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Title: Banquet Years by Roger Shattuck ISBN: 0-394-70415-0 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 June, 1968 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.56 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Pleasures of Art and Pataphysics
Comment: Since encountering this wonderful and fascinating book during my first year in college, I have felt its influence in many parts of my life. My nickname shows the influence of Alfred Jarry and his Dr. Faustroll, even though I often identify more with the character Panmuphle. Just for introducing and explaining Jarry, Roger Shattuck's book is worth a good look. Yet another phenomenon that is more complex than its surface first suggests -- the painting of Henri Rousseau -- becomes better understood and more deeply appreciated through Shattuck's chapters on art in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. He certainly educated and influenced my own artistic preferences. And there is more, on poetry and music, but enough said. This is a book of enduring value.
Rating: 4
Summary: Take Your Pick
Comment: This is a good book to rummage around in and to pick through, depending on your interests. The book has a strange kind of ebb and flow to it, alternating between straightforward biographical information, entertaining and easily comprehensible, and some very difficult philosophical sections on what these four disparate people were trying to achieve in their work. The book is very good but in some ways doesn't quite hold together because of the alternating style. And, quite honestly, in some of the analytical sections I sometimes wasn't sure what Mr. Shattuck was saying! If you want something that is entertaining but also very thoughtful without lapsing into the obscure you might want to try David Sweetman's "Explosive Acts" instead. That book seems to me to be more comprehensive and to give you a better feel for the times. Shattuck's book is more narrow in focus. A big drawback for me is that I have never heard the music of Erik Satie. As far as I know it is unavailable. This makes it a little tough to follow Mr. Shattuck's analysis of the music. So, "The Banquet Years" has got a lot of rich, dense prose but you'll need to beware if you are watching your intellectual weight!
Rating: 5
Summary: Essential Life Style Guide
Comment: I first came across this book when assigned it in college, and I return to it every few years. I found this a bracing book when I first read it and still to this day. Anyone who thinks Andy Kaufman was the first person to cross the line of performance art into life should read the section on Alfred Jarry. Indeed at a certain point Jarry became irretrievably blurred with his creation Pere Ubu (whom he took to "impersonating" in real life to an extent that must have been quite a trial to his friends). Yet there is something very moving and affirming about the often tragic story presented here. Jarry lived in a half sized room and became a chronic drunk yet he retained an impeccable dignity despite feeling trapped in a savage and absurd world. His last words were for a request for a toothpick. Jarry returned the insult of life with perfect poise.
The other portraits are equally incisive, the Satie portrait particulary haunting (its hard to listen to his music without thinking of the tiny room he lived in and never let another sole visit during his lifetime).
Shattuck gives the historical background that gives you fascinating insight into the social/cultural conditions behind the emergence of what have to be considered highly idiosyncratic artists.
For anyone with bohemian inclinations or posturings this book is essential, perhaps making your own little room shine with a little solidarity for those who have trod before you...
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Title: Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness (Kodansha Globe) by David Joseph Weeks, Jamie James, Philip Turner ISBN: 1568361564 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Selected Poems of T'Ao Ch'Ien by T'Ao Ch'Ien, David Hinton, Tao Chien, Ch'ien T'Ao, Qian Tao ISBN: 1556590563 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press Pub. Date: May, 1993 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: A Giacometti Portrait by James Lord ISBN: 0374515735 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1980 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Dreams of Terror and Death : The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft by H. P. Lovecraft ISBN: 0345384210 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 11 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson ISBN: 0486277909 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 13 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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