Pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions, of laws governing exceptions and of the laws describing the universe supplementary to this one. Alfred Jarry's posthumous novel, "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician," first appeared in 1911, and over the next 100 years, his pataphysical supersession of metaphysics would influence everyone from Marcel Duchamp and Boris Vian to Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard. In 1948 in Paris, a group of writers and thinkers would found the College of 'Pataphysics, still going strong today. The iconoclastic Rene Daumal was the first to elaborate upon Jarry's unique and humorous philosophy. Though Daumal is better known for his unfinished novel "Mount Analogue" and his refusal to be adopted by the Surrealist movement, this newly translated volume of writings offers a glimpse of often overlooked Daumal: Daumal the pataphysician. "Pataphysical Essays" collects Daumal's overtly pataphysical writings from 1929 to 1941, from his landmark exposition on pataphysics and laughter to his late essay, "The Pataphysics of Ghosts." Daumal's "Treatise on Patagrams" offers the reader everything from a recipe for the disintegration of a photographer to instructions on how to drill a fount of knowledge in a public urinal. This volume also includes Daumal's column for the "Nouvelle Revue Francaise," "Pataphysics This Month." Reading like a deranged encyclopedia, "Pataphysics This Month" describes a new mythology for the field of science, and amply demonstrates that the twentieth century had been a distinctly pataphysical era.

Both an acidic critique of society and a manual for learning how to think for oneself, this novel explores the abyss of the materialistic world and presents an initiatory journey in three parts. In the first, the narrator finds himself in an underworld full of drunks and eccentrics; he then ascends to a supposedly higher rung of society, populated by phony artists, politicians, and scientists who live in their artificial paradises with their false idols. Last of all is the awakening, the transformation into a new reality after getting to know himself better, rejecting the vicious cycles of alcohol and false wisdom. "Una acida critica de la sociedad y a la misma vez un manual para aprender a pensar, esta novela explora los abismos del mundo materialista y presentan viaje iniciatico dividido en tres etapas. En la primera, el narrador se encuentra en un inframundo lleno de borrachos y personajes extravagantes; asciende despues a un peldano y que superior de la sociedad, poblado por farsantes del arte, de la politica y de la ciencia que viven en paraisos artificiales con sus falsos dioses. Finalmente viene el despertar, la transformacion hacia una nueva realidad luego de conocerse mejor, rechazando los circulos viciosos del alcohol y de la falsa sabiduria."