The Celestial Bandit: Tribute to Isidore Ducasse, the Comte de Lautréamont edited by Jordan A. Rothacker
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Featuring work by authors and artists including:
Mark Amerika, Louis Armand, Ben Arzate, duncan b. barlow, Tosh Berman, R.J. Dent, Douglas Doornbos, Seb Doubinsky, Steve Finbow, Chris Kelso, Faisal Khan, Dylan Krieger, Callum Leckie, Chris Lloyd, Alexis Lykiard, Jennifer Macbain-Stephens, Christopher Nelms, Golnoosh Nour, David Leo Rice, Jeremy Reed, John Reed, James Reich, & Audrey Szasz
Mark Amerika, Louis Armand, Ben Arzate, duncan b. barlow, Tosh Berman, R.J. Dent, Douglas Doornbos, Seb Doubinsky, Steve Finbow, Chris Kelso, Faisal Khan, Dylan Krieger, Callum Leckie, Chris Lloyd, Alexis Lykiard, Jennifer Macbain-Stephens, Christopher Nelms, Golnoosh Nour, David Leo Rice, Jeremy Reed, John Reed, James Reich, & Audrey Szasz
Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870), better known by his pen name Comte de Lautréamont, is the most influential writer most people have never heard of. Maldoror, the first of his two works, has been described as the most evil book ever written. It has also been described as the funniest. Either way, it provides some of the most gorgeous, twisty, weird sentences in any language.
An inspiration to the Surrealists, post-colonial Caribbean writers, and the Situationists to name a few, Lautréamont still garners a following today. In The Celestial Bandit, editor Jordan A. Rothacker brings together twenty-four contemporary artists from music, visual arts, and the writing world to pay tribute to this unique and exciting influence. Poetry, essays, short stories, experimental texts, and a dictionary of disruptive neologisms, this anthology has it all.
All profits from the sales of The Celestial Bandit will be donated to Surfrider Foundation for their efforts to protect our oceans that Ducasse loved so much.
“I have used google map to pinpoint the part of my brain which savored the bitter taste of Isidore Ducasse’s rich, blood-dipped words, and the ensuing craniotomy was to enable the transplant of uniformly rapturous The Celestial Bandit in that exact cortexul cerebral location not only because I wanted the acetylcholine to traffic Bandit’s retributive ardor—openly attentive to the Anglo-American taste and literary air et esprit du temps—but also since this tactfully coherent compilation of assorted creative readings of Les Chants de Maldoror--and Ducasse—in a true Deleuzian sense, is buggery of what, Comte de Lautréamont himself called, an immense celestial anus. I congratulate Jordan A. Rothacker and a wealth of writers on this joyful, riotous discharge.”
—Ebadur Rahman, writer
“Just the other night he asked me to stroll with him along the river bank during the crepuscular hours [with] alligators,” writes duncan b. barlow, and, reading The Celestial Bandit, I was along for that walk into the shadows of literary experimentation. If you’re coming to this collection as I am, unfamiliar with the Comte de Lautrémont, expect a run through the most deliciously depraved gauntlet. Entries in this Lautrémont lexicon range from macabre metafiction to perverse poetry to surreal sketches to ribald reflections on plagiarism, attribution, and the pains and pleasures of translation by writers including Dylan Krieger, Louis Armand, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, and James Reich. Read it now; read it again during Shark Week; and be assured that, if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll say, to quote Douglas Doornbos, “the scandal was my own enjoyment.”
—Jessie Janeshek, author of MADCAP and Channel U
“Le Comte de Lautréamont inhabits a strange orbit, colliding with the present and revealing all as warped in its image (and more true through this merging). Sinister, lyrical, and fractured, I am constantly surprised (not really) to find Ducasse's influence lurking behind some of my favourite cultural touch points, artists, and writers (Mike Kelley, Hans Bellmer, Georges Bataille). Rothacker has done an inspired job in bringing a new generation of voices together in honour of Ducasse’s 175th birthday.”
—Jared Pappas-Kelley, author of Solvent Form: Art and Destruction
ISBN: 978-1-7343065-5-2
PRESS
- Review in StatoRec
- Review in Heavy Feather Review
An inspiration to the Surrealists, post-colonial Caribbean writers, and the Situationists to name a few, Lautréamont still garners a following today. In The Celestial Bandit, editor Jordan A. Rothacker brings together twenty-four contemporary artists from music, visual arts, and the writing world to pay tribute to this unique and exciting influence. Poetry, essays, short stories, experimental texts, and a dictionary of disruptive neologisms, this anthology has it all.
All profits from the sales of The Celestial Bandit will be donated to Surfrider Foundation for their efforts to protect our oceans that Ducasse loved so much.
“I have used google map to pinpoint the part of my brain which savored the bitter taste of Isidore Ducasse’s rich, blood-dipped words, and the ensuing craniotomy was to enable the transplant of uniformly rapturous The Celestial Bandit in that exact cortexul cerebral location not only because I wanted the acetylcholine to traffic Bandit’s retributive ardor—openly attentive to the Anglo-American taste and literary air et esprit du temps—but also since this tactfully coherent compilation of assorted creative readings of Les Chants de Maldoror--and Ducasse—in a true Deleuzian sense, is buggery of what, Comte de Lautréamont himself called, an immense celestial anus. I congratulate Jordan A. Rothacker and a wealth of writers on this joyful, riotous discharge.”
—Ebadur Rahman, writer
“Just the other night he asked me to stroll with him along the river bank during the crepuscular hours [with] alligators,” writes duncan b. barlow, and, reading The Celestial Bandit, I was along for that walk into the shadows of literary experimentation. If you’re coming to this collection as I am, unfamiliar with the Comte de Lautrémont, expect a run through the most deliciously depraved gauntlet. Entries in this Lautrémont lexicon range from macabre metafiction to perverse poetry to surreal sketches to ribald reflections on plagiarism, attribution, and the pains and pleasures of translation by writers including Dylan Krieger, Louis Armand, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, and James Reich. Read it now; read it again during Shark Week; and be assured that, if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll say, to quote Douglas Doornbos, “the scandal was my own enjoyment.”
—Jessie Janeshek, author of MADCAP and Channel U
“Le Comte de Lautréamont inhabits a strange orbit, colliding with the present and revealing all as warped in its image (and more true through this merging). Sinister, lyrical, and fractured, I am constantly surprised (not really) to find Ducasse's influence lurking behind some of my favourite cultural touch points, artists, and writers (Mike Kelley, Hans Bellmer, Georges Bataille). Rothacker has done an inspired job in bringing a new generation of voices together in honour of Ducasse’s 175th birthday.”
—Jared Pappas-Kelley, author of Solvent Form: Art and Destruction
ISBN: 978-1-7343065-5-2
PRESS
- Review in StatoRec
- Review in Heavy Feather Review