Unknown Arts

by William Walsh

Unknown Arts, to use a Joycean coinage, is a thinkling. Walsh offers a series of critical appropriations—poems, stories, and a silent play—drawn from Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and more. “Enjombyourselves thurily!” “Art critic Thomas Hess found that the only worthwhile criticism of a work of art is another work of art. William Walsh must feel this too, because he does not merely document and rearrange Joyce’s work here—he makes, with Joyce’s materials, his own music. Each piece is a lovely read, and a reminder not of totemic, hallowed literature, but of how personal and playful the act of reading really is.” —Darcie Dennigan, Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse (Fordham University Press) “A mixup, an accumulation; William Walsh faithfully divines James Joyce and his multiflex bodies. Here is a man (two men, I mean, meant to mingle, both) once won of song and slave to rhythm; sum dumb, fully plumbed. Here is a truly prazeful recapitulation! Read.” —Ken Baumann, Solip (Tyrant Books)

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2012

About the author

William Walsh is the author of The Poems and The Poets (both from Erratum Press), Forty-five American Boys (Outpost19), ON TV, Unknown Arts, Ampersand, Mass., Pathologies, Questionstruck, Stephen King Stephen King (all from Keyhole Press), and Without Wax: A Documentary Novel (Casperian Books).

His work has appeared in Annalemma, Artifice, Quick Fiction,, New York Tyrant, Caketrain, Juked, LIT, Rosebud, Quarterly West, Crescent Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, as well as anthologies like The &NOW Anthology: Best of Innovative Writing, Dzanc's Best of the Web, and New Micro: Norton Anthology of Exceptionally Short Fiction.