Evan Dara: Reader Response
Reactions to the Works of Evan Dara
“Clear your to-read list and put [The Lost Scrapbook] at the top. An amazing mindblowing torrent, a Joycean Gaddisian Rushian Steinian Wallacian but ultimately only Daranian splendor. The book is a vortex of voices leading to the roaring silence of the burst eardrum of your mental ear.”
Yonina Hoffman (@yonina)
“To have authority and gain respect, future novels may need to simulate those books we have to heft and weigh, texts such as anthologies, manuals and encyclopedias. Or maybe not books at all but other performances such as magic acts and circuses, or even repositories of medieval manuscripts and oral histories, archives and museums. At the end of The Recognitions a composer finally plays his own music in a cathedral, hits a very difficult note, and brings the cathedral down on his head. Dara has taken a similar risk with his Beethoven-influenced novel of variations. Readers who wish to see books preserved will want to have this one…”
Tom LeClair, on The Lost Scrapbook
News
Recent Posts
- The Lost Scrapbook Wins at the Japan Translation AwardsWe’re excited to announce that The Lost Scrapbook has just won the Grand Prize at the 11th Japan Translation Awards! On April 27, 2025, the Japan Translation Award committee met in Tokyo and named two works as recipients of this year’s Grand Prize. One of them was the Japanese translation of The Lost Scrapbook, carriedContinue reading “The Lost Scrapbook Wins at the Japan Translation Awards”
- Things Ain’t What They Seem: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Lifeby Gilbert Sorrentino [Note: This was originally included in the second issue of Context, which was published by the Review of Contemporary Fiction in 2004. While it is technically still available in the Wayback Machine, it seemed a shame to let this piece languish in digital exile. If requested, we will be swift in takingContinue reading “Things Ain’t What They Seem: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life”
- Evan Dara’s The Lost Scrapbook: First Japanese TranslationIt brings us immense pleasure to announce that Evan Dara’s The Lost Scrapbook will be available in its first-ever Japanese translation this November, translated by the esteemed Yoshihiko Kihara. Known for its unique style—written without periods and narrated by countless anonymous voices—this novel has long been considered an “unread masterpiece.” Originally published in 1995, TheContinue reading “Evan Dara’s The Lost Scrapbook: First Japanese Translation”
- William Gass’s Intro to Robert Coover’s The Public BurningFrom William Gass’s introduction to the 1998 Grove Press edition of Robert Coover’s The Public Burning: “Written in the 1970s, published finally in 1977, about actual and imaginary events of June 1953, it could not be more current, more relevant, more right on than it is now (or whatever date the reader finds herself immured)….Continue reading “William Gass’s Intro to Robert Coover’s The Public Burning”
The Evan Dara Affinity 