Customer Reviews (1)

The Hundres Days
I first learned of this book in a review of Emmanualde Waresquiel's Cent Jours in the TLS. The reviewer, rightly, characterized this novel as a remarkable recreation of the chaos and confusion that existed among the Bourbons and their followers during Holy Week, 1815, as Napoleon moved towards Paris to reclaim his throne.
Aragon describes this week through the eyes and thoughts of an extensive cast of characters - turn coat Marshals of France, soldiers and officers of the Bourbons, and, particularly, Theodore Gericault. The descriptions of thoughts, events and locales are beautifully rendered. I really felt swept up in these events. I have read extensively on the Napoleonic period and the Hundred Days, but had never really fully empathized with the feelings of those going through this stunning reversal of fortune (to be suddenly repeated in June after Waterloo).
I heartly recommend this novel to anyone with a good grasp of French who has an interest in this period of French History. ... Read more

Product Description
Flesh Unlimited is a compendium edition of three classic erotic/ surrealist novellas: Les Onze Mille Verges and Les Mémoires d'un Jeune Don Juan by Guillaume Appollinaire and Le Con d'Irène by Louis Aragon.

Dadaist poet Guillaume Apollinaire fine-tuned his uniquely poetic and surreal vision to produce these two materpieces of the explicit erotic imagination at the turn of the century, works which compare with the best of the Marquis de Sade. In Les Onze Milles Verges, debauched aristocrat Mony Vibescu and a circle of fellow sybarites blaze a trail of uncontrollable lust, bloody cruelty and depravity across the streets of Europe. Whilst in Les Mémoires d'un Jeune Don Juan, a young man reminisces his sexual awakening at the hands of his aunt, his sister and their friends as he is utterly corrupted in a season of carnal excess.

Louis Aragon's Le Con d'Irène is the intense story of a man's torment when he becomes fixated upon the genitalia of an imaginary woman and is reduced to voyeuristically scoping her erotic encounters in-between describing various events in brothels and other sexual adventures.

Translated from the original, complete and unexpurgated versions by Alexis Lykiard (translator of Lautréamonts Maldoror), Flesh Unlimited has a general introduction and notes section. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Intimidated?
I've got something of a selective taste.For instance, I can read a book of depravity should the style resonate something within myself.Bataille's Story of the Eye did not reach me in a positive way, I found its grotesqueries too vivid and realistic to enjoy...and since reading it I have been wary of this sort of "Surrealist Erotica."

Meanwhile, Flesh Unlimited has continued to pop up on my reccomended page, so after a bit of hesitation, I ordered and read the thing.I must say I find it more enjoyable than Story of the Eye due to the manner in which it was written.

Apollinaire's first story (The Eleven Thousand Rods) is absolutely hilarious.The "action" in it is so over the top, cartoonishly scatological...expulsions of all sorts from the body descibed in almost campy detail.The characters in the story have no repercussions in mind regarding their actions, and the text feels as though Apollinaire felt the same in the way in which he wrote it.The story is essentially that of an unfulfilled promise (made in the throes of passion) and follows a man's quest across Eurasia and his various sexual conquests (featuring loads of "buggering," incest, sexual violence...even pedophelia and necrophelia).This may all sound shocking, but I assure you, it is written is such a manner that makes you snicker with an "O god" as opposed to shuddering.

Apollinaire's second story, the infamous Confessions of a Young Don Juan, is written with less brevity.It is about a young man's early sexual awakening.While the boy's age is about 17 at the time of the story, the narration and content make him seem very, very, very young - around 12.This can add all sorts of disturbing overtones to the story if that sort of thing bothers you.I found this selection less enjoyable than the first.

Finally the book closes with Louis Aragon's classic story Le C** d'Irene, which, as mentioned in an earlier review, is written in more of a "classic" surrealist style than anything else.If, at the very least, you are familiar with the chaotic "cut-up" style of William S. Burroughs, you should be more than able to handle and enjoy it.

Overall the collection is entertaining and sometimes (albiet, for me, less frequently) titillating.If you're apprehensive as to whether or not this will offend you after this review, maybe you should hold off until you're more confident.However, I was not put off by Flesh Unlimited in the slightest, much to my surprise.

