Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

04 December 2010

My Current Read

Right now I am reading from the Atlas Anti-Classics series. The book is called Alfred Jarry: Collected Works I - Adventures in 'Pataphysics. It is unsurpringly morbid, although perhaps a bit more than I was expecting, and surprisingly sexy. He wrote, as it turns out, Symbolist plays, as well as his famed Ubu series. At any rate, I love Jarry, as I am sure you know, and I am finding this reading incredibly informative. It is safe, I think, to say, that not only did he obviously prefigure Theatre of the Absurd and (of course) Dada, but he seems to have been 1) a proficient Symbolist poet and not just a jokester and also 2) seems to have inarguably prefigured Surrealism. His oneiric poetry is easily of a piece with Breton & Soupault's Les Champs Magnétiques.

Fun quote from Jarry for today from Caesar-Antichrist:
Ubu speaks. "When I have taken all the Phynance, I will kill everyone in the world and go away."

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