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Editors’ Note: On 25 April 2013, novelist Tom McCarthy announced the winner of the first annual White Review Short Story Prize Below is the short speech he gave that night *** I want to talk about the ‘re’ in White Re-view The magazine conferring tonight’s prize is, of course, a re-prise, a re-play, a re-enactment The original White Review, La Revue Blanche, ran from 1889 to 1903 It had several editors, but the most charismatic of these was one of my own heroes, Félix Fénéon   This gifted writer, who cut an elegant figure around turn-of-century Paris in a top hat, gloves, and perfectly manicured nails, served as midwife to the Post-Impressionist movement, writing about their work, and art in general, in a way as far removed from stolid art criticism as can possibly be imagined Here’s an entry from his Symbolist Directory:   Degas: a thigh, a flower, a chignon, ballerinas convoluted in the flurry of the tutu, a boozer’s nose, the hand of a milliner amidst a fluttering of feathers and ribbons The expression of Modernity   All Fénéon’s prose is characterised by the same elliptic quality Here’s the outline for his psychological novel The Muzzled Woman:   1st Part: Uh! 2nd Part: Two purplish butterflies alight on Jacqueline’s zygomatic muscle 3rd Part: Paul’s Sa’s bed 4th Part: The menacing eye of the lewd druggist   Did he actually write the novel? Of course not There’s no need when the outline, in-and-of itself, is such a masterpiece   Later, he penned a regular column at Le Figaro, which consisted entirely of another Fénéon-invention, the 3-line news haiku:   It was his turn at nine-pins when a cerebral haemorrhage felled M André, 75, of Levallois While his ball was rolling, he ceased to be   Oh, and Fénéon was a bomb-thrower Like Alfred Jarry, Anatole France, Camille Pisarro, Octave Mirbeau, and (to an extent) even Mallarmé, a fully signed-up member of the blossoming anarchist international, he once hid a bomb inside a potted hyacinth which he laid on the windowsill of a café frequented by diplomats, and, having lit the fuse with a touch of his long ivory cigarette holder, settled down to a glass of