Félix FénéonKirja-arvosteluja

Will likely always be "currently reading" this book -- great to dip in and out of, and an inspiration to all writers.

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?

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.

The entries take on a certain sameness as the book progresses. They are, nonetheless, interesting and well-crafted. I was surprised at how frequently people were run over by trams, streetcars and early automobiles in 1906 France.

La formula Fénéon secondo il suo inventore: una riga per l'ambiente, una per la cronaca più o meno nera, una per l'epilogo a sorpresa. Leggere per credere.

Moving, funny, most modern.

Godibilissimo. Si legge volendo in mezz'ora, ma volendo ci si può mettere un pomeriggio, lasciando vagare la fantasia sulla base di tre righe che possono essere il nucleo di un intero romanzo.

A beautifully illustrated book with charming, mordant three-line epitaphs that taste of the dry wit of Edward Gorey. The illustrations are collage-style, much like Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python illustrations, with photos, ink, markers and possibly crayon. Unlike Gorey, these scenarios are not fictional. They were brief news items written in a French newspaper in 1906 by Felix Fénéon, a member of the literati and an anarchist.

Some of the dark tidbits made me giggle. Some were rather sad. They all captured an intriguing tone of turn-of-the-century France. Overall, it’s an evocative collection, but can they really be considered three line “novels?” True, Hemmingway wrote a six word “novel” that he claimed was his best work.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Pretty sharp, that. But in this case, I was left wanting a bit more after tearing through this $24.95 hardback in about half an hour. Enjoyed, yes. But probably better to borrow from the library.

I wish I could write sentences like this. He makes it seem so easy, boiling it all down to the essentials.

A collection of short little articles chronicling the absurd and comic and tragic events of 1904 France. The brevity and soul of a Maupassant, the journalist realism of Zola, in the length of a Tweet.

Fénéon was a brilliant French intellectual, an anarchist activist, a writer of considerable talent but no reputation to speak of, and a promoter of French painters, writers, and liberal thinkers. In 1906, Fénéon was employed by the French daily Le Matin. During that year, he wrote 1,220 fait-divers—"sundry events," short news items that occupied a very few newspaper columns. Fénéon's fait-divers were uniquely and cleverly written, coming to be known as "novels in three lines." This collection of all but 154 of his fait-divers is pure fun and a bit of literary genius.½

Non è esattamente un romanzo ma una collezione di circa 150 (degli oltre 1.500 originali) romanzi in tre righe. Un genere a sé, con qualche analogia con cose simili (più lunghe) di Guareschi. Inizio del '900. Una lezione di stile.

M. JB, een lezer uit Ronse, is in het kleine kamertje al lachend om het leven gekomen. De schuldige, wijlen M. Fénéon, blijft ongestraft.
Volledige bespreking via http://wraakvandedodo.blogspot.com/2009/08/felix-feneon-het-nieuws-in-drie-regel...

As the title says, all of human life is there. Faits divers from Le Matin, for instance, one taken at random from p. 32 "At the station in Macon, Mouroux had his legs severed by an engine. `Look at my feet on the tracks!' he cried, then fainted.

Digesting an entire story and reproducing it in three lines is an art form. To have had it your daily paper was a privilege denied to all of us. Feneon could make the most mundane news item into a fascinating gem. He could communicate angles with extraordinarily efficient use of words. He was the Al Hirschfeld of news. Like Hirschfeld, Feneon's news items are tinged with humor:

Brandy he thought. Actually it was carbolic acid.
Thus Philibert Faroux, of Noroy, Oise, outlived
his spree by a mere two hours.

If you read this book while imagining the nationwide roundup page in USA Today, you will mourn the death of creativity. Journalism today is so dry and careful, so politically correct, as to be completely disposable and avoidable. Try this item, one of series describing the ongoing battle to get crucifixes out of classrooms in 1906:

Two mayors in the Somme were determined
to restore to classroom walls the image
of divine torture. The prefect suspended
those mayors.

And let me leave you with one last gem that could also never appear in an American paper today:

The name of a man arrested in Blainville
as a spy: Tourdias. His age: 24. His
profession: traveling salesman of bandages
and medicine.

Truly a novel, an elevator pitch for a Hollywood thriller. Leaves you asking questions, like nothing in the papers today. And that's the whole point, isn't it? Leave them asking for more!