4 Dada Suicides: Selected Texts of Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma & Jacques Vache (Anti-Classics of Dada) [Paperback]

Jacques Rigaut (Author), Julien Torma (Author), Jacques Vache (Author), Arthur Cravan (Author, Editor), Roger Conover (Editor), Terry J. Hale (Editor), Paul Lenti (Editor), Iain White (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Anti-Classics of Dada | Publication Date: June 1995

4 "writers" on the fringe of 1920s Paris Dada mvmt

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It is said of Cravan, the self-proclaimed poet and boxer, that he "put all of his genius into his life." All four of the writers here were, in a way, performance artists, with their art being their lives?complete with dramatic finale. Rigaut shot himself in the heart. Vache overdosed on opium, and both Cravan and Torma vanished without a trace. Which isn't to say their lives didn't influence Dada, the short-lived, professionally disruptive approach or the Surrealists who followed. None of the writers here was prolific: a result, no doubt, of short lives, wartime interruptions, the time and energy needed create personae and the difficulty involved in writing to suit a philosophy devoted to destroying art and literature. By and large, the choppy prose reveals the preoccupation with word games, undermining poetic norms and epater le bourgeois and is most valuable for the window it gives on the movement and its anti-art, freedom-at-all-costs inspiration. The works show a quirky, egocentric, tongue-in-cheek style, the kind that, by the sheer force of its outrage, created a new way of looking at the world and defined a literary era.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 269 pages
• Publisher: Atlas Pr; First Edition edition (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0947757740
• ISBN-13: 978-0947757748
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 6.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,210,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now now, put that gun down Jack, April 7, 2005

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J from NY (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 4 Dada Suicides: Selected Texts of Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma & Jacques Vache (Anti-Classics of Dada) (Paperback)

"4 Dada Suicides" is a novelty of a book if ever there was one. Sad to say, since none of these guys would have wanted just to be novelties. We have Jacques Rigaut, the morbid dandy who, according to the man who employed him for awhile, was not quite the dadaist rebel he played at being; Arthur Cravan, perhaps the highlight of the book, with his intoxicated adventures and bitingly witty dismissal of just about everything! With Cravan, more so than Torma or Vache, one gets the sense of a man who could have been so much more than merely a scandalous figure who scribbled some opiated aphorisms. Torma is a trip too, however, his creepily composed and pale phantom haunting the black and white pages with telling lines:"Perfection is mediocrity. Only excess is beautiful". And we have the infamous Jacques Vache, goofing off to Breton about the state of his own health and his possible impending death (or not).

This is sort of an epitaph for four men who represented, in one way or another, the final "No" to values finally proved false. One wonders, though, while being awed by their enigmatic rebellion against society and art, whether they would have had anything to say had they not offed themselves so very quickly. THIS however is the most bizarre book I have yet to encounter from Atlas Press, and that's saying something. Beyond a must read, the ever sharpening sense of the edge and the immediacy of our lives in the face of death makes this a must have, right now. Read it.