British author D.F. Lewis (homepage) writes weird fiction informed by Lovecraft and William Burroughs. But he doesn’t necessarily claim it. I’ve never read him but I’m tempted. His book Weirdmonger certainly looks interesting. The webpage linked above claims “[i]ts contents (by DFL) push the durable tradition of Prose Literature towards previously unconsidered areas of fiction genre, acquired taste, vexed texture of text, humour, horror, fantasy, SF, eschatology/scatology, poetry and philosophy (and back again).”
Perhaps even more intriguing is his ongoing Nemonymous project. The premise is simple: put out a hybrid magazine/anthology in which all the stories are anonymous. The difference is that the authors are anonymous even to the EDITOR (DFL himself), sometimes even remaining so after publication. This does two things in my view: it lets the writing speak for itself and it allows non-horror/slipstream/sci-fi/fantasy authors publish weird stories in an avant-garde publication. By all accounts the volumes are handsome, well put together affairs, but they are DAMN hard to get hold of.
For cheaters and the idle curous, there is a wikipedia article that reveals the authors whose works appear in all four volumes. It also provides more info on the project in general.
From DFL’s website, six pointless claims:
(1) DFL wrote the world’s most separate short fictions published in the most separate independent print publications (none of which fictions, incidentally, should be read out of context with the others but rather as an entire highly moral accretion of fiction or novel-in-continuous-progress),
(2) he produced, in 2001, ‘Nemonymous’: the world’s very first self-contained multi-authored volume of anonymous fiction stories collected as such (the authors’ by-lines being revealed in the subsequent published volume),
(3) he was the very first editor to start considering (and later only to consider) anonymous story submissions for publication until and beyond final acceptance or rejection,
(4) he is the only writer who has ever attempted to post the whole of his back catalogue of fiction to a megazanthine network of freely available websites – a sixties-type ‘happening’ showing the writing he has done over the years,
(5) he published, in 2002, the world’s first blank short story in print (as far as it is known), and
(6) he coined these words and expressions: ‘zeroism, egnisomicon, egnisism’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1967), ‘whofage’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1973), ‘agra aska’ (1984), ‘weirdmonger’ (1988), use of ‘brainwright’ in modern times (1990), wordhunger (1999), ‘nemonymous, nemonymity, late-labelling, veils-&-piques’ (2001), ‘denemonise’ (2002), ‘megazanthus’, ‘weirdonymous’ , ‘chasing the noumenon’ (2003), ‘wordonymous’, ‘wordominous’, ‘the-ominous-imagination’ (2004), ‘a woven fire-wall of words’, ‘bespoke publication selling’, ‘nemoguity’, ‘vexed texture of text’ , ‘fictipathy’(2005)
Regarding claim #1, word is that DFL has over 1500 stories in print. Have I read him and not known it?
Nonsequitur Manifested:
I am intrigued by DFL. “Nonsequitur Manifested” deserved a post of its own, highlighting your clever intro.