October Update

I still continue with my rediscovery of the works by "Eddie" M. Angerhuber. I have just managed to obtain another collection of hers: In Asmodis Haus Romantische Spukgeschichten. This book was published in 1997 by Goblin Press in a limited number of 100 copies. After 20 years it has become almost completely unobtainable and the fact that none of its contents (7 stories and an afterword by Angerhuber) were ever (and may never be) reprinted, makes it a valuable collector's item. I am very glad that I was able to secure a copy. I continue reading her stories in German and, once I am ready, I will provide some material about her works on CL. This will include an article about Angerhuber and the reception of her artistic output both in Germany and the English-speaking world and will be followed by an extensive bibliography of her works. Both should be ready for publication on CL in the first quarter of 2017.

The Vexed Texture of Text - a conversation with the "poet fictioneer" D. F. Lewis

D. F. Lewis is a master storyteller, a unique voice in visionary literature with a distinctive and idiosyncratic prose style. His stories, rich in neologisms, sometimes seem to be written in another language, a language that imbues his writings with qualities that can only please readers with an acquired taste. Author of over 1,500 published stories, he is the winner of the British Fantasy Society Karl Edward Wagner Award. Apart from being a writer, he is also known as the editor of the magazine Nemonymous and as the creator of Gestalt Real-Time Reviews (published online as Des Lewis).

I first came across Lewis' works through Thomas Ligotti Online discussion board, one of the venues where he publishes his flash fiction pieces known as "thingies". From among many of his memorable coinages for words and expressions I am particularly fond of the term "ominous imagination", which I think is very close to "visionary literature" discussed on this blog.

Des has agreed to answer several questions, which I am honoured to publish on Confusio Linguarum. In a short conversation we have covered a number of subjects, some of which are in the scope of this blog's focus.

Classic Horror Stories - multiligual omnibus collection

I prepared the following 16 (!) volumes back in 2006-07. They collect over 2000 stories and a few novels and novellas -  all of them considered classics of the gothic/horror genre.

The Last Balcony by D. F. Lewis

Highly sophisticated and wonderfully nightmarish imagination, an expertly controlled and sardonic vision that reminds me as much of avant-gardists like William Burroughs as it does the best traditions of horror literature.

-- Thomas Ligotti on D. F. Lewis in DAGON DFL SPECIAL 

In 2011, together with S. D. Tullis I was invited by the award-winning avant-garde author D. F. Lewis to help him choose stories for his collection The Last Balcony.
This was a very difficult choice as Des' oeuvres span over 2000 stories, most of which have been posted online in the so-called Weirdmonger Wheel - a web of websites, blogs and discussion forum posts where the stories are scattered.

"Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies" by Tommaso Landolfi

Two quotes from "Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies" by Tommaso Landolfi, a story relevant to this blog:

“A language reconstructed on the basis of meager inscriptions does not acquire substance until one proves that, on the basis of those inscriptions, that language and only that language could be reconstructed. But in our case, on the basis of so fragile a collection of data, it might be possible to construct or reconstruct not one but a hundred languages. Thus one would be confronted by the amusing case of a piece of poetry which could have been written in any one of a hundred languages, each dissimilar from the others and from the first…”

The Collected Fiction of D. F. Lewis

I am pasting this from elsewhere, to have all of  the "self-publications" in one place:

I hereby present a series of books I created (for personal use) back in 2008-09 collecting the stories by D. F. Lewis that formed, at the time, 99% of the impenetrable Weirdmoger Wheel. Being an obsessive collector, I gave the series the title "The Collected Fiction of D. F. Lewis," which obviously doesn't mean "complete". And indeed, it is obvious, it will never be possible to publish a complete collection of fiction by the author. Even my series from 2008-09 spans 10 volumes out of the planned 13. I still hope to find time one day to complete the three missing ones. Regardless of when this will happen (if ever), I thought it's about time I posted pictures of this collection on the thread that started it all.

Meta-bibliomania

Meta-bibliomania - excessive fondness for acquiring and possessing books about bibliomania.

This is what I came up with while reading "Des bibliothèques pleines de fantômes" by Jacques Bonnet. I was certain I would be the first to coin this term, if it weren't for this essay by Jennie Hann:http://blogs.library.jhu.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/JHann-Grad-2012BookContest1.pdf

Hann provides an extensive list of titles about book collecting.To this list I would add the following classic on bibliomania:

Bibliomania; or Book Madness was first published in 1809 by the Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776 – 18 November 1847) who was an Anglican clergyman and founder of the Roxburghe Club. Written in the form of fictional dialogues from bibliophiles, it purports to outline a malady called bibliomania.

--wikipedia.org

The Collected Fiction of D. F. Lewis

I am currently editing and typesetting a new volume of stories and "thingies" by D. F. Lewis for my private collection. This volume will form Volume 8 of the planned 13 volumes of the Collected Fiction of D. F. Lewis that puts together the contents of the stories posted by the author on the labyrinthine Weirdmonger Wheel. I have managed to unearth this very CD-R, on which I have once (thank goodness) saved the end result of the previous volumes and thanks this I will be able to continue the series exactly where I left it off over 6 years ago.