how Cuckoo's Progress came about
Cuckoo's Progress was written during the 60’s by Sture Dahlström. Unlike the Swedish author’s previous work, it was written in English rather than his native language Swedish. The novel was published in the USA in 1971 and in the UK the following year. The story of the publication is almost as spectacular as a Sture Dahlström novel and there is plenty written elsewhere about all the craziness surrounding the publication of Cuckoo’s Progress for those who are interested.
The two original issues were full of errors and the cover images were, should we say, less than carefully chosen… Sture was frustrated with most things about the publication and after dealing with court cases, new publishers asking him to alter the story completely and an interrupted film project with Sam Peckinpah, Sture Dahlström rewrote the story in Swedish to become Gökmannnen, Dahlström's perhaps best known work. Eventually it became a success and Dahlström continued to wrote his novels in Swedish for the rest of his life.
We are many Sture Dahlström fans who have been intrigued by Cuckoo's Progress and Dahlström’s way of telling stories in English, but unfortunately the few surviving copies of the original paperback editions are hard to come by and you can expect to pay hundreds of dollars, pounds or euros for a worn copy.
The story of this release begins just like that. A desire to experience Sture Dahlström’s storytelling in English. After years of searching for old copies and nagging publishers to publish Cuckoo's Progress, a copy turns up in an old standing antiquarian search online. 3,600 Swedish Kronor was the price... "Oh, I'll have to think about that over lunch," I thought. I quickly wrote and told Joakim, an acquaintance who is one of the country's biggest Sture Dahlström fans, about the find. He answered immediately. “Idiot. You can order hand-wound guitar pickups from some guy in Jönköping for thousands of kronor, but when Cuckoo's Progress finally shows up, you hesitate." His simple and clear message had the desired effect. I realized I'd been a complete idiot for hesitating and rushed back to my laptop to buy the book as soon as I got back from lunch.
Gone... I told Joakim that it had already been sold, who pointedly stated that I probably need to be faster the next time a copy appears.
After a few weeks, Joakim told me that it was he who had bought the book to teach me a lesson, and that I would of course be welcome to buy it from him. But before Joakim sent the book to me, we started discussing if we perhaps should try to get it published, so that everyone else who was curious about Cuckoo's Progress could read it without having to search for years for an old yellowed collector's items costing hundreds of dollars, pounds or euros.
Said and done. We contacted the copyright owners and got the go-ahead to release a small limited edition. When the production work was almost finished the following year, one of Sture Dahlström's family members told us that there was a copy Cuckoo’s Progress in the archive that Sture Dahlström had made corrections to, and that perhaps we should have a look at these notes before publishing our new edition.
During the search for the old copy in the Dahlström archive, a complete typewritten manuscript was discovered, corrected and revised by Sture Dahlström himself. The final English version of Cuckoo's Progress, a version that was never released. I froze when I heard about the find.
Without hesitation we dumped the version we had been working on and started over with the new material. The manuscript was laid out like a large book and we decided to keep Sture Dahlström's layout ideas, paragraph division, choice of punctuation and so on, but adapted to a standardized novel format.
Sture Dahlström himself wrote the following in what could be called his literary testament:
"Cuckoo's Progress" – Gökmannen
Can possibly be published in the Olympia Press edition, but if I have time I will try to assemble my own original.
Now we know he made it before he passed away and now Sture's corrected and revised version of Cuckoo's Progress was finally released in time for what would have been his 100th birthday on the 28th of December 2022.
We who have worked on the project hope that you readers will appreciate Cuckoo's Progress as much as we did during the work on the release. We have chosen to keep a low profile, because we are completely uninteresting in the context of Cuckoo’s Progress. The only people of interest in this project are Sture Dahlström, Xerxes Sonson Pickelhaupt, Leon, Nurse and the other charachters in the story.
Sincerely,
The publisher