A new book from innovative publisher Mark Batty is "Three Line Novels," written by Felix Feneon, illustrated by Joanna Neborsky and translated by Luc Sante. Here's the back story, from the publisher's web site:
"Felix Feneon – anarchist, art maven, literary instigator – edited Rimbaud’s Illuminations and was the first to publish James Joyce in French. He was also the author of 1,220 faits-divers that appeared over the course of 1906 in the Paris newspaper Le Matin. As stand-alone pieces, these concise, and often bizarre, three-line reports of death, naval exercises gone awry, petty theft and labor disputes are enigmatic fragments, but when viewed as a whole they form a mosaic of the era in France.
The New York Review of Books published Luc Sante’s English translation of these items as Novels in Three Lines, inspiring artist Joanna Neborsky to create illustrations and collages that vivify a selection of the trenchant vignettes."
Here are a few samples:
"Nurse Elise Bachmann, whose day off was yesterday, put on a public display of insanity."
"A certain madwoman arrested downtown yesterday falsely claimed to be nurse Elise Bachmann. The latter is perfectly sane."
"If my candidate loses, I will kill myself," M. Bellavoine of Fresquenne, Seine-Inferieure, had declared. He killed himself."
A bizarre collection that will amuse anyone into black comedy--but also a great source of prompts for any writer. If these ideas don't stimulate your imagination, nothing will.
(Less strange but very useful and featuring lovely graphics is my book, "Creativity Now!", available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers. It also makes a great present...whose birthday is coming up?)
