Current & recent activities

10/24
Current & recent activities
		Steve’s critical edition of the little-known 16th-century English horror novel The Adventures of Lady Egeria is now available from Sublunary Editions: https://sublunaryeditions.com/products/the-adventures-of-lady-egeria
In August Steve discussed The Novel: An Alternative History with Kassia Oset and Dylan Cuellar on their Unburied Books podcast: https://unburied-books.castos.com/episodes/teaser-the-novel-with-steven-moore Early next year, they plan to discuss the New York Review Books editions of William Gaddis’s first two novels.
An e-book of Dalkey Days—with a corrected text and full-color illustrations—is now available from the publisher (https://redfiendpub.com/non-fiction) and many other e-book vendors. Factory recall: And a corrected edition of the original book version has just been issued by Zerogram Press. Steve is happy to send a signed copy of the new edition to anyone who purchased the original: send him your mailing address HERE, and confirm that you have destroyed the earlier edition via a photo: ripped in half, roasting on a fire, floating in a pond, chewed by a dog, etc.
Steve's talk at the 2022 Gaddis conference has been published (along with other papers from the same) at the Electronic Book Review: https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/new-directions-for-gaddis-scholarship/
Steve’s edition of The Dixie Dugan Trilogy, mentioned below, is now available from your preferred online vendor.
Concluding what now looks like a busy year, Steve spent part of 2023 copyediting books by some favorite writers, including Alexander Theroux's Godfather Drosselmeier's Tears & Other Poems (https://www.toughpoets.com/#books), and Lauren Fairbank’s third novel Prison Mars (https://coronasamizdat.com/index.php). (He'd published her first novel, Sister Carrie, with Dalkey Archive Press, where he also published Theroux's first book of poetry, The Lollipop Trollops.) And he's now editing two other books he's wanted to do for years: The Dixie Dugan Trilogy by J. P. McEvoy, an author Steve wrote about in 2017 (http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2017/03/02/the-avant-pop-novels-of-j-p-mcevoy-essay-steven-moore/), as well as a modernized edition of an obscure Elizabethan novel titled The Adventures of Lady Egeria, by "Master W. C." (1584), which has the dubious distinction of being the first horror novel in English literature. The latter will be published by Sublunary Editions, which specializes in such literary curiosities; check them out at https://sublunaryeditions.com/.
On 17 October 2023 Steve spent an hour discussing William Gaddis with James Ellis (via landline) for his Hermitix podcast, which was posted on 15 November: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hermitix/episodes/The-Work-of-William-Gaddis-with-Steven-Moore-e2av6vp It is also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdv3SAN7JTw&lc
Steve published two more articles on William Gaddis in 2023. In May, his “William Gaddis and Russian Literature” appeared in Firmament 3.2 (May 2023): 7-12, and was posted online in August at https://sublunaryeditions.com/magazine/william-gaddis-and-russian-literature.
In September, his “Wild Talents: Pynchon, Gaddis, and Charles Fort” was posted on Greg Gerke’s Socrates on the Beach: https://socratesonthebeach.com/steven-moore
		Coming in April 2023 are two more books by Steve: New York Review Books will publish a new, expanded edition of The Letters of William Gaddis, originally published in 2013. For more information, https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/the-letters-of-william-gaddis And Zerogram Press will publish Dalkey Days, a brief memoir Steve was inspired to write last September about his years at Dalkey Archive Press (1988-1996), profusely illustrated. https://zerogrampress.com/2023/01/11/dalkey-days/
In October 2022, Steve published an essay-review of The Collected Poems of Marguerite Young in the online supplement of Poetry magazine: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/158622/reality-is-wild-and-on-the-wing
		Later that month, he delivered the keynote address at the William Gaddis Centenary Conference at Washington University, St. Louis, now available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KxXgmpwhNE
		Steve discusses his Theroux book in the Feeling Bookish podcast with Roman Tsivkin & Robert Fay Steve’s new book is on Alexander Theroux, and will be published in September by Zerogram Press. It combines previously published essays with several new ones to provide an overview of the work of this singular writer. For further information, visit http://zerogrampress.com/books/
Steve’s interview with Scottish novelist M. J. Nicholls has just been published in the spring 2020 issue of Rain Taxi. Previously Steve has made cameo appearances in two of Nicholls’s postmodern novels: The House of Writers (Sagging Meniscus, 2016), p. 87, and The 1002nd Book to Read Before You Die (Sagging Meniscus, 2018), p. 190.
