"La vache qui rit" is one thing, "La vache qui chie" quite another. There are dozens of similar jottings, each one as invigorating as the one that went before. You'll want to spend the whole day savouring these tidbits, perhaps with a big batch of Miss Toklas's hashish fudge on hand, by way of a chaser.

"Spare me the Derrida doodads," I cried, hurling the thing across the very small room where this perusal was taking place. It smashed into the wall and bounced into the tub which, happily, was empty. I retrieved it, decided to persist, and I'm glad I did. Laporte's history is larded with gathered oddments, fascinating insights and wild conjectures, some of which will make Guy Fournier feel "une vraie Pollyanna" vis-à-vis the derided Lebanians.

Even more entertaining, and equally apropos, is Anthony Burgess's (Heinemann, 1963). This was the first of the four Enderby novels, and I read it almost 30 years ago. I'm pleased to report that, upon revisiting, it remains one of the funniest and most elegantly rude books I've ever digested. Digestion is key, of course, as the grease-fed Enderby -- this is England, 1963 -- sits astride the loo and scratches out the poems that sustain his minor reputation.

He's so tremulous and vulnerable and archaic a figure that you can't help adore him. Burgess, at the top of his satiric game, rendered Enderby's fears and pretensions and awful poems with great panache; likewise, the symphony of his bowels: pfffrrrummmp, perrrrp, querpkprrmp, and porripipoop are among the onomatopoeic inventions that appear in the first two pages. Transports, some of delight, are guaranteed.

I wish Guy Fournier luck in his new ventures and would like to assure him, and others, that these are but three of many books that might interest fecophiles. If they don't do the trick, try going to the website for abebooks.com. Enter "scatology" in the search field. "Do you mean eschatology?" it will ask. Don't be, as Gertrude Stein would say, cowed. Persist. You'll find there's a regular chocolate box of possibilities out there, just waiting for you to unwrap it and dig in.

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