Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen at Artforum:
The bulk of Fénéon’s art writing has never been translated. For anglophone audiences, he is probably better known for his “Novels in Three Lines,” a litany of more than one thousand mini-tragedies and absurdities published anonymously in 1906 during the half year he spent writing news items for Le Matin, an American-style mass-circulation newspaper founded by a disciple of William Randolph Hearst. These faits divers, of which Luc Sante published an acclaimed translation in 2007, make for reading that is melancholy but piquant. They include random reports such as “On the left shoulder of a newborn, whose corpse was found near the 22nd Artillery barracks, a tattoo: a cannon.” Or: “The sinister prowler seen by the mechanic Gicquel near Herblay train station has been identified: Jules Ménard, snail collector.”
more here.