Fantasia Impromptu & FINIS
by Benjamin DeCasseres
Edited by Kevin I. Slaughter
Cover art by Josh McAlear
Underworld Amusements, 2016
Baltimore, MD
246 pages, 6×9″

Paperback:
Amazon.com
Underworld Amusements (US)
ASP (UK/EUR)

Hardback (edition of 13):
Underworld Amusements

Fantasia Impromptu & FINIS constitute Benjamin DeCasseres’ (1873-1945) most private writing, but even then, they were intended for publication and posterity. The first is a diary-like collection of notes and reminiscences began in December 1925. The latter was professed to be “a summation of all my books, of my lifelong beliefs.”
Fantasia Impromptu was released as a series of booklets, six in total, that constitute his “intellectual, emotional and spiritual autobiography.” They are filled with ruminations on daily life, aphorisms, esotericisms, and appeals to future readers. It is appropriately dedicated to: “The Thinkers, Poets, Satirists, Individualists, Dare-Devils, Egoists, Satanists and Godolepts of Posterity.”
FINIS is his final work, appropriately enough, and consists of three essays and a “hymn”, all previously unpublished. The one focus of all of these pieces is Oblivion. Though he states in his introduction is was not necessarily meant to be his last work, he died before it was published, and his wife Bio prepared an introduction and included a poem of dedication. FINIS was released as a booklet the year of his death and has never been reprinted before.