British writer Kevin Jackson, who "was the author or editor of some 30 books which, in their bewildering variety of subjects and genres, mirrored their creator's capacious mind," died May 10 at age 66, the Telegraph reported. Jackson also collaborated in the production of TV documentaries, short films, comic books, surreal plays for radio and a rock opera. A poet and reviewer, he was a founding member of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics, an organization "inspired by the French symbolist playwright Alfred Jarry's 'science of imaginary solutions,' a philosophy of the absurd which sets out to solve problems that nobody had thought could possibly exist."
Jackson's books include Constellation of Genius, which was described by novelist Will Self as "that most counterintuitive of things, an insanely readable book about modernism"; The Language of Cinema; A Ruskin Alphabet; Invisible Forms; Humphrey Jennings; Moose; Bite: A Vampire Handbook; and Pavane for a Vampire Queen. In collaboration with illustrator Hunt Emerson, Jackson also produced comic books based on the writings of John Ruskin. He also wrote a children's story in verse, Greta and the Labrador (2019), an English version of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets (2015) and a cartoon strip for the Fortean Times about the lives of famous occultists. Constellation of Genius is available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.