Cultural Writing. Essays. Menard Press is proud to publish two fine and contrasting essays by this singular figure and one of the most significant British poets ..".to be found on that important frontier between mainstream and the experimental, flinging out messages in bottles into a sea of unknowing"--Anthony Rudlof. The poet, novelist and critic Alan Wall supplies an introduction at once both critique and homage.

In The Anti-Basilisk Christopher Middleton, in the spirit that impelled Shelley to write The Masque of Anarchy, reveals as crooked the apparently straight and sees what's coming round corners with a clarity that dazzles. Bruno Schulz in 1937 made an observation that might stand as epigraph to this collection: 'Thrones wilt when they are not fed with blood, their vitality grows with the mass of wrongs committed, with life-denials, with the crushing of all that is perpetually different and that has been ousted by them.' Certain dilemmas in such a prospect are implicit in the shady figures of 'Saul Pinkard' and 'Doctor Dark'. The Basilisk of the title is a sort of monster, all ego, atavistic and implacable. The poems fall into five sections, the first and fourth twenty-poem panoramas, the fifth a gathering of translations.

A beautiful and elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art reproductions, Looking at Pictures presents a little-known side of the eccentric Swiss genius: his great writings on art. His essays consider Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau, Fragonard, Brueghel and his own brother Karl and also discuss general topics such as the character of the artist and of the dilettante as well as the differences between painters and poets. Every piece is marked by Walser's unique eye, his delicate sensitivity, and his very particular sensibilities-and all are touched by his magic screwball wit.

The Swiss writer Robert Walser is one of the quiet geniuses of twentieth-century literature. Largely self-taught and altogether indifferent to worldly success, Walser wrote a range of short stories, essays, as well as four novels, of which "Jakob von Gunten" is widely recognized as the finest. The book is a young man's inquisitive and irreverent account of life in what turns out to be the most uncanny of schools. It is the work of an outsider artist, a writer of uncompromising originality and disconcerting humor, whose beautiful sentences have the simplicity and strangeness of a painting by Henri Rousseau.

Serpentine: A mineral or rock consisting of a hydrous magnesium silicate, H4 M3 Si2 O9, and having usually a dull green color, often with a spotted or mottled appearance, resembling a serpent's skin. It occurs usually in masses, which are sometimes foliated, sometimes fibrous ... Presence of iron may give it a red or brownish hue. Precious, or noble, serpentine is translucent & of a rich oil-green color. Serpentine results from the alteration of other magnesian minerals, esp. chrysolite, amphibole, & pyroxene, and is frequently found in large masses ... -Webster's, 1914; from a note preserved in the author's papers Serpentine was first published in by Oasis Books, London, in 1985. It received little distribution and minimal notice at the time, somewhat to the author's distress, and the publisher's regret. It has never reappeared complete, although selections have appeared in subsequent compilations. A collection of experimental prose texts-although the author forbade such a definition from appearing anywhere in the first edition, presumably in case it frightened off potential readers-Christopher Middleton described it as being a series of texts "on the nature of evil".

The Swiss writer of whom Hermann Hesse famously declared, "If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place," Robert Walser (1878-1956) is only now finding an audience among English-speaking readers commensurate with his merits--if not with his self-image. After a wandering, precarious life during which he produced poems, essays, stories, and novels, Walser entered an insane asylum, saying, "I am not here to write, but to be mad." Many of the unpublished works he left were in fact written in an idiosyncratically abbreviated script that was for years dismissed as an impenetrable private cipher. Fourteen texts from these so-called pencil manuscripts are included in this volume--rich evidence that Walser's microscripts, rather than the work of incipient madness, were in actuality the product of desperate genius building a last reserve, and as such, a treasure in modern literature. With a brisk preface and a chronology of Walser's life and work, this collection of fifty translations of short prose pieces covers the middle to later years of the writer's oeuvre. It provides unparalleled insight into Walser's creative process, along with a unique opportunity to experience the unfolding of his rare and eccentric gift. His novels "The Robber" (Nebraska 2000) and "Jakob von Gunten" are also available in English translation.

Christopher Middleton, long a resident of the USA, is one of Britain's finest poets. He was writing (not for publication) his 'Nocturnal Journal' during the two years prior to his retirement from the University of Texas at Austin, where he had taught German and Comparative Literature since 1966. The journal appears here in conjunction with conversations tape-recorded by Marius Kociejowski in London during October 2002 and June 2003. In both areas Middleton attends eloquently to his concerns as poet, translator, and essayist: values intrinsic and peculiar to poetry, the fundamental human aptitude (and craving) for aesthetic expression, and the reading of sign-systems usually deemed haphazard (e.g., a Turkish sea-mew, a soccer match, the aprons of waiters, rubbish in the Paris Metro, and a fresco in Cappadocia). Also included here, by way of introduction to the volume, is a brief but entertaining reminiscence of his first encounters with Christopher Middleton by Marius Kociejowski.

When "The Quest for Christa T. "was first published in East Germany ten years ago, there was an immediate storm: bookshops in East Berlin were given instructions to sell it only to well-known customers professionally involved in literary matters; at the annual meeting of East German Writers Conference, Mrs Wolf's new book was condemmed. Yet the novel has nothing eplicity to do with politics.