Adventures Of Telemachus, The [Paperback]

Louis Aragon (Author), Judd David Hubert (Translator), Renee Riese Hubert (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2004

This is the first paperback edition in English of one of the most important and entertaining works of Surrealist fiction. Aragon's 1922 novel boldly appropriates the title and plot of a didactic 17th-century epic, recounting the adventures of Odysseus' son Telemachus; but the moralistic underpinnings of the original are replaced by a Surrealist's dedication to the strange, the beautiful, and the erotic. Though a classic of Surrealism, this is not automatic writing; on the contrary, it is a wryly self-conscious book, full of the kinds of intertextual games associated with writers such as Borges and Calvino. As the Huberts comment in their Introduction, "Aragon did not have to liberate his mind through automatic exercises; but by mastering and playing with the narrative he succeeded in freeing himself from the constraints of mimeticism descend[ing] into the diabolical nirvana of dada."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Poet and novelist Aragon (1897-1982) helped launch the dada and surrealist movements. In Telemachus, written in 1922 and newly translated for this first English edition, he does an irreverent spoof of the 17th century moralist Fenelon, who rewrote Homeric epic as a guide for princes and schoolboys. Along with MentorMinerva in dragTelemachus quests for his father Ulysses, who is dawdling amorously on the way back from Troy. But where Fenelon warns against women, Aragon indulges Telemachus in the erotic delights offered by petulant nymphs Calypso and Eucharis. Minerva and Calypso have a lesbian interlude. An amusing sequence takes place in Neptune's underwater brothel. Instead of fleeing temptation by diving in the sea to seek wisdom on a distant shore, Aragon's Telemachus tastes pleasure and wrestles with his identity in the here-and-now of Calypso's isle. His final act is Aragon's invention. The highly academic introduction discusses Telemachus as a dada/surrealist document, with its fracturing of language and bourgeois values. Most non-specialist readers will skim over the novel's tortured talkiness, savoring Aragon's passages of sensuous lyricism, his playful tactics with myth and his obvious delight in the power of words.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

In this counter-novel, originally published in 1922, Aragon opposes his iconoclastic text to Fenelon's didactic 17th-century novel of the same title. The avant-garde hero lands at the erotic paradise of OgygiaCalypso's islandand his adventures are related with surreal, Dadaist brio: unexpected analogies, collage poetics, dream imagery, and verbal acrobatics exploiting paradox and contradiction. Translating such a text is fraught with difficulties, but this first translation overcomes the hurdle by providing an "impression" of the text "in keeping with that of the original" rather than a literal rendering. The result is most enjoyable reading, accompanied by an excellent introduction and helpful notes. Danielle Mihram, New York Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Exact Change (February 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878972235
• ISBN-13: 978-1878972231
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pre-surrealist masterpiece, June 20, 2000

By 

Chad A. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adventures Of Telemachus, The (Paperback)

Aragon demonstrates his involvement in the Paris DADA scene with this excellent proto-Surrealist work. In the tradition of Alfred Jarry, he presents an utterly fantastic tale full of wonderful nonsense and absurd wit. That Surrealism arose from DADA is evident in his juxtaposing of unrelated ideas and use of automatic writing techniques (the latter of which produces an effect similar to Breton's Magnetic Fields). If you like the work of Jarry, Schwitters, Tzara, and the like, then you will probably enjoy this.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ACTION PACKED!, December 23, 1999

By 

Marcus Aurelius (Lodi, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adventures Of Telemachus, The (Paperback)

SCARED FOR LIFE! Porn queen runs to ex-husband as lover is taken in by Po-Po. I was all washed up and there was a relentless wave of phone calls upon me when I found this book. A treatise on parisian intellectual theatrics, these adventures are an unbelievable example of how utterly likable surrealist pretensions can be. It is sure to cheer you up (even cures minor ailments).

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A difficult book to get into, September 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Adventures Of Telemachus, The (Paperback)

Man oh man, what a trial it was trying to get into this book. I'm normally a fan of surrealist writing (see my reviews of Breton's NADJA, Aragon's PARIS PEASANT and Carrington's THE HEARING TRUMPET) but TELEMACHUS seems to me to be a rather torturous exercise in literary gymnastics. I've been told that in this work Aragon pulls out all the stops as he uses every pun, metaphor and literary device available to rework and subvert French literary traditions. It doesn't seem to have come off too well in the translation though. The plot is very loosely based around the adventures of Telemachus, who is shipwrecked on a fantastical island with his androgynous Mentor. On the way he is tempted by the blandishments of Calypso and her nymphs. But that's about as much plot as you get. The narrative (if one can call it that) consists of sentences strung in a truly surrealist manner. Remember how the Parisian Surrealists were all enchanted by that one famous line by Lautreamont about the chance meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine? Well, in this work Aragon takes these surrealist juxtapositions to the extreme. The result is initially surprising and one cannot doubt the startling beauty of some of the images originally afforded by this technique, but when the entire book is written in this fashion, it gets very hard indeed. Not a good introduction to surrealist writing at all--in fact, it really put me off. Read it if you absolutely MUST.