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Red Dust was started 1961 with the purpose of "publishing work thought
to be unpublishable because of length, form or content."
In 1963 the first books came out: MATHIS AT COLMAR: A
Visual Confrontation by Linda Nochlin and SIGHTS Three Novellas by Anna
Holmes. In one of the novellas: Paris, July 14, 1959 the events of a
woman's life are not presented as they occurred in time but in the lights
of that night.
I visited Paris in 1959 but came home quite ignorant of
the "nouveau roman". A friend gave me a copy of THE WIND by Claude Simon
translated by Richard Howard. I saw that Simon had given a visual
arrangement to his work. The story of the hero is not told in time but
like the wind is throughout the book.
"All the elements of the story are always present"
Simon has written.
In 1969 I first took the Red Dust books to the Frankfurt
Book Fair. The books that interested me most there I saw on the publisher
John Calder's table. I saw THE THIRD WEDDING by Costas Taktsis (this was
actually an Alan Ross book). In this novel a mother and daughter-in-law
gossip and the history of Greece 1939-49 emerges.
Taktsis has let individual lives speak deliberately for themselves
and unwittingly for their period with unforced authority.
The Observer
I also saw THE PARK by Philippe Sollers and A
SENTIMENTAL TALK by Daniel Castelain. I published these two along with LAW
AND ORDER by Claude Oilier - a book that Grove Press bought and decided
not to publish. In these three novels he, you and I may be one and the
same person, events of one time can not be separated from events of
another or seen from one point of view, the climax is all through the
story.
Several years later at the Fair, again on Calder's
table, I saw THE LIBERA ME DOMINE and PASSACAGLIA by Robert Pinget
translated by Barbara Wright. Red Dust has been publishing Pinget's works
ever since. These are works of voices often with conflicting accounts of
an event.
Pinget writes:
It is not what can be said or meant that interests me but the way
in which it is said. And once I have chosen this way it imposes both
composition and subject matter on me.
Red Dust has published eight Pinget works with two more
about to come out. EVENT by Philippe Sollers has followed THE PARK. In
this work the real event is the narration itself. Barthes has written
about the novel in an after word. He says in effect: No truth can be
written about an event, it is only when we give up words in their function
of naming things and allow them their own life that "a language of truth
begins to speak."
Although I feel that I know most about fiction Red Dust
has published quite a lot of poetry. FOUR GERMAN POETS : Eich, Domin,
Fried, Kunert translated by Agnes Stein came through the mail. I went on
to publish 100 POEMS WITHOUT A COUNTRY by Fried and WINDY TIMES by Kunert.
These German poets are characterized by a restlessness, an inability to
forget, a sense of being a citizen between two camps.
My favorite of the German poets is Gunter Eich and my favorite poem: Oder
my River
Oder my river,/ which has no source/ Drops trickle out
of the mountains of time/ water tasting of childhood
Eich goes on:
Unrest in field furrows and elderbush/ the incomprehensible in the heart
Three years ago Red Dust published Antonio Cisneros, the
great Peruvian poet: AT NIGHT THE CATS translated by David Tipton, Maureen
Ahern and Will Rowe
Here is one of my favorites:
Wind Haut de Cagnes
The wind fucks me up
Even if itās literary like the Mistral that
prowls
through
my
house
names hotels and wines
tangling my hair
from the water it brings sand, shipwrecked sailors, planks from wrecks
from the forests thorns, tall branches and pikes and owls
(from the streets of Lima:
dust
dust
dust
and a little ground glass)
Paul Klee painted a painting called Le Tapis de la
Memoire ö it is something which is there before you and yet it is woven
with the past. Klee wanted you to take time to see a painting.
I want you to see the story all at once.
That is the sort of thing I am looking for and working with at Red Dust. .
Joanna Gunderson, 1987
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