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Product Description
Book Description
Paris Peasant (1926) is one of the central works of Surrealism, a work that helps define the movement itself; yet this is the first U.S. publication of Simon Watson Taylor’s authoritative translation, completed after consultations with the author. Unconventional in form — Aragon self-consciously avoided any recognizable narration or character development — but fiercely lyrical, Paris Peasant is, in the author’s words, "a mythology of the modern." The book uses the city of Paris as a framework, and Aragon interlaces his text with the city’s ephemera: café menus, maps, inscriptions on monuments, newspaper clippings, as well as the lives of its citizens. A detailed description of a Parisian passage, nineteenth-century precursor to the mini-mall, and another of the Buttes-Chaumont park, are the great set pieces within Aragon’s swirling prose of philosophy, dream, and satire.
"No one could have been a more astute detector of the unwonted in all its forms; no one else could have been carried away by such intoxicating reveries about a sort of secret life of the city.…" — André Breton
"I was seeking… a new kind of novel that would break all the traditional rules governing the writing of fiction… a novel that the critics would be obliged to approach empty-handed." — Louis Aragon
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5 reviews
35 of 37 people found the following review helpful
An amazing read!
22 Sep 1999
Format:Paperback
Often considered one of the definitive surrealist novels (along with Andre Breton's NADJA), Paris Peasant is an exhilarating read. Aragon takes us through a special guided tour of Paris--not the Paris as we know it with its Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks, but a Paris of crumbling arcades, dilapidated shopfronts and suburban parks. Aragon imbues the detritus of the city with poetry and magic, and shows us how the surrealist spirit lives in the outmoded structures of civilization. His ode to the Passage de l'Opera, at that time threatened by Baron Haussmann's plans for the redevelopment of the city, is a tacit challenge to the rapaciousness of capitalism and modernization, with its quest for the ever-new and its destruction of the past. Every urbanite will find something to identify with in this marvellous portrait of Paris in the 1920s.
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Ideal English Edition
12 Jun 1997
Format:Paperback
This new edition of a scare work is welcome not
only for the exposure it provides to Aragon and
his work (if it can be called that), but for the
loving manner in which it is produced. From the
covers to the typeface to the translation of
newspaper column margins, editor Damon Krukowski
and designer Naomi Yang, known more for their
musical than literary endevours, have brought
attention to the smallest detail, the kind of
attention that is the substance of the text
itself. The translation, from a 1971 edition,
flows perfectly; just alien enough from standard
English to draw attention to Aragon's linguistic
differences, but not a characature of French
style. It would be hard to imagine a better
English edition of this work.
James L. Wolf
only for the exposure it provides to Aragon and
his work (if it can be called that), but for the
loving manner in which it is produced. From the
covers to the typeface to the translation of
newspaper column margins, editor Damon Krukowski
and designer Naomi Yang, known more for their
musical than literary endevours, have brought
attention to the smallest detail, the kind of
attention that is the substance of the text
itself. The translation, from a 1971 edition,
flows perfectly; just alien enough from standard
English to draw attention to Aragon's linguistic
differences, but not a characature of French
style. It would be hard to imagine a better
English edition of this work.
James L. Wolf
12 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Not as good as Nadja, Les Champs Magnetiques, et al.
23 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback
Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (Gallimard, 1926)
Aragon, one of the people at the core of the dada, and later the surrealist, movements in France, is a fantastic poet, like most of them were. However, I'm finding, as I move out to explore the prose of the movements after twenty years of enjoying (and being influenced by) the poetry, that most of them were far better poets than they were novelists. There are exceptions, of course (Rene Daumal's unfinished Mount Analogue and Breton/Eluard's Les Champs Magnetiques both made my best-reads-of-the-year list in the early nineties), but Paris Peasant isn't one of them.
The book's not bad, for what it is, but it could have been so much more. It encompasses three prose works of Aragon's, two of which seem to be that curious mixture of fiction and nonfiction which has become so popular in recent years, and the third of which is indescribable by normal means other than to say it's prose. The first is a travelogue of sorts, a kind of gutter-level guidebook to an area of Paris that most tourists likely stayed well away from. At a hundred twelve pages, it's by far the longest piece in the book. It's also written in almost stream-of-consciousness style, with no real attempt at coherence or flow, making it a more difficult read than it needed to be. The second details an evening Aragon spent with Breton and Marcel Noll strolling through Paris; it's the strongest of the three, the only one where Aragon's long diversions (which are likely to put one in mind of James or Joyce, though Aragon lacks the command of language of either; that, however, could easily be the fault of the translator rather than Aragon himself) really seem as if they're contributing to the piece, rather than distracting. The third, "The Peasant's Dream," doesn't really seem to fit into the short story or memoir categories; it's tempting to hang the godawful "flash fiction" moniker on it, or it would be were it not fifteen pages long. It's not bad, really, but it's not all that great, either; it's just there.
A minor, at best, work in the surrealist catalogue. There are many other things that belong in your collection before you set your sights on this one. ** ½
Aragon, one of the people at the core of the dada, and later the surrealist, movements in France, is a fantastic poet, like most of them were. However, I'm finding, as I move out to explore the prose of the movements after twenty years of enjoying (and being influenced by) the poetry, that most of them were far better poets than they were novelists. There are exceptions, of course (Rene Daumal's unfinished Mount Analogue and Breton/Eluard's Les Champs Magnetiques both made my best-reads-of-the-year list in the early nineties), but Paris Peasant isn't one of them.
The book's not bad, for what it is, but it could have been so much more. It encompasses three prose works of Aragon's, two of which seem to be that curious mixture of fiction and nonfiction which has become so popular in recent years, and the third of which is indescribable by normal means other than to say it's prose. The first is a travelogue of sorts, a kind of gutter-level guidebook to an area of Paris that most tourists likely stayed well away from. At a hundred twelve pages, it's by far the longest piece in the book. It's also written in almost stream-of-consciousness style, with no real attempt at coherence or flow, making it a more difficult read than it needed to be. The second details an evening Aragon spent with Breton and Marcel Noll strolling through Paris; it's the strongest of the three, the only one where Aragon's long diversions (which are likely to put one in mind of James or Joyce, though Aragon lacks the command of language of either; that, however, could easily be the fault of the translator rather than Aragon himself) really seem as if they're contributing to the piece, rather than distracting. The third, "The Peasant's Dream," doesn't really seem to fit into the short story or memoir categories; it's tempting to hang the godawful "flash fiction" moniker on it, or it would be were it not fifteen pages long. It's not bad, really, but it's not all that great, either; it's just there.
A minor, at best, work in the surrealist catalogue. There are many other things that belong in your collection before you set your sights on this one. ** ½
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