Steve discusses variety of things—including his youthful unpublished novel—in a recent interview posted here: https://thecollidescope.wordpress.com/2020/01/26/giants-in-the-earth-an-interview-with-steven-moore/
Steve discusses the meaning of "literature" in an essay-review of two books by Jeffrey Di Leo posted online at 3:AM Magazine, here: https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/what-is-and-isnt-literature/
The Ginkgo Book Company of China recently bought translation rights to both volumes of The Novel: An Alternative History, both of which speak highly of Chinese novels.
The second volume of Steve's novel history, The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800, has been reissued in paperback. The paperback corrects the embarrassingly large number of typos in the hardcover edition of 2013.
In October 2017, Fantagraphics Books published Steve's edition of On the Decay of Criticism: The Complete Essays of W. M. Spackman. He had published the The Complete Fiction of W. M. Spackman with Dalkey Archive back in 1997, and had always wanted to follow it with a collection of his brilliant nonfiction. http://www.fantagraphics.com/decaycriticism/
Steve’s new book, My Back Pages: Reviews and Essays(Zerogram Press), published in April, has already received two lengthy, favorable reviews, one by Julian Anderson in Fiction Writers Review, the other by Jeff Bursey in Numéro Cinqa. Steve was also interviewed in connection with the book by Michael Silverblatt for his Bookworm radio program, available for listening online HERE.
	My Back Pages: Essays and Reviews by Steven Moore Before he embarked on his massive history of the novel, Steven Moore was best known as a tireless promoter of innovative fiction, mostly by way of hundreds of book reviews published from the late 1970s onward. Virtually all have been gathered for this collection, which offers a panoramic view of modern fiction, ranging from well-known authors like Barth and Pynchon to lesser-known but deserving ones, many published by small presses. Moore also reviews dozens of critical studies of this fiction, and takes some side trips into rock music and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The second half of the book reprints Moore’s best essays. Several deal with novelist William Gaddis — on whom Moore is considered the leading authority — and other writers associated with him (Chandler Brossard, Alan Ansen, David Markson, Sheri Martinelli), all of which have been updated for this collection. Others champion such writers as Alexander Theroux, Brigid Brophy, Edward Dahlberg, Carole Maso, W. M. Spackman, and Rikki Ducornet. Two essays deal with the late David Foster Wallace, whom Moore knew, and others treat such matters as book reviewing, postmodernism, the Beat movement, maximalism, gay literature, punctuation, nympholepsy, and the history of the novel.
A lengthy interview with Steven Moore by British critic Nicolas Tredell has just been published in The VP Annual, which also reprints an interview Steve conducted with novelist Rikki Ducornet in 1998. This interesting annual also includes essays by/about Gabriel Josipovici and Ronald Sukenick, as well as a new interview with Alexander Theroux. Available from: Verbivoracious Press Book Depository Amazon
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		New chapters on Gaddis's later novels, and an updated introduction and conclusion, are in the new expanded edition of Steven Moore's book William Gaddis (Twayne1989), just published and now available in two formats at Wordery. "In 1989, Steven Moore published the first scholarly study of all three of William Gaddis's novels and since then it has been generally regarded as the best book on this difficult but major writer's work. This revised and expanded edition includes new chapters on the novels Gaddis published after 1989, the National Book Award-winning A Frolic of His Own and the posthumous novella Agape Agape, along with updated introductory and concluding chapters." More at the Bloomsbury site.
