Félix Fénéon (1861–1944)

Wonderful fun. Gallows humor, extremely dry. Arid. Feneon published these faits-divers in the newspaper Le Matin in 1906. 1,066 of the original 1,220 (Sante omits 154 of them for being too obscure ... though reading the ones that remain, I'd love to see the ones that were rejected ... what counts as "obscurity" with these?) mordant, often violent bits of French life are reprinted in this slim NYRB volume. Two nits: there's nothing regarding the images reproduced throughout (some are pages of newsprint but most seem to be woodcuts by -- I guess, given the initials 'FV' on them -- Felix Vallotton) and the repeating header on the right-hand pages reads "Novels in The Three Lines" ... where was your copy-editor, NYRB Classics?… (more)

Marvelous, weird, grim, blackly funny. Originally published in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906 as "Faits-divers," (literally, "diverse facts"), Feneon constructed these precursors to flash [non]fiction based on newswire and other provincial newspaper reports. Murder. Suicide. Rape. Domestic abuse - marital, adulterous, child sexual. Road accidents. Festival queens. Rabid dogs. Local politics. Disputes over crucifixes in classrooms. And who knew the French carried so many guns?! Each drama compressed into three lines of type, which managed to include the requisites of who, where, how, and why, and frequently a single word of dry comment. Read them as though they were haiku, in no particular order (only very rarely does a single event get more than one, though there are multiple thefts of telegraph cables mentioned).

Among my favorites: "In the vicinity of Noisy-sur-Ecole, M. Louis Delillieau, seventy, dropped dead of sunstroke. Quickly his dog Fido ate his head." and "Two mayors in the Somme were determined to restore to classroom walls the image of divine torture. The prefect suspended those mayors."

Feneon was an eccentric, writing and editing prolifically, the founder of important arts journals. But when offered the opportunity to publish a book, he announced "I aspire only to silence." The over a thousand "faits-divers" were printed anonymously, but his wife and his mistress carefully clipped and saved them. Luc Sante has captured their dry brevity with wit in translation, but I often found myself wanting to see them in the original French (what would the French idiom be for "fished out of the [name your choice of river here]," anyway? Sante's introduction is useful for understanding some of the allusions and social background of these tiny, lurid glimpses into French society of 1906. Fun for francophiles - and illustrated by several of Felix Vallotton's appropriately black and menacing woodcuts.… (more)