Often considered one of the definitive surrealist novels (along with Andre Breton's NADJA), Paris Peasant is an exhilarating read. Aragon takes us through a special guided tour of Paris--not the Paris as we know it with its Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks, but a Paris of crumbling arcades, dilapidated shopfronts and suburban parks. Aragon imbues the detritus of the city with poetry and magic, and shows us how the surrealist spirit lives in the outmoded structures of civilization. His ode to the Passage de l'Opera, at that time threatened by Baron Haussmann's plans for the redevelopment of the city, is a tacit challenge to the rapaciousness of capitalism and modernization, with its quest for the ever-new and its destruction of the past. Every urbanite will find something to identify with in this marvellous portrait of Paris in the 1920s.

This new edition of a scare work is welcome not only for the exposure it provides to Aragon and his work (if it can be called that), but for the loving manner in which it is produced. From the covers to the typeface to the translation of newspaper column margins, editor Damon Krukowski and designer Naomi Yang, known more for their musical than literary endevours, have brought attention to the smallest detail, the kind of attention that is the substance of the text itself. The translation, from a 1971 edition, flows perfectly; just alien enough from standard English to draw attention to Aragon's linguistic differences, but not a characature of French style. It would be hard to imagine a better English edition of this work. James L. Wolf

For anyone interested in surrealism this book is a must. Aragon is harsh and yet decisive in his uncompromising judgment of what is obsolete and what is not with respect to the surrealist revolution, and his denunciation of 'automatic writing' as poetry is right on the mark. He is so obnoxious and unsparing in his criticism of everyone and everything that the reader immediately realizes he was mistaken in joining the Communist Party and leaving the surrealist movement:he was made for a group that espoused absolute rebellion against everyone and everything conventional, and it was where he belonged. He distinguishes real poets from those he so gently refers to as, "any dog on the street who, like an inexhaustible diarrhea, ceaselessly copies down his insignificant scribblings and dares to compare it with true poetry". Eheheehehe! A must

Apollinaire delivers some of the most explicit erotica ever committed to the printed page, managing to do so with wit and a refreshing matter-of-fact bluntness that never degenerates into a mere exhibition of so-called perversion. This is not for the squeamish, or those easily put off by marginal sexual practices. These two works act as a fantastic clean sweep of the residual psychological Victorianism that still permeates our society, even after the sexual revolution. Like Bataille's "Story of the Eye" without that author's harrowing social vivisections, this book has caused more than one ostensibly jaded friend to recoil in disgust. That Apollinaire manages this with style is a testament to his twisted genius.

Flesh Unlimited sums up two novellas by the author Lez onze mille verges and memoires dún jeune don juan (11ooo pricks/ memoirs of a young don juan). Two notoriously wild and explicit works of erotica.

Maybe it was a bit too "Victorian" for my taste. It was less than I expected.

Aragon once said: "Arranging everything into a story is a bourgeois mania," and he makes good on that idea in this novella; the story itself comes second to the theme. The first part of Irene's Cunt concerns a man visiting a brothel who spies on the customers in an adjoining room. He quickly leaves, however, after he realizes the possibility of someone spying on him. Next we move on to the bed of an elderly paralytic who recalls his [and other people's] sexual encounters with the young female farmhands.

Filled with the dreams, memories, and experiences of the characters, Irene's Cunt treats sexuality and desire as somewhat of a curse, and beneath all of this lies Irene [based on Nancy Cunard, Aragon's real life infatuation for many years.]

Aragon opens the book with a dreamlike word barrage that flows together to make a poetic narrative reminiscent of Lautreamont. This style is found peppered throughout the book but the bulk of Irene's Cunt is written in a simple, concise style, filled with a good amount of dark humor.

This translation [what does it matter, you'll find no other!] by Alexis Lykiard is superb. Having read no other version of Irene's Cunt I draw this conclusion from the fact that Lykiard is one of the best translators of 'poetic french' around -- his version of Maldoror is MUCH better than the banal Penguin Classics and a cut above Guy Wernham's.

Irene's Cunt is an important work of erotica that deserves much more attention [certainly it doesn't deserve to be out of print, again!] In its day this book was well known and praised by the likes of Camus. At present it has fallen into the unknown along with a long list of other books that are fast becoming extinct!

Even though this short novel is not the greatest piece of erotica I've read, it does warrant reading. [For those unfamiliar with the term 'erotica,' there IS such a thing as intelligent, well written books pertaining to sexuality, and the surrealists had a knack for writing them.]

If you like this book at all you may also like: Story of the Eye [Bataille], Eden Eden Eden [Guyotat], Flesh Unlimited [Apollinaire ], The Torture Garden [Mirbeau], and The She Devils [Louys].

Cunt is the privileged place of dream. Don't wake me up, cries Aragon. This book is a praise of sleep, and of jewels hidden in it, just like orgasmic death is lurking behind cunt's door. The initial pages are among the greatest poetic treasures of this century.

Man oh man, what a trial it was trying to get into this book. I'm normally a fan of surrealist writing (see my reviews of Breton's NADJA, Aragon's PARIS PEASANT and Carrington's THE HEARING TRUMPET) but TELEMACHUS seems to me to be a rather torturous exercise in literary gymnastics. I've been told that in this work Aragon pulls out all the stops as he uses every pun, metaphor and literary device available to rework and subvert French literary traditions. It doesn't seem to have come off too well in the translation though. The plot is very loosely based around the adventures of Telemachus, who is shipwrecked on a fantastical island with his androgynous Mentor. On the way he is tempted by the blandishments of Calypso and her nymphs. But that's about as much plot as you get. The narrative (if one can call it that) consists of sentences strung in a truly surrealist manner. Remember how the Parisian Surrealists were all enchanted by that one famous line by Lautreamont about the chance meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine? Well, in this work Aragon takes these surrealist juxtapositions to the extreme. The result is initially surprising and one cannot doubt the startling beauty of some of the images originally afforded by this technique, but when the entire book is written in this fashion, it gets very hard indeed. Not a good introduction to surrealist writing at all--in fact, it really put me off. Read it if you absolutely MUST.

Aragon demonstrates his involvement in the Paris DADA scene with this excellent proto-Surrealist work. In the tradition of Alfred Jarry, he presents an utterly fantastic tale full of wonderful nonsense and absurd wit. That Surrealism arose from DADA is evident in his juxtaposing of unrelated ideas and use of automatic writing techniques (the latter of which produces an effect similar to Breton's Magnetic Fields). If you like the work of Jarry, Schwitters, Tzara, and the like, then you will probably enjoy this.

SCARED FOR LIFE! Porn queen runs to ex-husband as lover is taken in by Po-Po. I was all washed up and there was a relentless wave of phone calls upon me when I found this book. A treatise on parisian intellectual theatrics, these adventures are an unbelievable example of how utterly likable surrealist pretensions can be. It is sure to cheer you up (even cures minor ailments).