Today is Jack Kerouac's birthday. Tomorrow is mine. Well whaddaya know about that? Jack was something of a gateway drug for me. Through Jack I graduated to more exotic literary thrills. Much more like him in my youth than now, I would have to say the biggest of the many, many, many differences between he…
Middle East Central Square – Excerpt from Housebreaking the Muse
The following is a draft excerpt from my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. Here my protagonist, Ray Burke, in the midst of an unsuccessful job hunt, obsessed by the esoteric project he's undertaken to translate the complete annotated works of Dadaist-suicide Jacques Rigaut, and overwhelmed by the voices of French Dadaists and Surrealists who…
Evocations: Ian Curtis
Ian Curtis would have been 58 years old today. This draft is part of a sidebar project on which I’m collaborating with artist Jeff Edmunds. The project is a collection of illustrated biofictional shorts we’re calling “Evocations” because they seek to evoke the spirit of their subjects. For those not among the cognoscenti, you can…
Totally Wired: Prepare Your Affadavits of Explanation
Roughly 10 years ago I was asked to contribute to an anthology of William Burroughs ... well, I'm not sure criticism is the correct word here, and I wonder about scholarship, at least in the sense of traditional, received notions of scholarship. What the hell was it? Perhaps I can best describe the anthology as…
Jacques Rigaut, November 4-5, 1929: Excerpt from Housebreaking the Muse
The following is a draft excerpt from my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. The novel is haunted by the character of Jacques Rigaut, the French dadaist, gigolo, drug addict, dandy, and suicide. This fragment is from one of a number of first-person passages that present Rigaut on the night of his suicide. Rigaut Failure…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 