Belgians, on both sides of the lingual divide, are great jokesters and hoaxsters. Fittingly, the founding figure of Francophone Belgian literature was the folkloric prankster Thyl Ulenspiegel, hero of Charles de Coster’s Quixotic epic, itself a willful attempt to synthesize national identity as recently as 1867. Half French, half Flemish (with a touch of Dutch and German); […]
(Sure, yeah… spoilers.) Few writers have a debut like Anne Richter’s — her first book published in 1954, at the age of 15, and translated into English three years later by no less than Alice B. Toklas, who praises in her preface: “Each story of this book shows sensitive observation, delicate choice in its recording, distinction in the […]
This game of echoes is common enough. An image, phrase, or paragraph strikes your fancy, sinks into the brain’s loam and lodges in the bedrock of your memory. Then another, years later, makes it gleam or ring out in the dark recesses, so you rush to dig through your books, looking for what it reminds […]
The yearning for a tenderness perhaps available only in another world, which informs many of Schneider’s other works, is not entirely absent from Histoires à mourir debout. More elliptical and less sanguinary, cloaked in an aura of wondrous mystery, the two novellas that begin the book involve young women whose desires find no mortal satisfaction. Anne-Dauphine, in […]
Lest it seem every figure I describe in these columns is “major,” “unjustly neglected,” or “not-to-be-missed,” allow me to briefly legitimate Marcel Schneider’s claim to fame in the pantheon of French fantastiqueurs. Among his fifty-odd books — including eighteen novels; eleven short story collections; biographies of Schubert and Wagner; studies of Rousseau, Nerval, and Hoffmann; four volumes of […]
(Happy Comic-Con, everyone! This week we’re back with an exciting new crowd pleaser of a series set to debut this fall from Britain’s Titan Comics. Enjoy!) They were born on the battlefields of the Great War, amidst the mustard gas and x‑ray weapons. Beyond good and evil, they took over the great European capitals. Pulp writers made […]
(Interrupting our erratic programming in honor of the impending Comic-Con, I’ll be taking a detour from the follow-up to my piece on Marcel Brion to discuss, this week and next, two comics — a graphic novel and a series — forthcoming this fall.) Ludovic Debeurme will be the first to tell you his work isn’t “fantastical,” and that he doesn’t like the […]
A music hall violinist is haunted by a Vivaldi sonata only he can play, which has the power to start fires and summon the devil. A man wanders into a painting of a Dutch trading port, where a trawler captain on his deathbed relives, even as his wife poisons him, the day he netted a rotting mermaid. Music from a glass organ […]
I seem to be working recently on a number of comics that won awards in France (which often, despite purportedly heightened visibility, signifies squat abroad). What can it mean? A syncing up of American and continental tastes when it comes to comics? A realization of the European riches out there and still to be brought over? Expect more […]
Tying in with my translation of Maurice Pons’ short story “Honeymoon” in the latest issue of The Coffin Factory (a terrific new magazine! Check it out!), I humbly offer this consideration of his 1973 novel Mademoiselle B. No real spoilers, especially for a book so light on plot, but passages are quoted at length. Maurice Pons’ Mademoiselle […]