Hello!
I meant to write a proper post welcoming you to the Three Percent substack earlier this week, but have been too anxious and distressed to do it right . . . Still am, if I’m being honest, but we all need a distraction, and talking about books are mine.
This Substack will be, for the time being, a duplication of the Three Percent blog, which has been active since 2007, but, honestly, feels like it belongs in 2017. The way in which publications of this sort are shared, read, discovered, and appreciated has changed dramatically over the past 17 years, starting with the elimination of the Google Reader in 2013. So, in order to reach the widest readership possible, we’re moving over here.
What can you expect from this? Well, starting in January 2025, I will have slightly more time to read, research, and write, and intend to put a lot of my efforts into creating content for this Substack and the Mining the Dalkey Archive one (which is restricted to only Dalkey titles and stories from the press’s past). Over here, I’ll be getting back to basics: writing about forthcoming translations, updated and relaunching the Translation Database, running excerpts from Open Letter titles and ones from other publishers, writing occasional reviews, ranting, explaining some aspects of publishing especially as they concern the field of translation, and posting all of our podcasts.
Which brings me to today’s post.
Back in 2017, we launched the Two Month Review as a way of discussing “challenging” works of literature slowly, over a series of podcasts, providing an entertaining and smart way of entering books that might otherwise seem intimidating to some readers. It’s been an incredibly fun ride in which we’ve discussed everything from Gaddis’s J R to Volodine’s Radiant Terminus to Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy to Guðbergur Bergsson’s Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller. Sometimes we love the book, sometimes opinions are mixed. Regardless, these are evergreen seasons that can be appreciated whenever you decide to engage with a particular book—although we also structure them with enough recap and citations that, even if you haven’t read the book, you can follow along and get a lot out of these. (Conversations tend to expand into more abstract ideas about art and literature and the craft of writing.)
Our twenty-fourth season kicked off yesterday with the attached episode on Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man. We decided to start this season with this book before turning to Melvill by one of our favorite authors, Rodrigo Fresán & Will Vanderhyden. The full schedule of episodes and what pages are being covered each week can be found here in case you want to follow along.
If you haven’t heard of The Confidence-Man . . . buckle up. All of Melville’s works are amazing, but this somewhat cynical send-up of grifters taking place on April Fools’ Day on a steamboat is something else. In the words of Rodrigo Fresán, it’s “Pynchon before Pynchon.” It’s funny, asks big questions about faith and mankind, and is simply wonderful to read.
Which I hope you do! (Seems like a good time to examine how grifters gain power . . . if you know what I mean.) Or at least listen along. And if you like what you hear, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, where you can also subscribe and get the episodes a day before they come out here. And you can even watch the episodes on YouTube if that’s something you’re into.
Enjoy! And I’ll be back next week with some info about a new Open Letter title, and possibly some more teasers of what’s to come.
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