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Sto caricando le informazioni... Exquisite Corpse (1995)di Robert Irwin
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![]() Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. ![]() ![]() In Exquisite Corpse, Irwin's novel takes the form of an "anti-memoir," in the context of a London Surrealist cabal during the interwar period and the later dispersion of its members. The painter Caspar gives an account of his love for Caroline, his loss of her, and his subsequent efforts to find her, including the writing of the story itself. "What you hold in your hands is not literature, but a magical trap. Its sole purpose is to seek out Caroline" (10). The result is a sort of Hypnerotomachia--not one in which the dreamer sleeps, but one where he adventures in "hypnogogia," the Surrealist term of art for what a ceremonial magician would call the spirit-vision or "astral." Nor is the dream one of nostalgia for classical knowledge and beauty. "At the dark heart of Surrealism is ugliness and terror" (49). Irwin captures the inchoate compulsiveness of left-esotericism in the first half of the 20th century. The tale is littered with famous figures as bit players: Salvador Dali, Aleister Crowley, George Orwell, and others. They, along with the events of the war, help to anchor and orient the "marvellous" derangements of Caspar-Poliphilo, which finally arrive at the ambiguous consummation of his quest. This book is not really about me at all. Not only is this book not about me, it is also not written for you - unless your name is Caroline. What you hold in your hands is not literature, but a magical trap. Its sole purpose is to seek out Caroline. I have to publish the book of course and I imagine so many copies of Exquisite Corpse floating in so many stoppered bottles on strange and distant seas. The paradox is that publication on as wide a scale as possible is essential to my purpose, but really the book that is published is a private thing and destined for one reader only. The publishers, Dedalus, provided lots of copies of this novel for the 2005 UK Bookcrossing Unconvention and this one ended up in my goody-bag. The extremely unpleasant cover picture put me off reading it for a long time, but when I finally gave it a go, I was surprised to find an enjoyable story inside. Caspar, a mentally unstable painter and member of the surrealist Serapion Brotherhood in mid-1930s London, falls obsessively in love with a secretary called Caroline, much to the disapproval of his bohemian friends. He finds Caroline surprisingly elusive and fifteen years after her disappearance he writes a book that he refers to as an anti-memoir, in an attempt to lure her back to him. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Set in London, Paris, and Munich in the 1940s and 1950s, "Exquisite Corpse" is, like Irwin's cult classic, "The Arabian Nightmare," a novel about the strange and ever-morphing powers of the imagination. At once a love story, a mystery, and an investigation into the ideas of absurdist art, "Irwin's novel about English surrealism is funny and profound and hugely satisfying" (A. S. Byatt, "Sunday Times," Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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![]() GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:![]()
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