BOOK 231: PARIS PEASANT: LOUIS ARAGON

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: cafe 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. Andre 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. . . .-

(From Goodreads)

MY VERDICT: I loved some parts of this book more than others. The section where a small area of Paris is described in great detail from the shops, to the owners, to the rooms and the people that stay there. It reminded me of Georges Perec’s Life A User's Manual which I loved, if you like these kind of books then I would recommend this one to you. Also if you have any interest in old Paris.