Reality's Restore Button
A review by John-Ivan Palmer
E ver want to run naked across a convention floor, pie-hit a bishop, or show up at a job interview in a firecracker hat, screaming poetry until security guards haul you away? Andrei Codrescu's The Posthuman Dada Guide may not be the literal how-to that the title implies, but it will definitely give you the historical and philosophical basis you need to justify a stunt to your cell mates while the authorities figure out what to do with you. The book's subtitle, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess, more accurately describes the book's central theme; it refers to an allegorical game, played in 1916 at the Cafe de la Terrasse in Zurich, between two immensely influential figures in 20th-century intellectual history -- a Jewish-Romanian poet and a Russian political fanatic. With Tzara the Great Scoffer and Lenin the Great Enforcer, it's like Kokopeli meets Big Brother. On the century's chessboard of death, Tzara and his affiliates validate themselves by "transcendent egress" (deranged buffoonery...
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[Editor's note: This review contains explicit language which may be offensive to some readers. Please be advised.]
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