Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Mark Ford is by profession a poet, and it would take a poet to do justice to the biography of such an idiosyncratic, experimental, obsessive, overlooked dandy as Roussel. Roussel was indeed an odd figure: he never wore his clothes more than once, he rarely left his hotel when on vacation, and he spent much of his life with his mother. But his personal and literary style were influential for many experimental arists including Alain Robbe-Grillet, André Breton, and Foucault, who early in his career reveled in Roussel's 'lovely curiosity' and his 'form of beauty.' Ford does a fine job of bringing out Roussel's eccentricity; thanks to this biography, Roussel's work might become a little less neglected." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Raymond Roussel, one of the most outlandishly compelling literary figures of modern times, died in mysterious circumstances at the age of fifty-six in 1933. The story Mark Ford tells about Roussel's life and work is at once captivating, heartbreaking, and almost beyond belief. Could even Proust or Nabokov have invented a character as strange and memorable as the exquisite dandy and graphomaniac this book brings to life?Roussel's poetry, novels, and plays influenced the work of many well-known writers and artists: Jean Cocteau found in him "genius in its pure state," while Salvador Dali, who died with a copy of Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique on his bedside table, believed him to be one of France's greatest writers ever. Edmond Rostand, Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, Michel Foucault, and Alain Robbe-Grillet all testified to the power of his unique imagination.By any standards, Roussel led an extraordinary life. Tremendously wealthy, he took two world tours during which he hardly left his hotel rooms. He never wore his clothes more than twice, and generally avoided conversation because he dreaded that it might turn morbid. Ford, himself a poet, traces the evolution of Roussel's bizarre compositional methods and describes the idiosyncrasies of a life structured as obsessively as Roussel structured his writing.