Cadenza

A pioneering work of autofiction, Ralph Cusack’s Cadenza tackles time and memory, life and death “with an Anglo-Irish arrogance worthy of Beckett.” (Gilbert Sorrentino)

‘It’s just like this: I don’t want to go home and I can’t stand Dublin nor any place between the two of them either or at all...’

After a harrowing trip to the dentist, Desmond, the narrator of Ralph Cusack’s Cadenza, boards a train, locks himself in cabin 304D, and decides to take up residence indefinitely. Between room service sandwiches and whiskey, he sifts through his faulty memories of childhood, family, friends, and past lovers.

Cusack’s fleet-footed prose carries us lightly from one vignette to the next, from gorgeous descriptions of Irish landscapes to hilarious character sketches and erotic incidents worthy of a screwball comedy. Interwoven temporalities fight for our attention in the second-ever title to be published by Dalkey Archive Press, written—as Gilbert Sorrentino says—“with an Anglo-Irish arrogance worthy of Beckett.” Dismissed as an autobiography when first published, Cadenza is a pioneering work of Irish autofiction. Toeing the line between what is real and imagined, memories and wish-fulfillments, Cusack's stream of consciousness prose begs to be followed to the very last page.

Ralph Cusack (1912-1965) was born in Dublin. As a young boy he studied under Evelyn Waugh. He trained as a painter and in 1943 he was a founder member of the committee of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. He settled in the south of France to grow flowers for the manufacture of perfume. Cadenza, originally published in 1958 and published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1984 was his first and only novel.

Brian Dillon is an Irish writer and critic based in London. His books include Ambivalence, Affinities, Suppose a Sentence, Essayism, and In the Dark Room.