People like strange things; and publishers in the ’50s and ’60s were happy to provide an apparently endless string of strange paperbacks.  Some of the following are reprints from Fate magazine; some are from Ace Books’ “Strange Facts” series.  Many seem to have had the same cover design (please click for enlargements).  For less than […]

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Step inside.

Some friends who, like me, frequent that bane of productivity, Facebook, alerted me to a piece recently published in the New York Times, about the short-lived Greenwich Village Bookshop and its very special door.
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas has created a wonderful website for this relic, so that […]

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Raymond Roussel does seem like the kind of writer who would write acrostics.  His works are steeped in wordplay.  The procédé is based on homonyms; “Parmi les noirs” throws in a rebus and a cryptogram; there’s a sonnet with a hidden message in La Poussière de Soleils; and so on.  Acrostics seem inevitable.

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Unfortunately, Jules Verne’s nephew, Gaston, was mentally ill.  In 1866, Gaston tried to murder Verne, leaving his uncle lame for life.  While recuperating, Verne wrote a sonnet in praise of morphine.  I don’t blame him.
A LA MORPHINE
 Prends, s’il le faut, docteur, les ailes de Mercure
Pour m’apporter plus tôt ton baume précieux!
Le moment est venu de […]

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“To be popular, one must show interest in persons and things that do not interest one and simultaneously conceal the interest that one has in persons and things that do interest one.  One must always side with the prejudices and emotions of the person one happens to be with, however idiotic…
“One must be humorous but […]

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Admirers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau may be unaware of his musical interests.  He wrote a great deal of music, compiled a musical dictionary, and paid bills by copying music.  The dictionary is a neglected treasure, as passionate and eccentric as anything else he wrote; the entry for “copyist” fills 13 pages (at least in the 1839 […]

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On April 1, 1897, the remarkable French humorist Alphonse Allais published his Album primo-avrilesque.  It was a slim volume, containing seven monochromatic paintings (such as “Apoplectic cardinals picking tomatoes by the Red Sea”) and a silent funeral march (because the greatest sorrows are mute).  The march was the first silent piece, preceding similar works by […]

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(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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The “King James Version” of the Bible gives every indication of a garbled text.  Some words are omitted (for example, that curious hapax legomenon, επιουσιος, in the Pater Noster); some words seem to be approximations or guesswork (particularly the names of animals and musical instruments).  Much of it simply makes little sense.
We encounter similar problems […]

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In addition to his stories and his paintings, Shaver also regularly wrote poetry.  It was often published in a wonderfully unpredictable little magazine called Ray Palmer’s Forum, published by Shaver’s long-time editor, friend, and occasional adversary.
I believe this one, though, was unpublished.
(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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