The following is a synopsis of my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. Watch for excerpts over the coming months. Housebreaking the Muse Housebreaking the Muse traces the unlikely intersection of Ray Burke, recent MA in comparative literature from a large university in Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania; Jacques Rigaut, the French dadaist, poet, gigolo, drug…
Crusade 77
(spam poem by Edward Desautels) we spoke a barbarian tongue on the stage where swarms confined us in silks and reckless cloth of gold the world gazed and applauded engaged in pitiful longing for the cross and compass for the reckless men like poison we believed in all that was necessary in the seriousness of…
Manifesto: Maximalist Expressionism, or “Shut/-/Up(!) Fiction”
Several years ago, some fictioneer colleagues and I considered the idea of founding a small press. When asked what, precisely, we intended to publish, I answered, “Maximalist-Expressionist fiction,” a term both satisfactorily accurate and sensibly vague. Almost simultaneously a colleague responded, “Shut up fiction.” Much more to the point, wouldn’t you say? Especially when written…
Joe Strummer Along the Westway to Heaven
This is an another experiment in film, music, and short fiction I prepared in advance of a reading I gave at the University of Maine in 2007. It blends clips and stills of Joe Strummer and The Clash, and excerpts from my short bio fic piece, “Joe Strummer Along the Westway to Heaven.” The drawing…
The Decline of Labor
(spam poem by Edward Desautels) we'd saved our lives more than once by degrees we came to understand arithmetical problems and the drawn white faces crawling on hands and knees sentenced and banished like Vallandigham we groped about to please our counsel "we want to make a very careful choice" "we want to comment upon…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 