Each Book is different
First thing to note about this book is that it is not one book. Its actually three different stories written by different french erotic authors. That being said, Let me explain that the authors are vastly different in style and mood. For Example, The story "memiors of a young don juan" is written very much like how you would expect a normal erotic novel to be written that panders more towards hedonism: "My sister, then, had tumbled to the foot of the stairs. She lay there with her skirt dissarranged, making no effort to get up again"
While the story "Le C** D'Irene"is much more surrealistic then erotic. Mostly just rambling in foul language: "Don't wake me, for gods sake, you bastards, don't wake me, watch out I bite I see red."
I don't care for the surrealistic rambling bit because I don't find it terribly creative and more foul then anything. Although I did enjoy the other stories quite a bit which read more like books. the writing is well done, which doesn't surprise me since I believe the translator of this book also did a good translation of marldoror I believe. Although, this is not extremely artistic or extremely elegent. It is very good if you are interested in reading some very hedonistic erotica that is extremely well written with a bit of artist in it.

So when am I supposed to be offended?
I read these reviews of these supposed risqué novels and every time I buy the book I'm disappointed.I keep waiting for that moment where the novel leaps out of my hands and inappropriately exposes itself in a dark alley to my fragile mind.Perhaps my expectations were to high, with a name like `flesh unlimited, surrealist erotica' one would expect sexual acts from the deepest parts of the mind, unhindered by social-taboo or even personal-unconscious-censorship, things that perhaps aren't even physically possible but are some sort of `conceptual-art-sex-act.'I've read more titillating sexual accounts and fantasies in `seventeen magazine' - which by the way I highly recommend.

If your looking for something `new' don't get this, or `the Torture Garden' by Octave Mirbeau - that's a pretty over hyped one too, it would have done well to STAY out of print.Try J.G. Ballard, Carlton Mellick III, Georges Bataille, Marquis De Sade, or even William S. Burroughs.

Flesh Unlimited
With all my due respect to Guillaume Apollinaire The Poet, this is the first book in my life that I threw away.
This is something... it is hard to find a proper name for it. To begin with, this is not erotica. For those who is looking for erotica, this book will be a sheer disappointment. Erotica induces desire. This book provokes disgust.

This is a crude pornography written by a talented person without gag reflex. Yes, talented. This is why it is so pictorially repulsive. And without a gag reflex - because normal person cannot read it without nausea. I can only surmise that this repugnant masterpiece was written for diversion.

If you like reading about animalistic sex in odorous slimy excrements, this book is for you.

Unrestrained, Vulgar, and Artful
Apollinaire delivers some of the most explicit erotica ever committed to the printed page, managing to do so with wit and a refreshing matter-of-fact bluntness that never degenerates into a mere exhibition of so-called perversion. This is not for the squeamish, or those easily put off by marginal sexual practices.These two works act as a fantastic clean sweep of the residual psychological Victorianism that still permeates our society, even after the sexual revolution. Like Bataille's "Story of the Eye" without that author's harrowing social vivisections, this book has caused more than one ostensibly jaded friend to recoil in disgust. That Apollinaire manages this with style is a testament to his twisted genius. ... Read more

Product Description
First published anonymously in France in 1928, Le Cond'Irene, is the last 'lost' masterpiece of Surrealist erotica. LikesGeorges Bataille's Story of the Eye (published the same year),Irene's Cunt is an intensely poetic account, the story of aman's torment when he becomes fixated upon the genitalia of animaginary woman and is reduced to voyeuristically scoping 'her' eroticencounters. In between describing various events in brothels and othersexual adventures, Louis Aragon charts an inner monologue which isoften reminiscent, in its poetic/ surreal intensity, of the work ofLautreamont, and of Artaud in its evocation of physical disgust as thedark correlative to spiritual illumination.

This new edition features an exceptional and completely unexpurgatedtranslation by Alexis Lykiard (translator of Lautreamont's Maldororand Apollinaire's Les Onze Mille Verges), and includes completeannotation and an illuminating introduction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

snoozy contribtuion to a literary dead-end
If this is an artistic expression of lust's madness, then I'll take Jack Webb's boarder line parody of hardboiled detective metaphors any day.

