The Supermale

by Alfred Jarry, Ralph Gladstone (Translator), Barbara Wright (Translator & Introduction)

Jarry's legendary novel is a comical celebration of erotic prowess in the machine age

With the very first word of his famous play Ubu Roi--"Shite!"--Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) threw down his challenge to literature, permanently altering its course thereafter. Jarry's equally revolutionary novels form the cornerstones of a science he named "Pataphysics," a method for the rational disordering of rationality that has influenced countless subsequent artists and writers, from Marcel Duchamp to Wim Delvoye, André Breton to J.G. Ballard. The Supermale elaborates a carnal Pataphysics: André Marcueil, gentleman and scientist, believes that human energy has no limits, and demonstrates his belief by undertaking a 10,000-mile bicycle race with a locomotive, followed by an indefinite bout of lovemaking. After 82 acts of intercourse, doctors finally hook him up to a machine, with whom he merges in the book's--and the Supermale's--final climax. Like a mock Jules Verne, Jarry describes these deranged proceedings in a calm prose, crisply rendered here by Barbara Wright, one of French literature's finest translators.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Literature, Science Fiction, Novels, 20th Century

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.
Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (i.e. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", has been translated into English as "Pshit!", "Shitteth!", "Shittr!", "Shikt!", "Shrit!" and "Pschitt!"), he invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alfred Jarry transfers the setting of his absurdist black comedy The Supermale twenty years ahead in time – to him the future seems to be even more absurd than the present…

“The act of love is of no importance, since it can be performed indefinitely.”
All eyes were turned upon the perpetrator of this absurdity.

Then, as some dubious proof of the fantastic sexual potency, an apocryphal labour of Hercules is recalled…

“In the Labors of Hercules,” said the actress, “King Lysius offers the hero his thirty virgin daughters for a single night…”

Everything in the world is relative: Adam and Eve were evicted from the paradise for a single amateurish coition while the raping of the thirty virgins by the mythological hero is considered to be a feat…
André Marcueil – a fabulous supermale of the tale – naively believes in unlimited human capabilities so even the Adventures of Baron Munchausen to him ring true…

“Gentlemen,” said André Marcueil in a loud and ceremonious voice, “I believe that Colonel Baron Munchausen accomplished all that he claimed, and more.”

So he earnestly reasons that he can easily outshine Heracles and other libidinous colossuses in their sexual valour… At last his megalomaniac dream comes to pass…

They continued, and each embrace was a port of call in a different land where they always discovered something, and always something better.

Everything in nature submits to the law of procreation.

[Carloesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leggere questo pur breve romanzetto, surreale e grottesco, è una vera delizia. Jarry è un grande. Con un’eleganza di stile e un taglio sorprendentemente ironico e moderno (viene scritto nel 1901, anche se è ambientato nel 1920) precorre il futurismo, il dadaismo, il surrealismo e il teatro dell’assurdo (Tzara, Bretòn, Artaud, Ionesco, Beckett, e altri fino a Queneau gli debbono molto), movimenti culturali che stanno per nascere o che si affermeranno solo dopo la sua prematura scomparsa (1907), e riesce a trattare con leggerezza e disincanto le trasformazioni del mondo occidentale verso la modernità, l’affermarsi delle tecnologie, la disumanizzazione dell’uomo, il suo superamento verso qualcosa di Nietzchianamente superumano che alla fine si rivelerà assurdamente privo di senso .
Nel vuoto creatosi dalla morte degli dei (o dalla loro indifferenza) anche la tecnica mostra i propri limiti. L’eternità, l’infinito forse sono solo concetti astratti, e anche il supermaschio, il superuomo , e l’energia illimitata da poter sfruttare a proprio piacimento non sono che nuovi miti, e l’uomo è sempre più solo nell'universo ancora più complesso e incomprensibile.
Insomma, divertente, scoppiettante e genialmente (amaramente) profondo.
Come non assegnare almeno 4 stelline?

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absurd, provocative and ultimately tragic this book is also funny in parts. Some ideas I enjoyed: that human potential is limitless but technology can harness it; that God is created by mankind in its image; and that a diet of raw mutton is what superhumans eat. There is a crazy bicycle race in this book that is very much a set piece for the potential of human powered technology that flows like a surreal dream (with dreamlike elements thrown in: a dead guy being "trained" to keep cadence with the rest of the cycle machine and of course there's a feeble minded dwarf on the bike. Can't have a surrealistic episode without a feeble minded dwarf as David Lynch learned 80 years later).
Our Supermale's superiority is measured, along with a few other things, by his sexual prowess. But I'm afraid that Jarry implies that quantity (as in the number of times our guy can get it up in a row) is a better measure than quality; Supermale kisses and caresses his lover all over tenderly only AFTER he thinks she has died. It's something he never thought to do before...maybe not so super to some partners, eh? Ahead of its time in many ways, Supermale shows its contemporaneous age in its attitude toward women, nonwhite races and class. Still, an entertaining little read and probably one of the very first examples of what could be described as a cyborg in literature.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

