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…
In my August 11 post I talked about how I learned of the French Dadaist, gigolo, addict, and suicide, Jacques Rigaut. I discussed how this inspired building a fiction around Rigaut, and included a translation from the posthumous collected works of Rigaut titled Écrits. Today, I offer an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Housebreaking the Muse,…
In an earlier post, I presented the synopsis of my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. As noted, the novel is haunted by the figure of Jacques Rigaut, the French Dadaist, gigolo, addict, and suicide. Though I'd long had an interest in the Dadas, I didn't hear the name "Jacques Rigaut" until I stumbled upon…
Before I knew what a mind map was, I was mind mapping. Using scrap paper and pen I worked out some of the more difficult lines of association comprising the worm hole structure of my novel Flicker in the Porthole Glass. The following artifact shows a mind mapping exercise I completed sometime in 1993 over…
Years ago I took my first writing course, an undergraduate intro fiction offering taught by a high-strung, tenured loon whose own aspirations as a playwright had burned out along with his ability to comport himself civilly in social situations. His over-the-top insistence on a kind of Victorian propriety, combined with his inability to suppress his…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 