Why is it great? Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) was a clerk in the French War Office during World War I, a literary editor, art dealer, anarchist and journalist. While working for Le Matin in 1906, he wrote what came to be known as "Novels in Three Lines": brief notices of local news events—usually brawls, accidents, murders or suicides—that took up no more than three lines of newspaper print. A fairly typical example is: “On the bowling lawn a stroke leveled M. André, 75, of Levallois. While his ball was still rolling he was no more.” Fénéon’s three-liners are so great because they compress so much story into so little space. In relating Barcantier’s foiled suicide attempt, Fénéon depicts a vivid, detailed incident with just a few deft strokes and some artful syntax, suggesting a rich back story. Fénéon is Edward Gorey in prose: macabre, economical, darkly funny. His sentences are remarkable for at once being so workmanlike (they were written as filler to make the columns fit) and so accomplished at evoking haunting, unforgettable scenes.
“Barcantier, of Le Kremlin, who had jumped in the river, tried in vain to throttle, aided by his Great Dane, the meddler who was dragging him out.”
by James Geary
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