Mining the Dalkey Archive Podcast

Not the happiest day in which to record a podcast, but Chad, Brian, and Kaija speak their fears and then dive into Melville’s Confidence-Man, talking about grifters, the value of footnotes, and just how modern and amazing Melville’s prose is. They guess at who the “confidence man” might be, the burnt over district of western New York, Mormons, and a lot more.

This week’s music is “All Bets Are Off” by Japandroids.

Next episode will cover Chapters 10-19 of The Confidence-Man. You can find the full reading schedule here.

You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. Please rate and review! It helps more than you know.

Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.

If you’re not already familiar with it, every so often—for the past decade or more—I’ve hosted the Three Percent Podcast to discuss publishing, books, bookselling, book culture, etc., etc. All of the past (and future) episodes are available at iTunes and Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

I’m sharing this particular episode because it centers around Marguerite Young’s Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, Dalkey’s “biggest” publication to date, coming in at a whopping 1,321 pages.

Getting readers to put aside any fears about the size and heft and “difficult” reputation of this book and just read it is something that Dalkey (via Context and the Review of Contemporary Fiction) was always focused on, and is something that obsesses me—and my special guest, Lori Feathers.

Lori is the co-founder and co-owner of Interabang Books in Dallas, TX, along with being a book critic, podcaster, founder of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for North America, and overall great literary citizen. She’s also the creator of the "Involutions of the Seashell" Substack, a unique project dedicated to reading and talking about Marguerite Young's masterpiece.

Hope you enjoy the show!