“Jarry’s Surmâle kicks Nietzsche’s Übermensch for a distance of 10,000k.” --Worshipful Master

“Not to be messed with, this Surmâle.” --Deputy Grand Master

“Also not for the queazy.” --Grand Chancellor

“Perpetual Motion? You’ve found it.” --Grand Registrar

“More enduring than anything Theophrastus ever witnessed.” --Grand Superintendent of Works

“More conventional than the average Jarry, but for all that we’re still looking at a frighteningly and offensively entertaining tale.” --Grand Sword Bearer

“1001 nights in 24 hours?” --Grand Pursuivant

“Don’t let that title fool you. It’s just fiction.” --Grand Standard Bearer

[amapola · Rating 4 out of 5]

"L'amore è un atto senza importanza, perché lo si può fare all'infinito".
Tutti gli sguardi si fissarono su colui che aveva appena pronunciato una simile assurdità.

Ellen Elson è guarita e si è sposata.
Ha imposto una sola clausola all'accettazione di un marito: che egli mantenesse il suo amore nei saggi limiti delle forze umane…
Trovarlo è stato... “appena un gioco”.
Essa ha fatto sostituire, da un abile gioielliere, alla grossa perla di un anello che porta fedelmente, una delle lacrime solide del Supermaschio".

Tra queste due frasi è racchiusa la storia di André Marcueil, il piccolo uomo Supermaschio: la corsa in bicicletta, la sfida contro il treno, la forza amorosa dell’indiano, la prorompente fisicità degli amplessi per la scommessa di Teofrasto… un mondo surreale che provoca il riso, lo stupore. E infine la tragedia. Inevitabile.
Un libro stravagante, proprio come il suo autore. Da applausi.

Alfred Jarry


Se vi siete incuriositi vi invito a leggere la recensione di Carloesse (infinitamente migliore del mio commento), che mi ha convinta ad avvicinarmi a Jarry. Gliene sono grata.

https://youtu.be/iwYMaIf0izo

[Ed Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently greatly enjoyed Ubu enchaîné, which has an absurd humor that still holds up for me even after all these years. I wanted to next try Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician: A Neo-Scientific Novel, but this book was more easily available, so I tried it instead.

Mostly it fails for me. The main story is about a guy trying to figure out whether a story he heard about a guy having sex with 70 women in one night is possible. There are quotations, often in untranslated Latin, from philosophers about this subject. So maybe this is relating to some ancient question, but I know nothing about whatever it is referring to. I was bored.

But the middle section of this book, which could be extracted and stand alone as a short story, is more interesting. It concerns a nightmarish 10,000 mile bicycle race by five men on a bicycle-built-for-five. Their pants are stuffed full of dirt so that they can relieve themselves in it without needing to stop. They eat nothing but "Perpetual Motion Food", which is mostly alcohol. One of them dies during the race, but since their legs are linked together by metal bars, the others continue, fighting rigor mortis now in addition to the rest. Utterly absurd, but works well as a literary nightmare.

I suspect this was an inspiration for "Funnyway", the first published story by Serge Brussolo (sometimes called the French Steven King because he is equally prolific). While published as SF, and winning SF awards, "Funnyway" is closer in my mind to horror or "weird" fiction, concerning a bicycle race that seems to be a form of torture. It is one of the very few Brussolo stories that has been translated to English, and you can read it here. (Likewise, this novel could be called SF because it was written in 1902 but set in 1920, and it involves a science of sorts, but it really is something different.)

Jarry was definitely gifted, and influential, but this novel doesn't quite work for me.

I have no complaints about the translation by Barbara Wright.

[Andrew]

Alfred Jarry's "The Gigachad." OK, joke made, let's move on.

Jarry's style is a very early 20th Century French one -- akin to similar experiments by people like Andre Breton and Blaise Cendrars -- with a lot of whimsy pronounced with an H. There's a lot of commentary on what the Victorian positivist faith in human perfectibility through technology means, and it is fascinating, but it's secondary to the wHimsy, for what it's worth.

[James Tingle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is pretty weird to say the least, but it's also really fun to read as you revel in the surreal adventures and the mad imagery that Jarry conjures up. A hard book to adequately describe but very interesting and trippy and always supremely inventive.
A lot of people will probably hate it, but the open minded in search of something original will most likely enjoy it and appreciate a writer who did things very much his own way.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jarry’s single greatest accomplishment. Oh, the frivolity. I said frivolity!

[Lise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex, alcohol and bicycles. I love this book!

