Paris Peasant [Paperback]

Louis Aragon (Author), Simon Watson Taylor (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2004

Paris Peasant (1926) is one of the central works of Surrealism, yet Exact Change's edition is the first U.S. publication of Simon Watson Taylor's authoritative translation, completed after consultations with the author. Unconventional in form--Aragon consciously avoided recognizable narration or character development--Paris Peasant is, in the author's words, "a mythology of the modern." The book uses the city of Paris as a stage or framework, and Aragon interweaves his text with images of related ephemera: café menus, maps, inscriptions on monuments and newspaper clippings. A detailed description of a Parisian arcade (nineteenth-century precursor to the mini-mall) and another of the Buttes-Chaumont park, are among the great set pieces within Aragon's swirling prose of philosophy, dream and satire. André Breton wrote of this work: "no one could have been a more astute detector of the unwonted in all its forms; no one else could have been carried away by such intoxicating reveries about a sort of secret life of the city. . . ."

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Exact Change (February 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878972103
• ISBN-13: 978-1878972101
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing read!, September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Paris Peasant (Paperback)

Often considered one of the definitive surrealist novels (along with Andre Breton's NADJA), Paris Peasant is an exhilarating read. Aragon takes us through a special guided tour of Paris--not the Paris as we know it with its Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks, but a Paris of crumbling arcades, dilapidated shopfronts and suburban parks. Aragon imbues the detritus of the city with poetry and magic, and shows us how the surrealist spirit lives in the outmoded structures of civilization. His ode to the Passage de l'Opera, at that time threatened by Baron Haussmann's plans for the redevelopment of the city, is a tacit challenge to the rapaciousness of capitalism and modernization, with its quest for the ever-new and its destruction of the past. Every urbanite will find something to identify with in this marvellous portrait of Paris in the 1920s.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ideal English Edition, June 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Paris Peasant (Paperback)

This new edition of a scare work is welcome not only for the exposure it provides to Aragon and his work (if it can be called that), but for the loving manner in which it is produced. From the covers to the typeface to the translation of newspaper column margins, editor Damon Krukowski and designer Naomi Yang, known more for their musical than literary endevours, have brought attention to the smallest detail, the kind of attention that is the substance of the text itself. The translation, from a 1971 edition, flows perfectly; just alien enough from standard English to draw attention to Aragon's linguistic differences, but not a characature of French style. It would be hard to imagine a better English edition of this work. James L. Wolf

12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as Nadja, Les Champs Magnetiques, et al., November 23, 2005

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paris Peasant (Paperback)

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (Gallimard, 1926)

Aragon, one of the people at the core of the dada, and later the surrealist, movements in France, is a fantastic poet, like most of them were. However, I'm finding, as I move out to explore the prose of the movements after twenty years of enjoying (and being influenced by) the poetry, that most of them were far better poets than they were novelists. There are exceptions, of course (Rene Daumal's unfinished Mount Analogue and Breton/Eluard's Les Champs Magnetiques both made my best-reads-of-the-year list in the early nineties), but Paris Peasant isn't one of them.

The book's not bad, for what it is, but it could have been so much more. It encompasses three prose works of Aragon's, two of which seem to be that curious mixture of fiction and nonfiction which has become so popular in recent years, and the third of which is indescribable by normal means other than to say it's prose. The first is a travelogue of sorts, a kind of gutter-level guidebook to an area of Paris that most tourists likely stayed well away from. At a hundred twelve pages, it's by far the longest piece in the book. It's also written in almost stream-of-consciousness style, with no real attempt at coherence or flow, making it a more difficult read than it needed to be. The second details an evening Aragon spent with Breton and Marcel Noll strolling through Paris; it's the strongest of the three, the only one where Aragon's long diversions (which are likely to put one in mind of James or Joyce, though Aragon lacks the command of language of either; that, however, could easily be the fault of the translator rather than Aragon himself) really seem as if they're contributing to the piece, rather than distracting. The third, "The Peasant's Dream," doesn't really seem to fit into the short story or memoir categories; it's tempting to hang the godawful "flash fiction" moniker on it, or it would be were it not fifteen pages long. It's not bad, really, but it's not all that great, either; it's just there.

A minor, at best, work in the surrealist catalogue. There are many other things that belong in your collection before you set your sights on this one. ** ½