"Maldoror" is a very curious piece of fiction - at times a difficult and disturbing read. The style is non-linear: indeed what there might be of a plot is difficult to discern. But plot does not seem to be the point of the book. Rather, it's a fluid, non-temporal examination of the baseness of humanity. I was interested in the novel despite, not because of, the style in which it is written, and for that purely subjective reason alone I've dropped a star from my rating.

That being said, once you get used to Lautreamont's writing, there's much of interest. The creature (or metaphor?) Maldoror upturns moral decency and socially "acceptable" behaviour to glory in thinking the unthinkable and doing the undoable, never fearing to go beyond what would be termed "common decency". The result is rather like asking what would things be like if humanity divested itself of all moral values, allowing individuals a totally hedonistic and self-indulgent life, in effect acting like animals (which is what Maldoror states they really are).

Lautreamont does not fail to debunk the notion of a benevolent all-wise God - if all moral values are inverted, then the puported source of such ideas is open to attack too.

"Maldoror" is a strange, yet challenging work. I can well understand why it's widely admired in some quarters, its fascination flowing from its shameless disposal of social norms and mores. Perhaps in the end it reinforces the need for them - seeing the dark side might be a sobering experience.

G Rodgers

"maldoror" is one of the most intriguing, weird little books i've ever read. every surrealism fiend (like myself) should buy numerous copies of this book. lautreamont advances on every form of authority and convention with an aggressiveness and deadly seriousness that would have made jim morrison shudder, and we find ourselves shivering during parts of this dark but beautiful pearl of a book. maldoror, the outcast monster, is perhaps every alienated person we have scorned and ostracized because of their individuality or uniqueness. he is a furious and vicious being of total revolt, and by the end of this strangely dreamlike, automatic text, we have seen every barrier of civilization and every moral that lays the foundation of society trampled and spat upon. look especially for the scene where maldoror guns down some swimmers in the ocean and then proceeds to have sex with a whale. (i wonder if he wrapped it up!) when andre breton said this book seemed to exceed the limits of human capacity, he wasn't joking. if you're a misanthrope and a disaffected weirdo like myself, you simply cannot miss this. a sometimes startling yet essential celebration of ultimate freedom and absolute rebellion.

This book is a must-read for all misanthropes! With a nightmarish pre-surrealist quality the author paints various macabre poems in prose around the central figure, Maldoror, a being who rejects the human society to which he cannot belong, and who blames its Creator for all suffering. It is a love/hate poem/novel with the world and with the burden of existence. Very stong and surprising dark imagination! Wild exotic phenomena of science, the naive and crude intensity of adolescence, the savagery of nature and its animals, the juxtaposition of conflicting logic and anti-logic and mind-bending sensory imagery. This book is my bible. The author's work greatly influenced the Dadaists and surrealists who later wrote after WWI. I am presently translating the Entire book in Esperanto: .............................

"A sole few will savour this bitter fruit without danger."

Although MALDOROR's most immediate pleasure is its naked nastiness - rape, murder, torture, paedophilia, bestiality, blasphemy etc. - the truly unsettling nature of the book is its textual instability, the violence of its language, the horrible, concrete, surgical beauty of its images, the haunting effect of its descriptions, its foregrounding and destabilising of slowly compelling narrative, its clashing of tones, moods, viewpoints, narrators, targets, sympathies. French literature produces a lot of books like this, wherein a madman shouts the reader out of his complacency (e.g. Rimbaud, Corbiere, the Gide of FRUITS OF THE EARTH). This is better than most because its disgust is funny and a thrill. After book three, though, it all becomes a little wearing and monotonous, as Lautreamont's assault is more tediously preoccupied with language. The same fault can be levelled at the underrated, protean, difficult POEMS, where intellectual engagement wins out over sensual overspill. Book Six of MALDOROR, though, is a masterpiece of narrative subversion, simultaneously asserting the power of stories and running riot through their conventions, looking forward to, amongst others, Borges and Nabokov. Knight's introduction is rewarding, if a little dated, but the translation is one of the best I've ever read, capturing Maldoror's rhythmic logorrhea to horrible perfection.

I must say I do prefer the Lykiard translation to this one. Check it out.

If reading a normal horror novel (a term which I really dislike) is like watching a car crash, this evil, sick, tasteless and brilliant book is like being in one. Sensitive types should be warned that it contains lashings of blasphemy, weird sex (including, in one eye-popping instance, sex with a shark), bloody murder and rape, and all manner of thoroughly awful things. At which point I suspect you've all fallen asleep. Don't. What separates this from the supposed 'shock' lit of, say, Irvine Welsh, is a delirious sense of invention. More in tune with Michael Moore or Chris Morris than Howard Stern, each revolted gasp from the reader is carefully placed and planned to provoke a deep-seated feeling of terror. What always needles me is the way that the book's Satanic protagonist Maldoror often switches places with the narrator. It's a full-frontal assault on the reader's security. And why do we read it? Because it makes every other supposedly shocking novel seem tame, unadventurous and laboured. Even American Psycho. Especially American Psycho. Rather than a plot, Lautreamont has chosen a selection of essays and incidents to show Maldoror's evil. His concern over whether or not to kill a child is one of the many freakish and distressing incidents ("...lest your body burst like an over-ripe fruit"), but it is all shot through with black humour and a surprisingly moral indignation. In fact, Lautreamont offered to 'tone it down' for its first publication. Thank God he didn't. "You have no idea how hard it is", as Maldoror would say.

