Raymond Roussel, one of the most outlandishly compelling literary
figures of modern times, died in mysterious circumstances at the
age of fifty-six in 1933. The story Mark Ford tells about Roussel's
life and work is at once captivating, heartbreaking, and almost
beyond belief. Could even Proust or Nabokov have invented a
character as strange and memorable as the exquisite dandy and
graphomaniac this book brings to life?
Roussel's poetry, novels, and plays influenced the work of many
well-known writers and artists: Jean Cocteau found in him "genius
in its pure state", while Salvador Dali, who died with a copy of
Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique on his beside table, believed him
to be one of France's greatest writers ever. Edmond Rostand, Marcel
Duchamp, Andre Breton, Michel Foucault, and Alain Robbe-Grillet all
testified to the power of his unique imagination.
By any standards, Roussel led an extraordinary life.
Tremendously wealthy, he took two world tours during which he
hardly left his hotel rooms. He never wore his clothes more than
twice, and generally avoided conversation because he dreaded that
it might turn morbid. Ford, himself a poet, traces the evolution of
Roussel's bizarre compositional methods and describes the
idiosyncrasies of a life structured as obsessively as Roussel
structured his writing.
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