[Mandel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is the weakest people who are the most concerned - in imagination - with physical exploits" (p.3).

As with anything by Jarry, this novel verges on the uncategorizable. With its 10,000 mile bicycle race, and an ending reminiscent of Frankenstein's, it often seems like science fiction - a steampunk proto-cyborg novel. (Jarry was, after all, an early admirer of Verne and Wells.) With its superhuman protagonist who hides in the guise of a pale, effete weakling, it sometimes seems like a spoof of superhero narratives before the genre even existed.

On this reading, though - I'd read it first in college, many years ago - I couldn't help but see The Supermale as a satire of what we'd nowadays call toxic masculinity - or, more generally, of the ridiculous hubris of western culture. The novel is devoted to exploring the outlandish claim of its main character - Andre Mercueil, who becomes the titular 'supermale' - that human power has absolutely no limits. The book's three major set pieces - the opening debate about the theoretical limits of male sexual prowess, the above-mentioned bicycle race, and then the two-day sexual marathon between Andre and Ellen - are all bizarre, hilarious, and wild in the extreme, and its ending is strangely tragic. If you didn't know it was 120 years old, you could easily have guessed it was the product of a mind raised on Looney Toons, Adult Swim, and Rick and Morty. But no, it was written in 1902 - before surrealism, before science fiction came into its own, before postmodernism, before any of it. Jarry was sui generis.

[Matthew DeCostanza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mysterious stranger defies authority, wins races and woos damsels in this strange vision of a 1920 Paris.

Contained in this short novel are shades of Jules Verne, Frankenstein's Monster, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, essentially what is a primer of all early science fiction. And, as is so typical of Jarry, the author synthesizes this already oddball cocktail of influences with the literary fashions of the day: melodramatic life-and-death romance in the style of Tolstoy or Austen, scenes depicting the superficial foibles of high society, and a half-educated parlance of the antiquated scientific and philosophic fascinations of the time are a few that meet his gaze.

Athough Jarry was well-versed in the classics his prose did not match that of his heroes. An issue I had constantly was with his poor grasp of location; At times I had to turn a few pages back to re-adjust my impression of the characters' surroundings, as this vital information was often of secondary importance to the neverending stream of flowery but stilted prose. There was, however, room for some swooningly romantic diction, not to mention some raunchy-by-today's-standards descriptions of sex: "as their chests separated a loud and wet suction sound resonated throughout the room." Yikes!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...SCIENCE with a capital SCYTHE"

The Supermale’s
solid tear is worn

in the ring like a
perpetual heart

of both the machine
and the woman

who fell in love
with the man

'shadow, neither
immaterially nor

infinitely but
indefinitely, a god-

-dess embracing
past light records

in proximity to
the other starlike

world they create—
the department

of the impossible—
I, too, adore

[João Moura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jarry escreve como se escorressem sonhos pela sua caneta. Surreal, fantástica, mirabolante, filosófica, poética, a escrita de Jarry dá mil voltas ao leitor e deixa-o pendurado no tecto sem saber bem o que leu...muito bom, portanto...

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Jarry's major novel, to be read along with the Gestures and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll. Between the two you will revel in the world of pataphysics.

[Living Belowtheclouds · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am glad that most people like this book, but to me it is a bunch of nonsense.

[Felipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

O Supermacho — Romance Moderno, livro lançado em 1902 pelo absolutamente descompensado e genial Afred Jarry (pai das peças de Ubu, que inclusive dão nome a editora), que narra os descaminhos e desventuras de um rapaz que tem um órgão sexual descomunal e um vigor sexual mítico. Reiterando: romance lançado em 1902 sobre um jovem abastado que tem um pau gigantesco e consegue foder uma infinidade de vezes em sequência. 1902.

Jarry, de dimensões surrealistas e tido como grande precursor do dadaísmo, era mais reconhecido como dramaturgo, e trata também o romance como um artefato teatral. Os cortes de Supermacho são secos, os espaços são bem delineados, a progressão ocorre sem maiores sobressaltos que não aqueles verbalizados pelos próprios personagens no mundo quase fantástico que habitam, e no geral, ainda que esse mundo exale um aroma futurista, suas vibrações são quase barrocas.

Se você pega nesse livro sem qualquer compromisso de compreendê-lo a fundo, a leitura se torna bastante divertida, e se a abordagem é mais profunda, revela-se um vigor e inventividade literárias muito prazerosos para um leitor -só não recomendo ficar indeciso entre esses dois extremos.

Em tempo: o projeto gráfico da Ubu para esse livro é toda uma obra de arte à parte. As ilustrações em carimbo de Andrés Sandoval, o tom grave da diagramação que em muito remete à Bauhaus e às escolas soviéticas, o corte redondo e a encadernação ampla, as folhas brancas -que nesse caso fazem bastante sentido-, enfim; desses casos em que o objeto livro se faz muito difícil de substituir.

