October 2024
Arcade Publishing Monthly Newsletter
From the Editor
October is a great month, here’s why: Ponder a new novel by Daniel Roberts, author of Bar Maid (USA Today bestseller) comes out October 8th. Roberts’ second novel has a “slightly surreal humor,” and a “dash of Barthelme or Perelman” according to Kirkus Reviews. We know that this darkly comic tale, set in Disney World at the turn of the millennium will live up to the praise.
Also, To the Kennels by Hye-Young Pyun, a *Booklist Starred Review*, comes out October 22nd. Hye-Young Pyun is the bestselling author of The Hole (Shirley Jackson Award–winner), The Owl Cries, and City of Ash and Red, among others that Arcade has published English translations of. To the Kennels is an acclaimed story collection infused with psychological acuity, suspense, and a touch of the uncanny.
Though it is now officially autumn, our summer titles would still make great fall reads. Vivienne by Emmalea Russo, was featured on the Cracks in Postmodernity podcast as well as the Salt Lake Dirt Podcast, where Russo talked about her debut novel and her writing process. (Emmalea Russo will be reading from her book in NYC on Oct 10th here.) Matthew Davis was on the Red Scare Podcast where he talked about his debut novel, Let Me Try Again. If you’d prefer a techno-thriller, then Cooper and McKinley’s A Quiet Life may be more for you.
Coming up we will have more Bruce Wagner backlist titles out as (very beautiful looking) paperback editions in November. You can check out any of that series here. Also, we have just recently signed up Waseem by Lilas Taha, a novel about the life of a disabled (and wickedly smart) Palestinian boy living in a refugee camp. There are so many great projects coming out over the course of the next year, and we hope that you will read (and buy) them all.
Hope you are well, please read Arcade.
PONDER by Daniel Roberts
A 312-page Arcade Publishing novel. Out October 8th, 2024 ISBN: 9781648210693
"Roberts' old-school, slightly surreal humor has a dash of Barthelme or Perelman.”—Kirkus Reviews
"Imagine Don Quixote as told by Sancho Panza and set in the Kingdom of Disney, or Gatsby's story recounted from a barstool into a cracked mirror. Ponder is wonderfully weird, and also poignantly funny."—Harvey Sawikin, author of Rick Green, Esquire
"A hilarious, delightful, unforgettable joyride."—William Cooper, Newsweek opinion contributor and coauthor of A Quiet Life
A darkly comic tale of love and loss in Walt Disney World at the turn of the millennium
Murray “Cheese” Marks and John Apple, his slimmer, richer, more single friend, have chosen the happiest place on Earth for their annual boys’ trip. Disney World may seem like a strange choice for two grown men on a glorified binge-drinking trip; it is. But Cheese has never been, and his wife allows him this expense-free trip.
The Magic Kingdom was the last place John saw his parents before they died in a plane crash. John Apple was twelve then and wanted to return before he turned thirty.
Cheese and John’s buddy-comedy turns into a love-triangle drama when they meet a beautiful, free-spirited southern Belle named Virginia. John and Cheese quickly fall in love—but Virginia’s parents inexplicably push her not toward the handsome, single millionaire, but toward Cheese. And Cheese can’t help but encourage it—at least until his wife and John’s ex descend on Florida.
Ponder showcases a sardonic style that Kirkus praised as “old-school, slightly surreal humor [that] has a dash of Barthelme or Perelman.”
Daniel Roberts’s debut novel Bar Maid was a USA Today bestseller. Prior to becoming an author, he wrote plays: Haunted House which The New York Times called “sparklingly original with characters that stick”; and Brando, of which Time Out New York wrote, “An impressive piece of writing recalling Edward Albee or John Guare.” Vocationally, Roberts works as a private investor and venture capitalist in New York City, where he lives with young daughter.
"My grandfather, IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, Jr. was generationally if not vocationally linked to Walter Elias Disney. I have no doubt that these two titans would become absorbed in Daniel Roberts's wonderfully irreverent take on the world's most popular vacation spot!"
