The secret art of Antonin Artaud /

Surrealist Andr‚ Breton extolled Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), poet, playwright, artist, and theater theoretician, "for his passionate, heroic, negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive." Artaud struggled with mental illness and drug addiction and was in and out of mental institutions all of his life. Here, Caws (English, French, and comparative literature, CUNY) ably translates two thought-provoking essays on Artaud into English for the first time. Th‚venin, editor of most of Artaud's work, provides a graphic description and analysis of his disturbing drawings and paintings in her essay "The Search for the Lost World." In "To Unsense the Subjectile," Derrida, deconstruction's principal proponent, examines the subjectile in Artaud's work, what lies beneath or that which "refuses to be dominated by the writing process." Though it will have little appeal to a broader circle of readers, this short book will be extremely useful for scholars of the avant-garde, particularly those who are interested in Artaud.ÄRobert T. Ivey, Univ. of Memphis (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.