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Novels in Three Lines (New York Review Books Classics)by Felix Feneon
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL
"Novels in Three Lines" collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906--true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Felix Feneon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Feneon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. "Novels in Three Lines" is his secret chef-d'oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol. Review:"'Prolific writer and cultural critic Sante (Low Life) has translated half a year's worth of concise news blurbs written in 1906 for a Paris newspaper by Fnon, writer, anarchist and promoter of artists like Seurat and Bonnard. These 'nouvelles' (literally 'novellas' or 'news') attest to the ongoing despair of the human condition, giving readers a relentless compendium of murder, suicide, accidental death (beware of train tracks), infanticide, beatings, stabbings, depression and, in a particularly French twist, endless mention of strikes and scabs. According to Sante, Fnon took an established form and made it his own through the precision and style of his writing; yet it's hard to define that style, because it seems so variable, often straightforward, at times cheekily irreverent, sometimes syntactically impossible to understand, although it's hard to know how much of that is the translation and how much the writer's native prose. That the news is still filled with stories like those related here attests to the constancy of human nature, in both private and public undertakings, as when Fnon notes: 'The fever, of military origin, that is raging in Rouillac, Charente, is getting worse and spreading. Preventative measures have been taken.' Illus.' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Synopsis:A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL True Stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life from the dawn of the twentieth century In 1906, Felix Feneon wrote 1,220 short items for a Paris newspaper. Collected and published in France after his death, Feneon's miniature masterpieces are here translated into English for the first time. From adultery, murder, revenge, and traffic accidents to tax collection, daily life in France a century ago was as unexpectedly comic and tragic as anywhere else. But only a cultural figure like Feneon--anarchist, editor, and art critic, champion of Seurat and French translator of Edgar Allan Poe and Jane Austen--could have transformed newspaper hack-work into a modernist mosaic that captures the particular details of a place and an age with such exquisite timing and humor. Novels in Three Lines not only anticipates literary ready-mades like Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project and Andy Warhol's a: a novel; it is a unique artifact from the golden age of the newspaper and a window into early 20th-century France on the cusp of modernity. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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