The Adventures of Telemachus

By Louis Aragon

Book Overview

Retelling the adventures of Odysseus' son Telemachus through the Surrealist lens of the strange and the marvelous

This is the first paperback edition in English of one of the most important and entertaining works of Surrealist fiction. Aragon's 1922 novel boldly appropriates the title and plot of a didactic 17th-century epic, recounting the adventures of Odysseus' son Telemachus; but the moralistic underpinnings of the original are replaced by a Surrealist's dedication to the strange, the beautiful and the erotic. Though a classic of Surrealism, this is not automatic writing; on the contrary, it is a wryly self-conscious book, full of the kinds of intertextual games associated with writers such as Borges and Calvino. As the Huberts comment in their introduction, "Aragon did not have to liberate his mind through automatic exercises; but by mastering and playing with the narrative ... he succeeded in freeing himself from the constraints of mimeticism ... descend ing] into the diabolical nirvana of Dada."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878972235
• ISBN13: 9781878972231
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Exact Change
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 8.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Pre-surrealist masterpiece

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.

ACTION PACKED!

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).