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I really should have been the audience for this book, but I just couldn't help but think that he just wasn't that great of a writer. As I was working my way through it I found myself thinking that I'd rather be reading any of his contemporaries like Georges Bataille, Guillaume Apollinaire, Raymond Queneau, or Anton Artaud.
It's broken up into three parts. The first is Breton being an insufferable name-dropper. The whole first section reads like a poorly written live journal by a Williamsburg hipster from the aughts pointing out all the famous people that he knows and the edgy stuff he's into that you obviously haven't heard about yet. It was a chore to get through. It was written with disjointed open ended questions to give the perception that it was searching for something deep, but it didn't really offer any insight or reveal anything worthwhile to me other than who he was hanging out with.
The second section is a short obsessive "fling" with a woman who seemed to have better stories and ideas than he did. It was a better read because she was far more intriguing than he was. Breton was undoubtedly super successful at surrounding himself with inspired people, but I have to say I am not all that impressed by the man himself, this section just made him sound like a schmuck and/or a sucker. He was obsessed with the idea of this woman. Ignored his wife. Gave her a ton of money. Then became disenchanted by her because another man assaulted her.
The third section is a nicely written piece about Nadja as his muse. He seemed way more into his own inspiration by her than the woman herself. While he talks about her unfortunate turn, he doesn't do much other than rail at the system that she became embroiled in (including not visiting her to make sure she was ok). But hey, he immortalized her in his book, so who can complain about that kind of "exposure."
The guy traded on the ideas and talents of others (Jacques Vaché, Philippe Soupault, Yvan Goll). I kind of feel like this guy was more effective as a promotions guy and seemed like he was a positive influence to the male artists that he was friends with. His wives, who for me seemed to have more talent, got the short end of the stick and didn't benefit from his promotions, I guess they had to work to pay for his art and his bills.
For someone who's whole career was built on the surreal I was disappointed by how straightforward the prose was. It starts abstract revolving around wisps of ideas, but the imagery was missing through most of it, only to be substituted by some rather artless photographs (that he kind of apologized about at the end). I was hoping for a dreamlike fugue and instead it was a cerebral exercise in male obsession of what he wanted a woman to be, with only a couple lovely moments at the end. Eh.
It's broken up into three parts. The first is Breton being an insufferable name-dropper. The whole first section reads like a poorly written live journal by a Williamsburg hipster from the aughts pointing out all the famous people that he knows and the edgy stuff he's into that you obviously haven't heard about yet. It was a chore to get through. It was written with disjointed open ended questions to give the perception that it was searching for something deep, but it didn't really offer any insight or reveal anything worthwhile to me other than who he was hanging out with.
The second section is a short obsessive "fling" with a woman who seemed to have better stories and ideas than he did. It was a better read because she was far more intriguing than he was. Breton was undoubtedly super successful at surrounding himself with inspired people, but I have to say I am not all that impressed by the man himself, this section just made him sound like a schmuck and/or a sucker. He was obsessed with the idea of this woman. Ignored his wife. Gave her a ton of money. Then became disenchanted by her because another man assaulted her.
The third section is a nicely written piece about Nadja as his muse. He seemed way more into his own inspiration by her than the woman herself. While he talks about her unfortunate turn, he doesn't do much other than rail at the system that she became embroiled in (including not visiting her to make sure she was ok). But hey, he immortalized her in his book, so who can complain about that kind of "exposure."
The guy traded on the ideas and talents of others (Jacques Vaché, Philippe Soupault, Yvan Goll). I kind of feel like this guy was more effective as a promotions guy and seemed like he was a positive influence to the male artists that he was friends with. His wives, who for me seemed to have more talent, got the short end of the stick and didn't benefit from his promotions, I guess they had to work to pay for his art and his bills.
For someone who's whole career was built on the surreal I was disappointed by how straightforward the prose was. It starts abstract revolving around wisps of ideas, but the imagery was missing through most of it, only to be substituted by some rather artless photographs (that he kind of apologized about at the end). I was hoping for a dreamlike fugue and instead it was a cerebral exercise in male obsession of what he wanted a woman to be, with only a couple lovely moments at the end. Eh.