Arthur Cravan (born 1887 in Lausanne), a con artist, hotel thief, nephew of Oscar Wilde, and prizefighter, was a well-known drifter and publisher of a subculture magazine (Maintenant) in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, distributing it from a vegetable cart. His combative texts mocked the established art salons and provoked the stifling world of the Parisian literary scene. In the few texts gathered here, he found his own loud-mouthed, naive, yet tender language. At the start of World War I, he deserted and initially went to Portugal and Spain, where he lost a legendary boxing match against champion Jack Johnson by knockout in the sixth round. His exile took him further to New York and Canada, before the trail of the 31-year-old vanished in 1918 in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico. Arthur Cravan is the prot.