/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Tue Sep 5 13:00:01 2017 No.9983574 [Reply] [Original]

>Evan Dara is an American postmodern novelist. In 1995, his first novel, The Lost Scrapbook, won the 12th Annual FC2 Illinois State University National Fiction Competition judged by William T. Vollmann.

>The manuscript was originally brought to the publisher's attention by novelist Richard Powers, who described how he received it:

>“Several kilos of transatlantic, boat-rate typescript arrived on my stoop without prior warning of contents, and I’ve been grateful ever since. Dara shows how a novel can be experimental, yet moral, rule breaking but emotional, and post-humanist while still remaining deeply human. This scrapbook builds in stretches until the whole police blotter cum family album lies open in aerial view. Monumental, unforgiving, cunning and heartfelt, it lets no one off the hook, least of all the reader.

>"This first novel resembles the ambitious debuts of McElroy (A Smuggler's Bible) and Pynchon (V), but author Evan Dara pushes the bar back upward toward Recognitions-height.

>However, he has responded on separate occasions about the influence of William Gaddis on his style. In an indirect reply to a query from the critic Tom LeClair—in which he confirmed that he uses a pseudonym—Dara denied having read either The Recognitions or J R.[2] In 2014, the critic Steven Moore followed up on this question:

>“Asked about Gaddis’s possible influence, Dara told me that while working on The Lost Scrapbook he head that J R was a novel in dialogue and checked it out from The American Library in Paris: ‘Took the novel home, plunked it open, tapped it shut — didn’t want the influence’ (email January 19, 2014).”

>As opposed to other reclusive American writers such as J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, and Harper Lee, nothing is known about Dara's background or the reasons why he writes under a pseudonym. And unlike the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante, Dara has never given an interview or commented on his books.

Is he /ourguy?/

We're reading Evan Dara's The Lost Scrapbook on the /lit/ Discord. Join us and get in on the next big meme.

https://discord.gg/krcRqbz

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