We just received a nice email from Rebecca Bynum, publisher of New English Review, informing us that on August 1st she will release a book of short stories by Dalrymple. The Proper Procedure and Other Stories is 168 pages of 10 stories. Amazon link here.
This will be Dalrymple’s second work of fiction, after So Little Done, the first-person manifesto of a serial killer. No doubt many of us who admire his work have hoped to see more fiction from him, so this is an exciting development. He has often mentioned his deep admiration of Anton Chekhov, perhaps the master of the short story genre, and it will be interesting to see him follow in the footsteps of one of his great writer-heroes.
Dalrymple is quoted in the announcement thusly: “Some truth can be told only in the form of fiction. That is why I chose to write these stories.”
Clinton, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
On a different topic, I was wondering whether you might be able to pass on an article that I read recently in the Financial Times (of London) to Theodore Dalrymple? I think you mentioned once that you were able to contact him by email. I’m pretty sure that he would be interested in reading it. This is a link to the article:
https://www.ft.com/content/be860e06-5743-11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f83d2
Thanks, Andrew
Thanks, Andrew. Another reader already sent this to us, and I forwarded it to Dalrymple yesterday. I was able to evade the paywall by googling the title, but that stopped working and he couldn’t view it. I may just sign up for a temporary FT subscription and copy it. Of course, you could also email the text to webmaster@skepticaldoctor.com, although that would technically be verboten (wink, wink).
I also think he’d love it. Steve and I both work in the corporate realm and hear these absurdities constantly. Reading it was an absolute joy, and I told Dalrymple that it’s a gold mine of absurdities.