		A WINNER! The Novel, An Alternative History, 1600-1800 has won the Christian Gauss Prize of the Phi Beta Kappa Society for best book of literary scholarship or criticism of 2013: anouncement of finalists here.
NICE TLS REVIEW OF STEVEN MOORE'S THE NOVEL: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY 1600-1800 Legible pdf of full review here

		Jane Smiley: A Conversation with Steven Moore on April 3, 2014 Moderated by Michael Byers, Director of the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. More info here...
		The art magazine Music & Literature has a substantial interview on its web site by novelist and critic Jeff Bursey with "a tireless champion of maximalist and so-called "experimental" fiction," Steven Moore, nicely illustrated with photos from throughout his career..
		Publishers Weekly interviews Steven Moore about "the evolution of an amorphous artform" as shown in his The Novel: An Alternative History 1600-1800.
		Another nice little interview with Steven Moore from Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass.
		Steven Moore, the world's foremost William Gaddis expert, has selected letters from this major 20th-century American novelist, with meticulous headnotes and annotations that place each in the context of Gaddis's life and work -- *The Letters of William Gaddis*, coming in 2013, can be ordered in advance at The Book Depository, among other places.
Rare & Collectible: volumes from Steven Moore's personal book collection are now available in his online store at AbeBooks
		‘Portrait of a Novel’ looks at Henry James and the bridge to modernism -- a notable review of Michael Gorra's book on James' Portrait of a Lady.
		The saga continues... Opening of Volume II of The Novel: An Alternative History: 1600-1800, on Don Quixote, at the College Hill Review. Forthcoming August 2013...order it now at The Book Depository and other booksellers.
Volume 1 of The Novel: An Alternative History is out in paperback -- available HERE or HERE.
		"You're unlikely to find a wittier, more ingenious, more compulsively readable novel this year," says Steven Moore in a Washington Post review of Daisy Buchanan's Daughter by Tom Carson, published by Paycock Press. Read more here...and more about the book here.
		The novel is centuries older than we've been told Steven Moore's longish post at The Guardian's Books Blog, on how he came to view the novel as having a very long history, and to write The Novel: An Alternative History, to demonstrate this..
		Steven Moore's new book The Novel: An Alternative History is out, published by Continuum Books. CLICK FOR EXCERPTS AT THE PUBLISHER'S WEB SITE From the dust jacket description -- Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote (1605), but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the premodern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these premodern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Though Moore regards literary novels primarily as "performances" – authorial displays of style and technique – he does not neglect their value as cultural criticism. For the history of the novel is also the history of the rivalry between secular literature and sacred scripture. Indeed, Moore holds that the "secular scriptures" of literature provide a better guide to life than sacred scriptures (fictions of a different sort). Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining— The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel. Albert Manguel review at the Washington Post, August 22, 2010. Interview focusing on The Novel at Porter Square Books, June 9, 2010 Rain Taxi review by Scott Bryan Wilson, in pdf format, Summer 2010 print edition A review at Bomb magazine by Justin McNeil, April 7, 2010.
		Steven Moore interviewed by Splice Today online magazine about his penchant for big brainy novels, and other matters . http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/interview-steven-moore
SM gets blogged re The Novel early on : Eugene Lim's Reading Diary, 23 November 2008 "Independing scholar" Steven Moore is writing a history of the novel http://www.eugenelim.com/2008/11/23/%E2%80%9Cindependent-scholar%E2%80%9D-steven-moore-is-writing-a-history-of-the-novel/
Not current or, actually, recent: Steven Moore interviewed on Pynchon: In 1997 Steven Moore was interviewed by CNN for a feature on Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. The video of the little feature can be viewed here, and the related story, which only quotes one of the video interviewees, and that one is not Steven Moore, is here: http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/
to Steven Moore index page

My Back Pages: Essays and Reviews

‘Portrait of a Novel’ looks at Henry James and the bridge to modernism -- a notable review of Michael Gorra's book on James' Portrait of a Lady.