EVER MOORE

Christopher Moore is a merry madman. To call the Bay Area novelist a comic author does not begin to address the richness of his outrageous and singular oeuvre.

Moore can take a sacred plot (literally, like the Gospels, in Lamb, or figuratively, like King Lear in Fool) and profane it with scatological knavery, gleeful anachronisms and undistilled irreverence. The result is rudely, raucously funny, and yet weirdly true to the spirit of the source material.

(I can imagine Will Shakespeare laughing himself into a state of derangement over Fool, then stealing some of the funniest bits for his own future reference.)

Early in his career, Moore came to town for a book event at the Capitola Book Cafe, and he's been a staunch friend and supporter of the store ever since. This Saturday, in support of the Book Cafe's ongoing Survive and Thrive campaign, Moore returns for a 2 p.m. reading and signing of his latest assault on history and culture as we know it, Sacre Bleu.

In this new novel, Moore takes on modern art (the Post-Impressionists, in particular), and the French, for a tale in which Henri de Toulouse L'autrec and a young apprentice artist delve into the unknown story behind Vincent van Gogh's apparent "suicide."

More than this I can't reveal, mainly since I have yet to read Sacre Bleu. I'm waiting to buy my copy at the Book Cafe on Saturday, hear what the author has to say about it, and maybe score an autograph.

To reiterate, that's 2 in the afternoon, Saturday July 14. The Book Cafe is promising lots of fun activities yet to be announced, so keep checking their event page for further details.