Jacques Rigaut's Happiest Birthday: A Dada Bedtime Story In my August 12 post, I talked about how I stumbled across the figure of the French dadaist, gigolo, addict, and suicide, Jacques Rigaut and presented an excerpt from his appearance in my novel (in progress) Housebreaking the Muse. Some years ago, having "discovered" Rigaut, I worked…
The novelist Paul West has had the greatest influence on my development as a writer. I first had the great fortune of encountering this member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Prix Médicis and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, Literary Lion of the New York Public Library system, and…
Repost Update: Hard to believe I wrote this piece of (I guess you could call it) flash fiction in 2009. Considering we've managed to blast forward another five years, I thought I'd mark the 45 years since that odd pow wow in upstate New York and give the post another ride at the top of…
The following is excerpted from Manifesto: Maximalist Expressionism, or "Shut/-/Up(!) Fiction". I find it hard to believe there are those who counsel aspiring writers to hold as suspect that which amazes or delights in its writing. And while, to be sure, a knee-jerk exultation in every word slapped on the page will most likely spell…
(spam poem by Edward Desautels) prisoners at any expense and nothing on earth to be done she was the cause of our belonging our town cried the bitterest stream leaned back in its chair and saw that I was looking looking at its cleanliness and order, still the placid face across the stream the tumbled…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 