Illustrated Three-Line Novels: Felix Feneon

Felix Feneon – anarchist, art maven, literary instigator – edited Rimbaud's Illuminations and was the first to publish James Joyce in French. He was also the author of 1,220 faits-divers that appeared over the course of 1906 in the Paris newspaper Le Matin. As stand-alone pieces, these concise, and often bizarre, three-line reports of death, naval exercises gone awry, petty theft and labor disputes are enigmatic fragments, but when viewed as a whole they form a mosaic of the era in France. 

The New York Review of Books published Luc Sante's English translation of these items as Novels in Three Lines, inspiring artist Joanna Neborsky to create illustrations and collages that vivify a selection of the trenchant vignettes.