Bertha, The Child-Flower

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Bertha, The Child-Flower: A Raymond Roussel Illustration Contest

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Trevor Winkfield on Raymond Roussel's Names

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Trevor Winkfield (slightly foxed)

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Trevor Winkfield on Raymond Roussel

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus

I finally found a hardcover edition of Locus Solus. It only took a decade.

June 25, 2008 update: One World came through and has announced publication in July 2008. It may take awhile for the books to reach US bookstores.

Atlas Anthology III

I love the tagline at the top of the cover: "Benign Pollution * Enthused Writing."

This early anthology from Atlas Press was edited by Alastair Brotchie and Malcolm Green and published in 1985 with the help of Carcanet. You can still find copies with a little effort and patience.

Get in touch if you can provide scans of (or actual copies of!) Atlas Anthology 1 & 2.

June 2008 update: Read two of the four Robert Walser pieces from this book here.

Atlas's editorial note:

"Thanks to the generous assistance of Carcanet Press, it has been possible to bring the third Atlas Anthology to a wider audience. Readers will decide for themselves whether there is a thread connecting these many differing texts. It seems to us they represent aspects of a shared outlook which has been manifested by numerous groups (European Romanticism, early Expressionism, Surrealism, 'Pataphysics, the OuLiPo, the Vienna Group) and many individuals. One thing is certain: their preoccupations have little connection with the bleak and conventional naturalism prevalent in Britain and the U.S., which seems to owe more to Mrs. Gaskell than the twentieth century. We know from past issues that we have at least a small yet effusive audience, and cannot say whether the wider reception will be that 'climate of warm indifference'* with which the English normally 'welcome' enthused writing.

"Just so long as it's not boring . . . "

"*Title of Martin Seymour-Smith's survey of insularity of English writing, published in Bananas (the last magazine attempting to publish interesting writing in the U.K.) in 1976."

--THE EDITORS

Author included: Hans Carl Artmann, Pierre Albert-Birot, Wolfgang Bauer, Konrad Bayer, Pierre Bettencourt, Peter Blegvad, Andre Breton, Jean-Pierre Brisset, Gunter Brus, Rene Crevel, David Gascoyne, Alfred Jarry, James Kirkup, Karl Kraus, Jean Lorrain, Harry Mathews, Gustav Meyrink, Pasolini, Georges Perec, Benjamin Peret, Oskar Panizza, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Rigaut, Herbert Rosendorfer, Raymond Roussel, Paul Scheerbart, Mathew Phipps Shiel, Kurt Schwitters, Boris Vian, Austryn Wainhouse, Robert Walser, Unica Zurn, and more.

Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus

Brad, the editor of the great Neglected Books site [neglectedbooks.com], posted an annotated list of 20 out-of-print books I made in June of 2000. He added links to all the book titles. I'm going to post images of the books discussed (if I still have them). The permanent link for the list is here.

2. Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel (1877-1933, France).

First published in France in 1914. Rupert Copeland Cuningham's English translation first published in the UK by Calder in 1970 (and then in the US by University of California). Reprinted in 1983 in paperback by Calder and Riverrun. Again reprinted in 2003 by Calder/Riverrun (the edition I scanned). Hopefully we won't have to wait until 2023 for another reprint. Print-on-demand is always an option!***

Read Luc Sante's essay/review "The Scientist of the Fantastic" about Roussel, from the New York Review of Books, 1985. Read some pages from John Ashbery on Roussel.

***Jan.2008 update: I've since learned that John Calder has retired (was there an international day of mourning?), and his line has been purchased by Oneworld. Their statement: "Oneworld Classics is delighted to announce the acquisition of the legendary Calder Publications list – which includes works by Beckett, Céline, Artaud, Duras, Trocchi, Barker, Ionesco and Robbe-Grillet, among many others – and the Calder Bookshop on The Cut, near Waterloo, famous for its eclectic events programme."

Start flooding them with requests for Locus Solus.

Raymond Roussel postcard

I'm glad I wound up with this postcard for Mark Ford's book Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (foreword by John Ashbery / Cornell University Press). The book has apparently been remaindered, because it's selling for $5 on Amazon (I think I paid $30 a few years ago). I imagine this will scare publishers off from making more books like it.