Locus Solus - Softcover

Raymond Roussel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714544566 ISBN 13: 9780714544564

Publisher: Calder Publications, 2017

Synopsis

Based, like the earlier Impressions of Africa, on uniquely eccentric principles of composition, this book invites the reader to enter a world which in its innocence and extravagance is unlike anything in the literature of the twentieth century. Cantarel, a scholarly scientist, whose enormous wealth imposes no limits upon his prolific ingenuity, is taking a group of visitors on a tour of “Locus Solus”, his secluded estate near Paris. One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind: an African mud-sculpture representing a naked child; a road-mender’s tool which, when activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth; a vast aquarium in which humans can breathe and in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory. By each item in Cantarel’s exhibition there hangs a tale – a tale such as only that esteemed genius Roussel could tell. As the inventions become more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of the author’s stories grow to match them; the flow of his imagination becomes a flood, and the reader is swept along in a torrent of wonder and hilarity.

About this title

About the Author:

Raymond Roussel (1877–1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, chess enthusiast, neurasthenic and drug addict. Through his novels, poems and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th-century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo and the authors of the Nouveau Roman.

Review:

An experience unique in literature -- John Ashbery An imagination which joins the mathematician's delirium to the poet's logic - this, among other marvels, is what one discovers in the novels of Raymond Roussel. -- Raymond Queneau Genius in its pure state. -- Jean Cocteau My fame will outshine that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon. -- Raymond Roussel Raymond Roussel belongs to the most important French literature of the beginning of the century. -- Alain Robbe-Grillet The greatest mesmerist of modern times -- Andre Breton Things, words, vision and death, the sun and language make a unique form ... Roussel in some way has defined its geometry -- Michel Foucault

About this edition

• Publisher: Calder Publications
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0714544566
• ISBN 13: 9780714544564
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224