JOHN COOPER.

John Cooper was a little boy, whose father and mother lived in a cottage on one side of a village green. He was his parents’ only child, so that he had no brothers nor sisters to play with. But he had a dog of which he was very fond, and he used sometimes to play with other children on the green. Tom Jones was one of the boys that played with John Cooper. One day he asked John Cooper to go for a long walk with him, instead of going to school. John at first would not consent, but at last he gave way and went with Tom, taking Carlo with him.

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There is a wonderful variety of short literary forms: limericks, quatrains, haiku, couplets, epigrams, anecdotes, jokes, riddles, parables, fables, proverbs, maxims, blackouts, slogans, and on and on. Some are simply passing thoughts; others pack as much meaning as possible into the smallest space. Here, we’ll trot out the one-word poem — to be specific, the […]

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As an addendum to our toast to La Seine, I offer this sketch of the grave of Raymond Roussel, which I did on one of my visits there (yes, I went more than once). Fittingly, the exterior is formal, the beauties hidden. Roussel was a chess buff. He therefore designed a mausoleum containing 32 compartments, […]

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We here at the Ullage Group are intrigued by the extremes of literature. For that reason, we’ll occasionally raise a toast to an exceptional example. In this series, those will be works that are unusually short or long. The long poem is an unpopular form these days. Long movies and TV serials do well. Novels […]

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(We conclude here a short story by Paul Vibert, translated by Doug Skinner.) I can repeat the celebrated procedure of the rats’ father, a prosthetic graft, and so join together two elephants, or two whales; then, when the graft has taken, all I need do is cut a small incision for communication; and as I […]

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(We present here the second part of a short story by Paul Vibert, translated by Doug Skinner. Please read the first part for your greater enjoyment.) Obviously, there can be no question of a spacious apartment, but simply a small lodging, warm and convenient. It could be relocated at will; and man would thus solve […]

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(We have a serial for you this week: a short story by Paul Vibert, carved into three portions, so you won’t get sick by eating it all at once. I know almost nothing about Vibert, except that he wrote stories in the 1890’s, often based on scientific fantasy. His curious tales can sometimes be found […]

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Several years ago, an unusual character was leaving packets of his outpourings around Manhattan. He was apparently never discovered by the Outsider Art establishment; so I did a slide show about him, which I showed in a number of places around New York. It was also picked up by a website called “Word,” which is […]

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Translation is the ullage of literature. It’s never too respectable, although many fine writers have done it. Baudelaire probably improved Poe. I regret that Tristan Tzara never finished his version of Marlowe’s Faustus. It is, alas, impossible: you just can’t move meaning from one tongue to another; lexical fields are loose fits, syntax won’t transpose. […]

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During a dark night — both literal and figurative — I came across this passage, which I now translate: “Those who say that life is no more than an assemblage of misfortunes must find life itself a misfortune. If it is, then death is a blessing. People do not write such things when they have […]

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