The Chats of Maldoror
Surrealist fiction, and forensic reports on the strange, the failed, and the formally deranged.
A new dispatch arrives every week, rotating through four files.
The Serial. Once a month, a chapter-length instalment of an original serial. Each one stands on its own; together they add up to something worse.
Case Files. Films and books examined as evidence: exhibits, chain of custody, findings. Auteur disasters, metafiction, Eastern European absurdists, deadpan dystopias.
Wellness Checks. Field reports from the self-help, productivity and optimization industries, filed with a straight face.
Build Log. Notes from the making of a novel: research, process, aesthetics. No spoilers.
Who’s examining
I’m Thaddeus Awotunde, a writer in Ontario, Canada. I spent more than a decade as a forensic media technician, worked as a digital imaging technician in Toronto film, and hold an MA in Creative and Critical Writing. I’m at work on a novel.
About the name
A corruption of Les Chants de Maldoror, Lautréamont’s 1869 book the surrealists treated as scripture. The songs became chats. The derangement stayed.
