50: A Celebration Of Sun & Moon

by Douglas Messerli (Editor)

50 world authors, previously unpublished works

570 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

Douglas Messerli (born May 30, 1947) is an American writer, professor, and publisher based in Los Angeles, California. In 1976, he started Sun & Moon, a magazine of art and literature, which became Sun & Moon press, and later Green Integer press. He has taught at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are things that I admire about 50: A Celebration of Sun & Moon Classics. But there's a big difference between admiration and enjoyment. I'd never heard of the publisher before and I discovered they publish modernist literature, a lot of which has been translated from authors across Europe. I admire the amount of work it must have taken to compile such a collection and how Sun & Moon Press gives a platform to obscure styles of literature. I also found it interesting that there are a number of works that are part of 20th century avant garde art movements...in the past, I've often wondered what, exactly, Surrealist, Dadaist, or Futurist writing would look like. Now I know.

It took me almost five months to get through this beast of a book. There's a certain level of intellectual satisfaction one can get from reading this book, but most of the stories read like formal exercises and don't have much of a point. Included in this volume are short biographies of each of the fifty featured authors. My favourite was this gem, which, although unique to this author's purpose, seems to sum up how I felt about the majority of 50: A Celebration: "[Vitezslav] Nezval sought to 'unveil reality' by making the poem 'strange' and by creating 'at the expense of logic' (189). Or perhaps this excerpt from Charles Bernstein's "The Republic of Reality":

This line is stripped of emotion.
This line is no more than an
illustration of a European
theory. This line is bereft
of a subject. This line
has no reference apart
from its context in
this line. This line
is only about itself.
This line has no meaning:
its words are imaginary

(222)

There are few stories/poems that I actually enjoyed reading: "Diabolo: A Poem of the Night" by Vitezslav Nezval, "Lightland" by Velimir Khlebnikov, "The Dead Come Back to Life" by Tom la Farge, "To Read or to Re-Read" by Juan Goytisolo, "Pitcher, with Swans" by Norberto Luis Romero, "Certain Mysteries Concerning Father" by Marianne Hauser, "Children of Claye" by Raymond Queneau, and "A Dog Tries to Kiss the Sky" by Kier Peters.

[Christina knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

i just kind of bought this because it was on sale as a last copy and subsequently $5, about all i could afford. plus, i was in the mood for some celine and there was some celine to be found between its pages. and so much more. this is totally good. this publishing house looks pretty good too! i'd strongly recommend picking this up. it is a very nice anthology.

[Kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm partial to this anthology of modernist writing, which includes my translation of Paul Snoek's "Bleeding like an echo," a cycle of poems from his book Richelieu.