Buster V. Dachy

The Crumpled Envelope, 2017




Buster V. Dachy pays homage to Poe, Gombrowicz, Godard, and Lacan’s destined ‘purloined letter’. This unusual novel follows the structure of a play, with acts and scenes, but it entertains a rather ambiguous relation to narrative. Although there is one (a detective story even), with beginning and end, it appears to be distributed between a number of characters and voices, which are not always clearly distinct. Yet, the characters are assigned in the ordinary way of a play: they have names, roles, titles, and functions. Undoubtedly the main male character is rather sophisticatedly grotesque and the lead female character rather elegantly contrived. Visitors sound like shadows, which leaves the stage to four museum guardians who are the true heroes of this melancholic comedy. It finishes as it started, with a categorical sense of insignificant necessity.

‘Language languishing irresistibly, / It’s time to be and not to be / That Shakespearean rag— /Most intelligent, very elegant. / It’s that old classical play / what Dachy makes today––’
–> Vanessa Place

‘Buster Dachy put his finger on the nail. And the hammer on top.
–>K. Kraus

‘This novel is nothing short of a remarkable proof of the difference between “vain substance” and “crucial insignificance”.’
–> G. Orwell

‘ At last the return of the possibility of refusal.’
–> L. Michel

‘I might not have understood everything but I agreed with it all.’
–> J. Joplin

‘This comedy brings dignity to those who know how to laugh.’
–>Juvenal

Buster V. Dachy is the nom de plume of Vincent Dachy, the spokesperson of VD collective (DIY art). He practices Lacanian psychoanalysis in London.


204 pages 160 mm x 110 mm Paperback ISBN 978-1-910055-35-9 £10.00



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