Which Books?

The members of La Belle Inutile Éditions live in places very far apart from each other. J.K. Bogartte and Richard Misiano-Genovese live in the USA, Pierre Petiot, Jean-Pierre Depétris and Francine Laugier live in France and Evi Möchel lives in Austria. We very rarely or most often never physically met. We are therefore totally autonomous and independent and everyone publishes what they want. No one ensures that our books comply with any editorial line whatsoever. Our common reference to Surrealism takes the place of this and is sufficient to ensure the consistency of what we publish.

Moreover, if writing a book has never been easy, building and publishing it is not easy either. It requires some technical skills that are rarely found in authors who publish according to traditional patterns. In addition, it must be considered that it is an effort, a work that is not without the difficulties, the imponderables and the slowness associated with any work. We therefore sometimes happen to publish some of our friends who are not technically able to carry out this work by themselves.

Over time, the need for collective publications appeared, first with the Loup-Garou magazine, then with Lithaire. Both without defined periodicity, neither envisaged nor even desired, each issue appearing only when a content worthy of interest had finally been able to be collected. Moreover, surrealist activity has always been collective, and as we sometimes proposed to our friends some ideas for joint work or games, in some cases, it seemed interesting to publish the results as a book.

Finally, La Belle Inutile Éditions is not the only surrealist collective active in the field of publishing via print on demand and we sometimes consider that what our friends publish is at least as important, if not more, than what we publish ourselves, not to mention that quite often we participated in what our friends publish. This is the reason why the list of our books contains references to some of the work published by others, either collectively as Hydrolith 1 and Hydrolith 2 published by Oyster Moon Press, or more individually as is the case with Invisible Heads by Thom Burns and Allan Graubard. It doesn't necessarily mean that we always agree with what they write or what they do, but it is a way of paying homage to their work and giving them some publicity.