Works
In 1835 he wrote two plays which were staged in Dijon. He paid for the staging; both were total commercial failures. During his years in Paris, he published books (with the text usually printed on one side of the paper only, in an enormously large font) which included poems, aphorisms, paradoxes, short prosaic pieces and maxims. He also published several short stories, usually parodies of the then fashionable frenetic (horror) style (in one of them, an unhappy man commits suicide by swallowing the glass eye of his mistress). All these books were self-published and ignored by readers.
Interest in his works started to appear after 1918. His reputation was partly rehabilitated by André Breton, who included some of Forneret's poems and aphorisms in his Anthology of Black Humor.
The Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret is named in his memory. Recent winners include Serge Joncour, Franz Bartelt and Tom Sharpe.
A collection of Forneret's work is to be published in 2007 under the title Écrits complets.
Read more about this topic: Xavier Forneret
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The family that perseveres in good works will surely have an abundance of blessings.”
—Chinese proverb.