Anarchist and aesthete, Félix Fénéon was a pivotal, if not unavoidable, figure in fin de siècle Paris. He promoted the careers of Seurat, Bonnard, and Toulouse-Lautrec; a regular at Mallarmé’s salon, he edited Rimbaud’s Illuminations and published the first public edition of Lautréamont’s Chants de Maldoror. Failure to publish a book of his own (at least during his lifetime) didn’t inhibit his reputation as an elegant stylist, though much of what he wrote appeared anonymously. Such was the case when, in 1906, he began producing three-line items for the Parisian daily Le Matin. The results of this six-month occupation have

As comic books and graphic novels achieve greater literary prominence, they require a critical context that encompasses not simply writing and art as separate entities but also the unique interaction between visual and textual elements. In Reading Comics, critic Douglas Wolk wants to provide just that: His aim is “to explore some of the ways it’s possible to read comics, and to figure out where their power comes from.” For Wolk, comics have won the battle for respectability, and he here develops a structured method for readers and critics to evaluate and analyze them.

An intertwined crash course in outsider music and cultural studies, Paul Hegarty’s dense new survey, Noise/Music: A History, traces noise music’s avant-garde and experimental roots—from Futurism, Fluxus, and musique concrète to 1970s progressive rock and punk—and examines its more recent incarnations. In his attempt to characterize “noise,” Hegarty (who, in addition to teaching philosophy and visual culture, plays in two noise outfits) admits that the concept doesn’t have a static definition; it can be designated only by context. Still, he asserts that the music “largely avoids song structure,” resists narrative, and is so jarring that it hinders thought. He also