"She drifted into the room like 98 pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was hot and sticky--like a furnace full of marshmallows."

The explicit baseness of voyeurism which is this novel's ultimate subject is only interesting to those who have surrendered their life to voyeurism instead of living life. Free yourself from mere spectator: be alive.

Specific to the book: surrealist literature was burdened by its artificial aping of its visual counterpart (it was perfected in magical realism, but surrealist literature is by-and-large a failure).

Transitions are poor, and the translation is wooden. Sadly, the French isn't any better. This is a minor work for specialists only, and its only contribution to the average thinking man's horizons of knowledge is "what were they thinking" and since it concerns voyeuristic lust the inescapable conclusion "not very much."

Phallic Distortion
It is expected and obvious that the English language speaking public finds a surrealist masterpiece such as Louis Aragon's as intimately obscene, and on such grounds impregnates disparaging critiques that climax with inelegant statements pronounced with a stiff intellectual disregard. Here we do not find the graphic frames of admissable seductive contrivances of a DH Lawrence, rather we unveil a psycholyrical morphology that unsettles and unravels.

The text was originally published in 1928 anonymously by Rene Bonnel, the renowed controversial publisher of greats of the stamp of Jarry, Apollinaire, Pierre Louys and Raymond Rodiguet. Le Con D'Irene was confiscated and the supression of its publication dated through 1968 when authorship became awarded to a Albert de Routisie ( anonymous nome de plume of Aragon), and where five indelible illustrations of Andre Masson illuminated the text. The book, which runs to merely 90 pages, was immediately deemed to be a staple work of surrealist literature, its circulation spurred by the continuous attempts of the French conservative magnates at censure.

There are some aspects of this enigmatic erotic literary engagement that define new features to the previously overripened eros, and - if Cupid was seen as the whimsical child at the court of Aphrodite - we find in Aragon a disavowed Cupid that seems thrust out of the Olympian heights and cast away through to the depths of the underworld. How can sensuality be intellectual? The answer which the surrealist had found consensus within is best elucidated through this novella. The two most prominent aspect of the aforementioned change reflect the expression of disgust and transgression, as well as the ritual and magic that eroticism is akin to. In the first instance we are issued a sedimented encounter that seeks to define the limits of subjectivity by violating its comfort; In the second we meet a spiritual affirmation that absolves of moral imperatives the natural, the carnal and the law of desire which, by way of transgression, accentuates its pleasure, not by suspending rational strictures but by rendering them in a methodology of habit and order that incarcerates the mind as much as the flesh.

Philosophically this is a testament to a dialectic of desire that was being premised by Freudian analytical techniques, particularly as elucidated in Totem and Taboo and Civilazion and its Discontent, through an associative paradigm that functioned within a syntax of condensation and displacement. Namely the erotic was redrawn to overwrite the biological and inscribe a pattern of social stimuli that causes the sublimation of libininal sensibilities. Aesthetic sensibilities need not be seduced but more aptly raped; this was the new invitation to the intellectual Bacchanalia of modernism. There is a force that destabilizes the ego and announces the intercourse of the political with the enervated energy of the id. Here we realize that the act itself is not as sensually satisfying as the voyeuristic distance perpetrated. The closer one comes to desire the farther one is from satisfying it. These are not easy arguements of psychological valence, and to make this encounter all the more problematic, there is a mystical eruption of hysterical proportions that functions as an excess to the repressive implications of social mores.

If as Georges Bataille put it "sexual union is a compromise, a half-way house between life and death" then in Aragon's piece we find a true exponenet of such anxious absolutions; If mystical ecstasy is procured by the absolute expression of ego-psychic abandonment then eroticism is a psychological quest not alien to death; If temptation and irreverence are prophylactic ensurers of a fractured self, then Aragon's prose is a fundamental exponenet of these thematic effusions clad in a literary dress. Louis Aragon, much like Apollinare, was a a literary exponent that stood in the midst of a dialogue in flux between the traditional and the avant-garde. His prose reads beautifully, ecstatically, and is sharpened by an eloquence of the keenest powers. One may easily mistake the excellent rendition of Alexis Lykiard for a page of Nabakov's Lolita - the Russian author was, not surprisingly,an enthusiastic reader of surrealist fiction and particularly of Aragon. This is not trash literature any more than Salvador Dali's or Frida Khalo's paintings are obscene maniacal art. Its fascination stems from a sustained adoptive enterprise that surveyed the works of Horace, Ovid, Lucretius, and Catullus, where the word more prudely and properly translated genitalia is a mainstay of creative exuberance and mysogynistic exploitation. Here Louis Aragon does not stray far from such lamenting, rather he materially propagates what a Blake, for example, sought to do metaphysically during the English Romantic era. Obviously however the two could not be farther apart, but this is for the same reason that a circle's beginning and end meet at some point to close the spherical index.

