-
Featured
From Book 3: Portrait of Antonin Artaud
This is based on research of course, but it’s eerie how much I guessed before it was confirmed by research. He was not what I expected, even after all these years. I discovered there was always more to learn about Antonin Artaud. Like me he experienced sudden vertigo, especially at high places but also… Read more
-
Featured
All Excerpts
-
From Book 3: The Seashell and the Clergyman
On the evening of the premiere of The Seashell and the Clergyman my skin was a riot of inflamed cysts again, and I elected to stay home with an analgesic and a warm towel on my face. It was just as well, for reportedly there was another public scandal. While the raging, lustful priest… Read more
-
Self-Publishing Update: In Revisions
Book one, Traitor Comet, is edited and book two, L’Etoile de Mer (The Starfish) is in revisions. I’m researching a publisher I’ve contacted before, because they were bought last year. I’m planning both print and digital copies for sale, for a lower price than most books. (As I’ve stated before, I have no profit motive… Read more
-
From Book 2: Dadesque Dating
“Do you remember when we took a month off and camped out along the Rhein?” I asked Franz suddenly. “That summer before the War. We walked from town to town, slept under the stars—” “I remember.” Franz laughed suddenly. “And you built that raft and tried to float out to the Mäuseturm. You didn’t… Read more
-
From Book 2: Baudelaire and Artaud
What a curious relationship the reader has with a writer, I thought one day as I sat in my office reading Charles Baudelaire. When a writer’s work was broken off as Baudelaire’s was due to his drinking and carousing, the reader resented what Baudelaire had not written, what he could have written. But what man,… Read more
-
From Book 2: Kraut!
I had a job. Catherine’s father had been eager to hire me. Working for D’Arcy was nothing complicated which was exactly what I wanted, and required only my presence at the hotel desk where I handed out keys and called people down to take telephone calls on the party line. Louis lived there now; tight… Read more
-
From Book 1: Benjamin Peret
There were voices outside and someone pounded on the door. Desnos answered it and let in a group of five people. Before any introductions could begin more people walked up, so he left the door open to the warm night air. Some of the people I recognized from earlier this evening, but most were… Read more
-
From Book 2: Kiki and Man Ray
An adolescent boy’s voice piped up somewhere in the restaurant, answering a woman’s warning tone. The voice sounded familiar, but I could not place it. I turned from the window but I only recognized Kiki standing at the counter. She did not speak, and she did not look at me. The air was tangled… Read more
-
From Book 2: But We’re Not Gay
Desnos surprised me by asking if my father-in-law could find him a job. “I heard you and Artaud talking earlier. Writing is a hard life,” he confided sadly over the hum of conversation. “And I don’t get on with the other reporters.” That surprised me, but as he told me about his columns being severely… Read more
-
I Had to Buy a 16mm Film…
Because it was being sold by a going-out-of-business film distribution center and it was the only copy of Coup de feu à l’aube (1932) I could get my hands on. I intend to get a projector and make a digital safety copy.
-
Self-Publishing
At this point, I’ve contacted enough inundated and busy publishers of alternative, “weird” and slipstream fiction that self-publishing this novel series is becoming a likely alternative for me. As I’ve said before, I am not interested in money or making a profit off the stories of Antonin Artaud and Robert Desnos. My main concern is… Read more
I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality. —Antonin Artaud
The Double 