Certainly Maldoror is unique--I've never read anything like it before and I doubt that I ever will again. Lautreamont's genius is apparent throughout the book, on every page, in nearly every sentence. That said I've never felt so indifferently towards a book that impressed me so. Truth be told, Maldoror put me to sleep on several occasions. (Perhaps it was the translation?)
Maldoror lacks the humour of, say, A Season In Hell or Gerard de Nerval's poetry. It's difficult to read despite its dark and fantastic subject matter. Occasionally Maldoror is flat-out boring, although it's unfailingly brilliant. (Believe me when I write that I have NEVER had this reaction before!) Brilliant doesn't always translate to likeable, I guess.
The shorter piece of writing in the book, Poesies, is highly amusing. Overall I rate the collection three stars because it just didn't do it for me. I recommend Selected Writings by Gerard de Nerval instead of Maldoror.

On one's first encounter with Lautremont's "Maldoror", it will appear a virtually formless, incoherent and incompetent work -- "a compilation of a sick mind" -- until, that is, one becomes habituated to its style. Hailed as one of the pioneering works of surrealism, this is undoubtedly one of the most original and explosive meditations on pure evil. Lautremont's glorification of crime and murder, his blasphemy, his rhapsodic celebration of revolt, are, without a doubt, unsurpassed. Never has a book more malignantly oozed more evil, misanthropy and menace. It will jar any so-called "decent" person out of his/her comfortably smug composure.

"maldoror" is the best surrealist anti literature has to offer, without a doubt. the work of an obviously, eh...unconventional? psyche, it viciously tears a gaping hole in sentimentality and anything else that does not reek of absolute rebellion. if you've ever felt even the slightest rancor against society and the hollow men surrounding you all day every day, you can be sure that you will take a liking to this book. bataille and sade are great, but can't hold a candle to little isidore. perversely delicious.

I hunted this book down through what seemed virtually every bookstore in Manhattan until I finally found it used at the Strand. Having read Reed's amazing erotic classic, The Pleasure Chateau, & seeing how much Lautremont had influenced his style in that book, I was certain that a book by Reed dealing directly with Lautremont himself would be something extraordinary. I was extremely disappointed to read this dull, minutely over-analyzed fictionalized *report* on Lautremont's not-all-that-interesting comings & goings, relationship with his father, etc. Perhaps if I hadnt had such high expectations for the book I would have liked it better, but somehow I doubt that, for I wasnt even compelled to finish it. For that reason alone, I give it two stars, figuring it would be unfair under the circumstances to give it any less...and on the chance that Reed, who I still admire greatly for The Pleasure Chateau, might have done *something* of interest, eventually, with this book.

this fictitious yet engrossing and beautifully written biography of young isidore ducasse, the comte de lautreamont, author of the bizarre and slightly twisted "maldoror" and surrealist precursor par excellance (perhaps even surpassing rimbaud?), will keep the imaginative reader riveted and glued to it from start to finish. reed has an uncanny ability to 'hit the nail on the head', and we (or at least I) always get the sense that his portrayals of his poetic idols and heroes are not that far off the mark, although there is no way to know this to a certainty. we do know that lautreamont was a withdrawn, odd youth who frightened his classmates, very rarely spoke, and had virtually no companions either at the lycee or in paris, where he was to die at age 24. reed's ducasse is a rebellious, brilliant, and poetic genius with lofty feelings of contempt for humanity and a love for the creative imagination, which allows man to transform the banality and monotony of dull everyday reality into something more beautiful and aesthetic. and all of it comes off smoothly, never becoming pretentious or too fanciful. the only weakness lies in reed's botched attempts to explore 'the duality of identity', and explore lautreamont's supposedly schizophrenic nature. to my mind this assists in perpetuating false myths about the author which cannot be verified in any way whatever. from ducasse's letters to his father, his banker, etc, we see not the dionysian monster maldoror but a young man quite capable of being cool, rational, socially interactive and charming. not one word betrays even a touch of mental disturbance or inadaptability. it occasionally seems like reed is trying to imply that because he used a pseudonym to write maldoror, he was almost certainly a nutjob with two personalities tearing one another part. of course, this is entirely possible, but from the "poesies" and the aforementioned letters, it seems more likely than not that ducasse was provoking the writer by writing two such opposed and outrageously contradictory works, and it is quite an assumption indeed to read a great deal of neurosis or impending insanity into it. but other than that, this book is, as it says on the back cover, "an electric testament to the imagination", and anyone even mildly interested in surrealist literature should grab it immediately. another victory for reed.

Biographical information about the elusive Isidore Ducasse, a writer whom Andre Breton referred to as "a contemporary, one who was among us, yet we know less about him than we do about Dante, Shakespeare or Homer," is sketchy at best. This makes Reed's novel a risky venture, while at the same time leaving him a great deal of imaginative freedom. His writing is so compelling, and the voice of Ducasse, also known as le Comte de Lautreamont, so strong, that at times you'll find yourself thinking, This is the way it must have happened.