Finally it is to the title that we must return our gaze. It is the creative impulse turned inside out: the phallic lust is made absent to make for a wounded rational slip that engorges, engrosses and hides as it absorbes the thrsut of passion in favour of a fanciful praxis.
A book that ultimately fails, as did surrealism proper, because of the impossibility of rationalizing the irrational, the chaotic sterility that intention will forever be bound to, even as the claim to spontaneity is advanced. Albeit this is a work that deserved a readership, if for no other reason,a fund of critical treasures and lyrical dexterity. Postmodernism could not have been possible were it not for the surrealist endeavors at supplying the libidinal with a transcendental pulsion that is both ecstatic (as in beyond the essence) and intense (as in within it). Irene is the a transliteration ofthe Greek Eirenes, namely the goddess of Spring, of nature, the Satyr's energy force, reminding us that it is in absence that creativity is spurred rather than in fullness (plenum): The gestation of Desire is implicated through a lack. Here we find a healthy tension where if you are partially disgusted and partially appalled you lend merit to a literary exposition of unrest as a force of change. Ultimately the one aim was freedom and we cannot achieve freedom unless we strive to go beyond the limits set about us by cultural prescriptions and such like determinants.

Too French for me
After an introductory note by the translator, this opens with a Dada or Surrealist poem by Aragon - at least, I think it was supposed to be a poem. In truth, I found this blank verse (and others like it, later in the book) incoherent and repetitive, and unrelated in every way to erotic experience as I understand it. Next, a nihilist short story expresses dysphoria, anhedonia, ennui, and other diseases of the soul that have names only in French. The writer hints at some family, but he seeks out prostitutes instead then despises them even as he expects them to service him. The progression continues, through other short first-person features in varying but dismal moods. One of the cheerier ones comes from an older man, aphasic and paralyzed with tertiary syphilis, watching and musing on various fornications around his rural farmhouse.

"I have never sought out anything but scandal, and I cultivate it for its own sake." So said Aragon, and I imagine that this succeeded even in the intellectual climate of 1928 Paris. The good news is that Aragon fell out with the Surrealists shortly after this was written - one may hope that he moved beyond the literary level of a toddler playing with potty words.

-- wiredweird

Didn't find it captivating.
Maybe it was a bit too "Victorian" for my taste.It was lessthan I expected.

Don't wake me up.
Cunt is the privileged place of dream. Don't wake me up, cries Aragon.This book is a praise of sleep, and of jewels hidden in it, just likeorgasmic death is lurking behind cunt's door. The initial pages are amongthe greatest poetic treasures of this century. ... Read more

Product Description
"...to devote my life to the essential thing-- the thing for which I am made and which can bring a little happiness to the great family, the greatest spiritual family."--Matisse to André Rouveyre, September 4, 1942

Of all the artists of this century, Henri Matisse is one of the greatest and most beloved. His influence on modern art, both during his lifetime and today, has never stopped growing; in the eyes of the world, he is the French painter par excellence.

Henri Matisse is all the more cherished because his work celebrates the positive aspects of life, as evidenced by the titles of many of his major paintings: Luxe, Calme et Volupté, La Joie de Vivre, La Danse, Musique, to mention but a few. His explosions and juxtapositions of color and pattern inspire pure delight in the beholder, and his mastery of line, volume, and form are perhaps unequaled in the art of our time. The vitality, energy, and life-enhancing qualities that radiate from his art represent distillation of all that is affirmative in the human condition and are given immortality through that rare and indefinable quality known as genius.

