THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK - Ex Occidente Press

My séjour has ended.

This Friday I will start to ship again. All orders received while I was away will be in the mail in the coming three days.

As I was expecting, reading fine books and publishing Books is a better remedy than medicine and drugs. It is during this time that I've re-read a minor work by Ernst Junger, Alladin. Junger seem to suggest that people die simply because they're afraid. Afraid of a fatal disease or the atomic bomb or whatever.

In an interview published in Hervier's excellent The Details of Time, Ernst Junger confirms the theory:

"That's perfectly true", he says, "and it is obviously chiefly in the heart disease. Apparently, the central system is attacked, and this is accompanied by a kind of anxiety that aggravates the case. But it also involves a relationship to transcendence: if my relationship with it is harmonious, death can only bring me a higher state. Which doesn't mean I have to be in any hurry.... That is why the various religions are indispensable. Real health has nothing to do with ailments of the body. A man may be struck by a deadly illness and still be in unfailingly good health, while another may be in dazzling health, even though his prognosis is hopeless."

Now, I don't think Ernst Junger should be taken seriously when he speaks about a "real man's health". After all, even in the world of dreams, a gentleman who fought in two Wars, smoked heavily, experimented with heavy drugs and lived to see generations fade away like seeds of Walleriana Pure White and cities and nations crumbled to dust is certainly not someone to be trusted.

The question remains, though: why are you afraid?

Speaking of fine authors, after several years of trying to find The translator, I've finally found the right person to do the job.

The author is Alexander Vona.

A writer and architect, born in 1922 in Bucharest from a Jewish-Romanian family with direct connections to Elias Canetti and old Spanish Sephardi Jews; for those with a passion for the fine art of genealogy his real name was Alberto Henrique Samuel Bejar y Mayor. He died on November, 2004, at the age of 82.

In 1947, he receives the Romanian Royal Foundation grand prize for a slim poetry volume called Stained-Glasses (Vitralii). The book will never be officially released. That year, the coming to power of the Bolsheviks made sure this book will never be printed. The only persons who read it are his few friends and the jury. That year too the Romanian Monarch is forced into exile; Vona fled to Paris, where he will spend his remaining life. Not a single copy of Stained-Glasses exists anymore.

His absolute masterpiece though - and his only prose book - is The Bricked-Up Windows, a novel he wrote in two weeks, when he was only 25 years old.

This is what Times U.K. said about it:

First Alain Robbe-Grillet sought to translate it into French, but failed to complete it. Paul Célan started a translation into German, but killed himself before finishing. The philosopher Mircea Eliade took a copy to the US, where it was destroyed in a fire. Vona himself lost all interest in the book and in writing. First he worked as an engineer, then as an architect. On the collapse of communism, the writer Marta Petreu, an old friend, pulled out a carbon copy of the manuscript, hidden for more than four decades, and sent it to a publisher. The moment the book came out in 1993, it was hailed as a sensation. Across Europe, critics ranked Vona with Proust, Kafka and Beckett — but too late. Vona published a few more short stories, but he died an architect who had long since jilted his literary muse.

It would be hard for me to try to make a resume of Ferestre Zidite (The Bricked-Up Windows). It is the history of an unnamed city with unnamed streets and unnamed personages. A cheap literary trick these days but there is nothing facile or cheap about Vona masterwork. Suffice to say: I consider this novel to be one of the finest pieces of nostalgic, fantastical, decadent and outre literature I've read in my whole life. A splendidly bemusing text, which is going to receive an Ex Occidente Press deluxe treatment later this year, in December.

If you enjoy the works of Bruno Schulz, Max Blecher, Julien Gracq, Stefan Grabinski, Robert Walser you are in for an unprecedented treat.

Since I've mentioned Bruno Schulz, I am happy to say This Hermetic Legislature, the newest Ex Occidente Press original anthology, is certainly going to be released this Autumn. Dan Watt and I are waiting only for a few more confirmed stories to receive and we will be ready to go. I have no doubt this is about to become the press's greatest anthology to date.

The latest accepted story is by the one and only Michael Cisco. The Vile Game of Gunter and Landau it is called and it certainly is THE best story written by Michael until today. We were blown away by the sheer poetry and the amazing imagery of this literary jewel.

To those still working on their submissions, please hurry up. There only two places still available in This Hermetic Legislature table of contents.

Those who wonder who might be the next author we will honour here at Ex Occidente Press, I think I can tell his name: Pessoa.

It was not quite easy to choose who should be next after Bruno Schulz, but now that I do have the approval and the blessing of Mark Valentine, for Pessoa, that's all that counts.

Michael Cisco's Passport Levant novel, The Wretch of the Sun, not yet announced on the press's site, is now entering in its final phase. This wondrous novel is to be released this November, the latest.

Even if my vacation has ended, not the same can be said about my trusty partners, the printers guys. They still have twelve days of drinking whiskey and smoking hand made "James I of England" cigarettes. They should enjoy their time, yes, because I am ready to give them pure Hell once they are back at work! Six new books to print and bound are awaiting for them in a few days.

Before signing off, let me show you only a few of the artworks which will form the oversized printed Portfolio, the wrap-up dust-jacket and the bronze and silver folios for an announced, upcoming box set. The artist is a contemporary genuine Russian Symbolist. More details and photos of the actual box set, in a couple of weeks.

Regards!
Dan