Locus Solus - Softcover

Roussel, Raymond

4.02

1,206 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847492738 ISBN 13: 9781847492739

Publisher: Alma Books, 2012

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Based 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 20th 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, encyclopedic 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 hairless cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Georges Danton to fresh flights of oratory. By each item in Cantarel's exhibition there hangs a tale—a tale only 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.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of 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 profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouvenu roman. He is the author of Among the Blacks and How I Wrote Certain of My Books.

Review:

"Genius in its pure state." —Jean Cocteau

"Things, words, vision and death, the sun and language make a unique form . . . Roussel in some way has defined its geometry." —Michel Foucault

"Raymond Roussel belongs to the most important French literature of the beginning of the century." —Alain Robbe-Grillet

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.