The art of Matisse describes a trajectory leading from realism to abstraction, from darkness to light, from the cold of the north to the heat of the south, a route marked off by such revolutionary innovations as the burst of color found in Fauvism or the invention of his cut-outs. Matisse was still creating at a time in his life when many artists are content to rest on their laurels.

Since its original publication in 1984, this book by Pierre Schneider stands alone as the bible on the art of Matisse. The author spent fourteen years amassing a prodigious amount of information on the artist, and includes his own personal and original views on the work. Including over nine hundred illustrations, this is the most substantial reference of the works of Matisse ever published.

The reader will discover Matisse watercolorist, draftsman, ceramist, and the architect-- and unquestionably one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A landmark
There are some artbooks that can be considered landmarks of the genre and this is one such book. In 1986, Pierre Schneider, a respected French art critic for the French weekly L'Express, published this most important book on the greatest French painter of the XXth century and, in my opinion, it has not been equalled ever since. From the introduction (which is an in-depth study of the 1911 painting "The Conversation") to the last chapter centered on the late cut-outs, we are treated to a genuine firework of brilliant insight and marvelous reproductions. Every major work is analysed thoroughly and Matisse's life is followed with a host of erudite details (such as parallels drawn between Matisse's art and Proust's writings or Mallarmé's poetry)and all this makes this book not only a pleasure for the eye but also a great read.

The Bible On Matisse
I noticed that this is coming back into print in November 2002, so I figured I'd write this review. If you are a fan of Matisse, you should snap up this book. It is an awesome achievement by Mr. Schneider. There is a tremendous amount of biographical data here, as well as a wealth of reproductions- both color and black and white. One caveat, though. This is definitely not for the casual reader! There is a lot of detailed analysis of the paintings included- such things as Matisse's theories on the use of color and shape; the tremendous amount of work and thought that went into each work in order to create color harmony and a balance of all the pictorial elements, etc. Mr. Schneider respects the reader, so some of this stuff can be a real challenge! But I found it very worthwhile! Matisse's paintings are deceptive, at least to the layperson. They seem soothing and simple. Well, I can promise you that after reading this wonderful book you may still find the paintings soothing, but when you realize what went into the process of creating them you will never again think of them as being simple! This is one of those rare books that opens your eyes and makes you look at something in a completely new way.Reviewer Note: Please be aware that the book I am reviewing is the over 700 page book written by Pierre Schneider, NOT the much shorter book written by Mr. Jacobus and only translated by Mr. Schneider! ... Read more

Product Description
Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Les Beaux Quartiers, Aurélien, La Semaine Sainte, Les Cloches de Bâle, le Con D'irène, Servitude et Grandeur Des Français. Scènes Des Années Terribles. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Les Beaux Quartiers, deuxième volume du cycle Le Monde réel, est un roman de Louis Aragon publié en octobre 1936 aux éditions Denoël et ayant reçu le prix Renaudot le 9 décembre 1936. Dans ce roman en trois parties la description de ces « beaux quartiers », annoncée par le titre, ne commence qu'avec la deuxième partie : Paris. Dans la première partie, on découvre la vie étriquée d'une petite ville imaginaire, Sérianne, composée à partir de souvenirs hétéroclites de l'auteur, au pied des Préalpes du Sud, proche de Marseille, en 1912. Au fil des premiers chapitres apparaissent quelques personnages typiques : Eugène le marchand de couronnes mortuaires, qui abuse de sa servante Angélique et à l'occasion la rosse copieusement ; un jeune docteur amant de la femme du percepteur ; quelques fils de bonnes familles militants dans une association patriotique d'extrême droite « pro patria » ; un vieil aristocrate ruiné et sa fille ; un maître chocolatier au prise avec des licenciements et des grèves ; tout ce beau monde se retrouve régulièrement au « Panier Fleuri », la maison close, lieu incontournable de la III République. Apparaissent aussi les fils conducteurs du roman : le docteur Barbentane, radical, libre penseur et franc-maçon, maire et bientôt candidat au Conseil Général ; ses deux fils, Edmond, l'aîné destiné à la médecine, Armand, le cadet « promis à Dieu » par sa mère, l'antithèse même de son père. Mais bientôt le jeune homme traverse une grave crise religieuse commençant à trouver la poésie supérieure à la relig...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more