Novels in Three Lines

Went to Wordsworths to see if "Novels in Three Lines" by Felix Feneon might have come in and was not disappointed.

Again and again Mme Couderc, of Saint-Ouen, was prevented from hanging herself from her window bolt. Exasperated, she fled across the fields.

It is a collection of faits-divers printed in Le Matin in 1906, written by notoriously laconic writer Felix Feneon and only preserved because his mistress collected them.

Amorous hatred caused Alice Gallois, of Vaujours, to throw acid in the face of her step-brother, and, accidentally, a passerby. She's all of 14.

Feneon was an anarchist. He was arrested after a bombing and detonators were found in his closet at his office in the Ministry of War. He claimed his father had found them in the street. Challenged on this in court he replied, "The examining magistrate asked me why I hadn't throw them out the window instead of taking them to the Ministry. So you see, it is possible to find detonators in the street." He was acquitted.

"May the will of Allah be done!" cried the Berber Igoucinem yesterday, at Bougie, before the guillotine.

(The name Igoucinem does not appear in Google.)

Translated, and with an introduction, by Luc Sante.

Vote for MMP

I'll be voting Yes in the Oct. 10 Ontario referendum on electoral reform.

Why? Let me think about that.

I suppose because I think we are ruled by alpha-dogs.

They win a majority with something less than %50 of the vote -- maybe as little as 37% as in the 1990 provincial election --

They win a landslide on such a slender basis.

And they think:

'Man, we're good! We can do anything we want!'

(And sometimes they do.)

Or, they don't get a majority. They get a minority with 36% of the vote, say, as in the 2006 federal election. And they think:

'We were that close!'

And then they govern for the next year or two as if they are playing a slot machine. Just the right shove might hit the jackpot.

I'm in favour of MMP because it will make a majority government very hard to attain, given the political ecosystem that tends to obtain in Canada.

I want the alpha-dogs to get into parliament and think:

'Crap! We're going to have to deal with those assholes across the aisle -- forever!'

I want the alpha-dogs to realize they are pulling the sled, not leading it.

(This will sound to some people like sadism. I freely confess it.)