30 Years of Dedalus Books: Andrew Crumey, David Madsen and Sylvie Germain

November 30^th marked the thirtieth anniversary of the first publications from Dedalus Books. Their original list consisted of three debut novels including Robert Irwin’s The Arabian Nightmare, which has since been translated into twenty languages. Since then, Dedalus have carved out a niche as the home of strange and original new fiction, especially in translation, as well as a great list of decadent classics and anthologies. Dedalus describe their speciality as ‘distorted reality’, in which ‘the bizarre, the unusual, the grotesque and the surreal meld in a kind of intellectual fiction which is very European’. To celebrate, they are re-releasing seven significant books from their back catalogue, beginning with Pfitz, by Andrew Crumey, The Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by David Madsen, and Sylvie Germain’s award-winning debut The Book of Nights.

I’ve written before about my admiration for Dedalus books, particularly their Decadent Handbook which was a great inspiration to me as a young fop. Since then, I’ve discovered many of my favourite novels through Dedalus, from the occult fin de siècle tales of Gustav Meyrink to the work of innovative modern authors like Diegio Marani and Sophie Jabes.

The success of Andrew Crumey is an example of how Dedalus can nurture exciting literary talents. His debut novel, Music, In A Foreign Language won the Saltire Best First Book Prize on its release in 1994. Since then, he has published six further novels, including this year’s The Secret Knowledge, a novel linking philosophy and conspiracy theory which was championed by the likes of John Self. Speaking to Workshy Fop earlier this year, Crumey explained that ‘When I wrote my first novel, I sent an outline and the first couple of chapters to four publishers – three 'big-name' ones and Dedalus. The 'big names' threw it on the slush pile and never replied. Dedalus wrote back, asked to see the whole novel, and published it. They’ve kept my books in print ever since, have worked really hard to get my books translated into other languages, and have been very good to me.’

It is Crumey’s second novel, Pfitz, which has been selected as part of the anniversary celebrations. Pfitz is a deeply unusual book, blending elements of JK Huysmans’s style with a sense of metafictional playfulness. The novel concerns a European prince, who conceives of grand civic schemes, but lacks the means to enact his plans. Instead, he sets his people to work documenting imaginary cities, drawing up drainage systems, documenting the lives of the fictional inhabitants, and even writing the novels contained within the city’s library. The main character, Pfitz, is a clerk who discovers a loose thread in the history of one of these imagined inhabitants; as he sets out to discover more, he finds that he has become involved in a mysterious and threatening game.

In The Secret Knowledge Crumey uses his main character, a washed-up pianist, to convey his own feelings about the literary world, satirising the protocol of the festival green room. In Pfitz, the Prince could also be said to stand in for the author, producing heroic works of the imagination without any tangible benefits. In this reading, Pfitz’s investigations represent the reader struggling to find truth and meaning within a work of fiction. At points, Crumey deliberately interposes his authorial voice between the reader and the text, masking our view of events. Chapter four in particular contains a dialogue between 'reader' and 'author' worthy of Lewis Carroll.

Late in the novel, Crumey writes 'the person who puts pen to page is no more than a channel for ideas whose origin and meaning he can never hope to discern'. Pfitz is a humorous and staggeringly inventive exploration of this idea, handling complex ideas with a light touch. It is easy to see why Pfitz was chosen as part of this anniversary selection; it combines the Dedalus hallmarks of fin de siècle decadence with modern literary experimentation to great effect.

As well as a range of surprising and fascinating books, the Dedalus catalogue also features a refreshing approach to marketing. The blurb for The Torture Garden, for example, states that the opening chapters of the novel are nearly incomprehensible for everyone other than scholars of late nineteenth century French politics. Introducing David Madsen’s debut novel, published in 1995, Dedalus proudly quote the Sunday Times, thus: ‘Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf opens with a stomach-turning description of the state of Pope Leo's backside. The narrator is a hunchbacked dwarf and it is his job to read aloud from St Augustine while salves and unguents are applied to the Papal posterior.’ Good luck getting that onto the Richard and Judy book group.

…Gnostic Dwarf is set during the Renaissance, in the court of Pope Leo X. The narrator, Peppe, is a deformed street urchin, who is introduced to heretical teachings by the beautiful noblewoman Laura Collini. Peppe rises to become an indispensable member of Leo’s court, acting as spy, scribe procurer, factotum and confidant to the Pope. As a gnostic, Peppe believes that ‘there are two equally-matched powers in the universe, one good & the other evil, and these are perpetually at war with one another’, and throughout his narrative he demonstrates the dual nature of man, how the beautiful works of Raphael, Botticelli and Michaelangelo can be created in a time of brutality and filth.

Pope Leo’s reign was beset by challenges to the established order, and the inquisition’s attempts to quell the threat from Lutherism, gnostic cults and other heresies form the backdrop to the story, giving the book a thriller-like pace. Madsen merges erudition with readability, revelling in the squalor of sixteenth century Rome whilst also speculating on religion, art and philosophy. It is a bracing and compelling read.

The third book to be re-released is Sylvie Germain’s The Book of Nights, originally published in 1985. The novel was a huge success on its release, winning six literary prizes and being compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the Literary Review. I’ve enjoyed Germain’s work in the past, particularly Days of Anger, but this was the least satisfying of the three re-releases for me. Told in the magical realist style, The Book of Nights is a mythical retelling of modern French history, showing the shattering effects of three wars on a single peasant family, the Peniels.

There are memorable images; Germain plays with our ideas of the physical world, combining and dividing bodies at will, allowing the soul of one Peniel brother to take up dual residence in his twin’s body after he is killed on the Western front. Later, the psychological impact of the Nazi invasion is described in physical terms: 'the whole country was dislocated... There had always been three Frances, but these were not quite the same ones; France was now divided within its borders into three zones... There were even more zones besides: some people sailed away on ships with other bits of territory in their pockets, to go and plant them elsewhere, in temporary greenhouses in England or Africa'. Overall, though, I felt the narrative moved too fast to be truly satisfying, and the author’s over-reliance on the magical at times prevented her characters from becoming fully realised.

These three novels will be followed in June 2014 by James Waddington’s Bad to the Bone, with The Dedalus Book of Absinthe, The Decadent Cookbook and The Arabian Nightmare following at a later date. As an introduction to one of the most inventive and imaginative imprints around, all are recommended. Sometimes reality is better viewed through a distorted lens, after all.