Caroline Crépiat holds up my translation of her book Le Chat Noir Exposed, at an art show in Paris.

If you haven’t read it yet, this may remind you that you’ve been meaning to.

A quiet sonic glimmer for glockenspiel or vibraphone and piano, dodecaphonic but not exactly serial.

This sad little tale can be found in The Snowman Three Doors Down. The title did, in fact, come from a dream. The constraint (for there is a constraint) is that the text forms an acrostic of the title, and that each sentence contains the number of words corresponding to the initial letter’s place in the alphabet.

THE SOMETHINGIZATION OF SOMETHING

That curious phrase, “the somethingization of something,” which I had heard in a dream, continued to prey on my mind.
However I considered it, it still troubled me.
Everything about it was elusive.
Several weeks had passed since I dreamed it, and, try as I might, I could not remember the context.
Only those four words remained, the dream itself having long since evaporated from my memory.
My heart sank every time I contemplated it, and I contemplated it often.
Eventually I had had enough.
The only way to put my mind at ease was to make that maddeningly elusive phrase tangible in some way.
Having reached that conclusion, I set to work.
I sawed large letters from a plank of plywood.
Nothing could be more material than plywood letters, I thought, and nothing less nebulous.
Great big sturdy plywood letters!
In less than an hour, my work was done.
Zigzagging over the lawn, spelling the phrase, I reached a tree, which I climbed to survey my work, and then toppled from onto the fifteenth letter.
A.
That had to be the letter that broke my fall, of course: the one with the sharp point sticking up.
I had to admit that it was unequivocally tangible.
Of course, I would have preferred that it manifest substantiality in some less painful way.
Nevertheless, I staggered to my feet, extracted the bloodstained letter, and stanched my cut.
Once the bleeding stopped, I turned to examine the phrase, and tripped over an O.
Fortunately, Os are not sharp letters.
Sadly, however, my right leg became stuck in it, and I scraped myself badly when I pulled it off.
Onward I stumbled until, to my dismay, I tripped again, and fell over another O.
My left leg caught this time, and its extraction was no less painful.
Eventually, I surveyed my handiwork.
Then I pitched forward onto my face, as a sudden earthquake sent my phrase clattering down the hill in confusion.
Heartsick, I watched the palpable jumble into unintelligibility.
It was a disappointing end to my intended solution.
Nothing survived my engagement with the elusive, or my attempt at clarification, but gibberish.
Gibberish was not what I had wanted.

The upcoming issue of the Black Scat Review is devoted to “Lewd, Nude, and Rude.” I’m offering my translation of The Noble Apothecary, a 1664 novella by Jean Donneau de Visé. Donneau de Visé is remembered mostly for his polemics against Molière, but he also wrote plays, served as Louis XIV’s historian, and founded an influential literary magazine, Le Mercure galant. He also wrote L’Apoticaire de qualité, a bawdy tale of romance, jealousy, and enemas, which, as far as I know, has not been translated before. Here’s how it begins:

Since bloodletting and enemas contribute greatly to ladies’ health, and since ladies are convinced that such remedies lend brightness and freshness to their complexions, Araminte, although flawlessly beautiful, often used those innocent artifices, thinking thereby to preserve the charms of her lovely face.

One day when she was to receive an enema, her chambermaid informed her that it was ready, whereupon she lay on her bed, and assumed the best position for receiving the syringe that had been prepared for her, or rather, the remedy that she considered the preservative of all ladies’ complexions.

Araminte lying face down in this way, and unable to see what was happening in the room, awaited her enema with all the patience imaginable, having promised her beauty never to become angry, for fear of overheating, and thereby reddening her complexion, which she cherished above all earthly goods.

This beautiful woman was still waiting in that position, when her chambermaid remembered that she needed some linen, which obliged her to set the syringe on a chair, and to go look for what she required, in the room above.