—Ralph Watson McElvenny, author of the New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice biography, The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived
TO THE KENNELS by Hye-young Pyun
A 192-page Arcade Publishing collection. Out October 22nd, 2024 ISBN: 9781956763669
Translation by Sora Kim-Russell and Heinz Insu Fenkl
A Booklist *Starred* Review
“Pyun resonantly captures the universal, ubiquitous malais of aloneness.”—Booklist
"Pyun turns the subtle anxiety hidden in the daily lives of ordinary people into an eerie but fascinating nightmare. Dark, poisonous stories make you doubt what you know about yourself and the world. . . . Spellbinding collection filled with sharp-edged observations, skillful narration, and deep insights."—JM Lee, international bestselling author of Broken Summer and The Investigation
Six elephants bolt from an amusement park and vanish; where they’re found brings back memories of a forgotten dictator. A car ride on a foggy highway at night becomes a drive through hell for a young couple getting away for the weekend together. A family lives the dream of moving from the city to a brand-new bedroom town in the country, only to be plagued by debt and fears of eviction, while the sound of incessant barking rings from the kennels nearby. In a city built on the site of ancient tombs, a homeowner’s renovation of a broken wall leads to an outcome no one expected. Older workers hired to play characters from a folk tale and wear smiles no one believes. An accountant asked to cook the books for his boss. A would-be writer disappointed in her students and her choices.
These are some of the premises and characters in Hye-young Pyun’s To the Kennels, winner of one of Korea’s most prestigious literary awards. Infused with psychological acuity, understated suspense, a touch of the uncanny, and her Kafkaesque take on the contemporary world, To the Kennels offers a thrilling, unsettling ride through territory that is both familiar and strange. As Un-su Kim, author of The Plotters has observed, she “reveals to us the cellular division of emotions we’ve never seen before.”
Hye-young Pyun was born in 1972 in Seoul and earned her undergraduate degree in creative writing and graduate degree in Korean literature from Hanyang University. Her published works include the short story collections Aoi Garden, To the Kennels, Evening Courtship, and Night Passes; and the novels City of Ash and Red, They Went to the Western Forest, The Law of Lines, The Hole, and Let the Dead. She has received many awards in Korea, including the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, the Yi Hyo-Seok Literature Prize, the Today's Young Writer Award, the Dong-in Literary Award, the Yi Sang Literary Award, and the Contemporary Literature (Hyundai Munhak) Award. Her novel The Hole was the 2017 winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and City of Ash and Red was an NPR Great Read. In 2019, she was awarded the Kim Yujeong Literary Award for her short story "Hotel Window." Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Words Without Borders. She currently teaches creative writing at Myongji University and lives in Seoul, Korea.
Sora Kim-Russell's translations include, besides The Hole, City of Ash and Red, The Law of Lines, and The Owl Cries by Hye-young Pyun, Un-su Kim's The Plotters; Hwang Sok-yong's At Dusk, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize; and Suah Bae's Nowhere to be Found. Her full list of publications can be found at sorakimrussell.com. She lives in Seoul, Korea.
Heinz Insu Fenkl’s first novel, Memories of My Ghost Brother, was a Barnes and Noble “Great New Writer” selection and a PEN/Hemingway finalist. He has served on the editorial board of AZALEA: the Journal of Korean Literature & Culture and is a consulting editor for Words Without Borders. His translation of Kim Man-jung’s seventeenth-century Buddhist novel, The Nine Cloud Dream, was published by Penguin Classics and his most recent novel, Skull Water, is one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023. He lives in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City.
"It's impossible to put down To the Kennels. So unique to Pyun, these stories are frightening, intriguing, and chilling to the bone all at the same time, and you won't get the likes of them from anyone else in the world. And I promise you, these penetrating stories will broaden the horizon of your world."
—Kyung-sook Shin, author of Please Look After Mom and Violets
“Arcade is a storied literary imprint (its original publisher discovered Samuel Beckett) that mirrors and embodies Tony Lyons’s fierce, lifelong commitment to writers and their art. After thirty-five years and fourteen novels, I have never been treated with more care, respect, and devotion, and have never, hands-down, had such beautiful books created from my work than with Arcade . . . Long may Arcade (and Tony Lyons) live!”
—BRUCE WAGNER