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. It is also narrated, in part, by a reformed Père Ubu. In this fragment, Ubu introduces the setting for much of the…
Graffiti on the underpass wall implored us to do something awful to the Pope with planet-cracking nova bombs. I might have appended a Henny Youngmanesque “please,” because surely the author intended this muddy echo of the William Burroughs word hoard as a kind of one liner. Must I tell you Jean-Paul II blitzed the countryside…
In my novel (in progress), Housebreaking the Muse, a reformed, erudite, and chatty Père Ubu plays a central role and handles the lion's share of the narrative. The following excerpt is from the second chapter, in which Ubu introduces himself and explains his role. The entire chapter appears in the 2009 issue of Stolen Island…
In the following excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Housebreaking the Muse, the primary narrative entity, a reformed Père Ubu, introduces the protagonist, Ray Burke, a graduate of a large state university in Middle-of-Nowhere Pennsylvania whose grand aspiration is to land a position as "a functionary in a large private university." Ubu Burke wandered down Mass Ave.…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 