 2, 3 or 4, Microsoft Office, both Mac and PC proficient
Meticulous attention to detail, commitment to producing quality product, conscious of tight deadlines
Ability to multitask and maintain multiple similar projects
Bachelor’s degree with concentration in English and/or History (Master’s preferable)
For further details or to apply, please email clodagh.feehan@mercierpress.ie, including a cover letter stating why you are interested in the role along with your CV and salary expectation.
Mercier Press
Cork based Mercier Press is the longest established independent publisher in Ireland. The Company publishes books of Irish interest and its core strengths are in the areas of History, Biography and Memoir, Politics, Business, Sport, Folklore and Heritage, MBS, Children and Literature. For over 65 years, Mercier’s commitment to excellence and innovation has kept the Company at the forefront of Irish publishing. Mercier is the only Irish publisher to be awarded the national HR standard, Excellence Through People, demonstrating our commitment to the personal and professional development of our people.
Mercier Press is an equal opportunities employer
HOUYHNHNM PRESS LIMITED
www.houyhnhnmpress.com
You can get your hands on the standard edition for €300 or the special edition for €900.
From Houyhnhnm Press:
This new, critically emended edition of Finnegans Wake, welcomed by Seamus Deane as ‘astonishing and pleasing beyond measure’, is now delivered to its reading public seventy years after the novel’s first publication by Faber & Faber on the 4th of May 1939. Finnegans Wake is the most bookish of all books.
John Bishop has described it as ‘the single most intentionally crafted literary artefact that our culture has produced’. In its original format, however, the book has been beset by numerous imperfections occasioned by the confusion of its seventeen-year composition. Only today, by restoring to our view the author’s intentions in a physical book designed, printed and bound to the highest standards of the printers’ art, can the editors reveal in true detail James Joyce’s fourth, and last, masterwork.
This edition is the summation of thirty years’ intense engagement by textual scholars Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon verifying, codifying, collating and clarifying the 20,000 pages of notes, drafts, typescripts and proofs comprising James Joyce’s ‘litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of whirlwords’ (fw2, 14.16-17). The new reading text of Finnegans Wake, typographically re-set for the first time in its publishing history, incorporates some 9000 minor yet crucial corrections and amendments, covering punctuation marks, font choice, spacing, misspellings, misplaced phrases and ruptured syntax. Although individually minor, these changes are nonetheless crucial in facilitating a smooth reading of the book.
Here are two original manuscript pages:
You know what I fucking mean?