Since she expected to be gone a short time, and thought she would find at once what she wanted, she left the door to her mistress’s room open. Timante, who often visited Araminte, arrived at that very moment, and finding the path clear, and being quite respectful, entered without a sound: but he had scarcely taken four steps into the room, when he saw her in the position I have just described. His surprise almost paralyzed him, and since he had entered without being heard, his respect for that incomparable ass prevented him from making a sound. He looked around to see if anyone were there, and after he had scrutinized every corner of the room, his growing amazement stopped him awhile from either advancing or retreating. But finally, seeing the syringe lying on a chair by the bed, he stepped forward, took it, and, noticing that it was full, decided to give Araminte her enema, which he did more ably than the most accomplished apothecary in Paris. […]

Here’s a list of the music I’ve written for keyboard. I haven’t added dates, since I’ve often reworked them.

Acronym 1 (Haydn)
Acronym 2 (Rameau)
Aftermath
An Afternoon in the Arboretum
Alibi
Amenities
Aretino in Solrésol
Aubade

Bach Had a Bad Headache
Bedbag
Bill Irwin’s “Marionette”

Chorales 1-6
Chuff
Clot
Cries of Vendors
Cryptogram 1 (Bach)

Dip
Dirgette
Dodecaphonophenakistoscope
Domicile Adoré

Fiction
Fixative
Flookem
Fort in Solrésol

Gilding the Pyrite
Guesstimate

The Hand Without the Fingers Is Just a Spoon
Hapax Legomenon
Honorificabilitudinitatibus

Ineffervescence
Infix
Introduction to “Laughter”
It All Went Pfft

Jag
Jumpy

Kerf

Life’s Little Sorrows
Lorem Ipsum Dolor
Lull

Maybe Those Hornets Would Like These Posies
Mazagran
Misapprehension
Mozart at the Cannery Works
The Muscatel Suite
Music for Organ 1-3
Music for Piano-Zither
Music From Dreams 1-6
The Music of the Spheres
My Head Cool-Bedded in the Flowery Grass

Nocturne

Oh
On a Theme by Lewis Carroll

Pangrams 1-5
The Party Next Door
The Passing Clouds Mock the Sky’s Stasis and Purity
Pay Attention
Pillow
Prelude

Quickstep

Radio Valentine
Rameau’s Nephew
Rousseau’s Three-note Tune

Sabbat
Scuttles of Petals
A Slot Machine for Wooden Nickels
Sore Spot
Spang
Spillover
The Squeamish Ossifrage
Stevenson at the Flageolet
Stumbling Block

This
This Honeycomb Matrix of Atoms Known as the Material World
Two Dances
Twinge

Ulterior Misgivings
Under the Weather
The Underground Mountain Concert in Norway

Waltz

Zolla di Zucchero

I’m happy to report that the Musée Alphonse Allais, in Honfleur, has acknowledged my latest translation with this charming image on their Instagram page. And thanks to Caroline Crépiat for passing along the news!

My new annotated translation of “Loves, Delights, and Organs,” by Alphonse Allais, is now available from Black Scat Books. Allais was a peerless humorist whose wild imagination, and fascination with technology and language, made him a favorite of Alfred Jarry, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Umberto Eco, and generations of writers. The Pataphysical College named him their “Patacessor,” and Oulipo recognized him as “an Anticipatory Plagiarist.”

As critic Jean-Marc Defays put it: “Allais comes across as a very modern writer, and his work as an experimental enterprise which is exemplary in many ways… it is also quite possible to invoke such writers as Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges.”

My translation faithfully hammers into English the 47 stories in the 1898 original, and adds six more from the same period. Hooray!

The 24th issue of Black Scat Review is now available! The theme of this one is “Funhouse.” In it, you can find my short story “The Potato Farm,” as well as delightful verbiage and artwork by Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, David Berger, Norman Conquest, R J Dent, Muriel Falak, Eckhard Gerdes, Richard Gessner, Alfred Jarry, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Mantis, Kate Meyer-Currey, Bob McNeil, Lillianne Milgrom, Lance Olsen, Paul Rosheim, Nile Southern, and Jim Yoakum. The editor is the tireless Norman Conquest, and you can pick up a copy on Amazon.