The Man Who Ate His House is now available from Black Scat Books and available on Amazon! For this curious little volume, Derek Pell and I selected plots from the cautionary writer’s manual 101 Plots Used and Abused (James N. Young, 1945), modified and combined them in various ways, and fed them to ChatGPT. The […]

[Read more →]

Corinne Taunay holds up her striking portrait of Alphonse Allais, from my translation of Let’s Not Hit Each Other.

[Read more →]

I never expected to write so many literary translations. They keep adding up, however. Here’s a list, arranged by author, of both books and shorter pieces, for anyone who’s curious. Albert-Birot, Pierre: “Four Poems” (Typo 2, 2023) Allais, Alphonse: Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks (Black Scat, 2013) Selected Plays (Black Scat, 2014) The […]

[Read more →]

TYPO 2 is now out and ready to be read! This sporadic periodical calls itself a “Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, and Constrained Design.” I contributed brief articles on alien alphabets and the principles of double talk, the score for my musical transcription of “lorem ipsum dolor,” and translations of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Albert-Birot, and […]

[Read more →]

Let’s Not Hit Each Other is now available from Black Scat Books! This collection by the incomparable Alphonse Allais includes a flying whale, an inflatable colonel, telepathic snails, a summer crime, the insularization of France, missionary parrots, an amphibious herring, twin cousins, and proposals for billboard dogs, deodorized urine, calming the sea with varnish, and crossing […]

[Read more →]

An alphabet that’s both categorical and musical. HORN Alphorn Bullhorn Car Horn Drinking Horn English Horn French Horn Greenhorn Horn Inkhorn Jawhorn Krummhorn Leghorn Matterhorn New Horn Old Horn Pronghorn Quadruple Horn Ramshorn Stinkhorn Tinhorn Überhorn Valve Horn Waldhorn Xanthohorn Yak Horn Zink

[Read more →]

Corinne Taunay’s chapbook Marcel Duchamp: Paris Air in New York, in my translation, is displayed in the window of Les Ateliers du Tayrac in Paris, on the occasion of her show of portraits of artists and writers. It’s small, but you can see it at the bottom of the left window, if you click on […]

[Read more →]

For the first issue of Typo, a stereoscopic word ladder.

[Read more →]

The apparently tireless Norman Conquest (aka Derek Pell) has started a new magazine. It’s called TYPO, which he describes as a “Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, and Constrained Design.” He and Farewell Debut are the editors, and I’m on the masthead for “Special Collections.” I contributed a stereoscopic word ladder, as well as brief articles […]

[Read more →]

In this brief video, Caroline Crépiat describes her book Le Chat Noir Exposed, which I had the honor of translating last year. Watch Caroline! Read her book!

[Read more →]