[M I R I A M · Rating 1 out of 5]

Esta es una reseña a medias porque he abandonado su lectura quedando algo menos de la mitad del libro. No es para mi sin ningún tipo de duda...
Le tenía muuuuchas ganas pero de verdad que pasaba las páginas, releía frases y no entendía nada.
Llegué a mirar todas las reseñas de él aquí, en Goodreads, Babelio y Amazon porque no daba crédito a tantas páginas surrealistas. Es absurdo, sí. Y si miráis reseñas es algo que refleja mucha gente junto con hilarante, y para algunos esto es una genialidad y para otros un sinsentido. Soy de los segundos 🙋🏻‍♀️

Eres oyente de conversaciones de hombres sobre sexo, lees sobre una competición de bicicletas contra una locomotora, sobre sustituir el agua por alcohol... Solo a grandes rasgos del medio libro que he leído.
Está lleno de metáforas que algunas puedes intuir 😒 a base de releerlas y otras te quedas un poco igual.
Quizás se entienda más y se pille el sentido en el resto de páginas, no sé, pero para mi era un suplicio tener que cogerlo para leer, así que hasta aquí llegó.

Si le dais una oportunidad a lo mejor vosotros leéis entre líneas mejor que yo y lo disfrutáis. En ese caso os pido por favor que me lo contéis, ya por curiosidad.

[Eva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ett absurt hopkok, som är litteraturhistoriskt intressant ur flera aspekter, även om jag inte roas av att läsa boken i sig.

Störst behållning har jag av mittenavsnittet, 'Loppet på tiotusen engelska mil', där fem män på en femmannacykel, tävlar mot ett snälltåg. Det intressanta är den detaljrika beskrivningen av det mycket snabba förloppet, vilket ger en sorts filmisk ultrarapid-kvalitet av de bilder den skapar åt mig. Beskrivningen av de fem männen, fastspända på sin femmannacykel gör att ekipaget i sig liknar ett lok med de helt synkront snurrande fem hjulen, och sägs överskrida 300 km/tim. Hur snabbt gick tågen i slutet av 1800-talet?

Redan i inledningen konstateras att människan har skapat Gud, inte tvärtom. Jarrys huvudkaraktär, André Marceuil, är övermänsklig, vare sig han cyklar eller utövar erotik, är han mer maskin än människa. Romanen tilldrar sig 1920, och är en sorts tidig Science-Fiction / framtidshistoria, och känns som en en inledning till den robot-romantik som blev så viktig i senare SF-filmer.

[Tom Edling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vad man i folkmun kallar ”intelectual snobbery” eller så är jag helt enkelt inte tillräckligt klipsk än för att riktigt greppa boken.

Jag tycker om den, den var charmig, men den var också svårläst. Dels för att den är skriven i långa jobbiga meningar som är svåra att hänga med i, där information ges mellan kommatecken istället för i nya meningar. Dels för att det är en filosofisk bok där varje mening skrivits med sina egna gömda detaljer, så man måste fokusera otroligt för att hänga med. Sen går det också att diskutera om det verkligen är en bok om erotik... Kanske år 1902 men inte enligt dagens standard.

Om jag läser om den om några år kanske jag får mig en bättre helhetsbild av verket.

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een van de meest toegankelijke romans van Jarry. Soms erg grappig, geniaal, banaal of flauw, maar nooit vervelend. Verouderde vertaling van Gerrit Komrij. Slordige uitgave, met maar liefst 3 dt-fouten.

[Andrea Cornaggia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non si può riassumere o valutare questo romanzo in qualche riga, perciò lo faccio con tre lettere, una sillaba e una parola, preferibilmente in maiuscolo: WOW!

[Clara Prizont · Rating 2 out of 5]

i finished this book on saturday and already forgot what it was about

[Wan Feng An · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like Florida man but in book form. The bike race was the only good part, the rest was just bougie frenchies monologuing. Skip all that and just read the part where 5 men are stapled together and race a train.

[Cheryl Anne Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our protagonist Andre Marcueil had grand ideas...so grand that his "Everyday ordinariness became extraordinary."

Andre firmly believes that human capacity has no limits. He believed it so fervently that he would risk his life in a ten-thousand mile race with a steam locomotive at speeds greater than 300 miles per hour with no rest and no sustenance, save the cubes of perpetual motion food, then to copulate with the same woman 82 times in twenty-four hours, and to recharge an electric chair designed to produce love.

Braggadocio? Maybe, or maybe his futuristic ideas held something of substance, something an ordinary mind could not possibly grasp hold of. Andrew Marcueil - Hercules, Frankenstein, or Supermale?

The fusion of man and machine is not that uncommon a theme, but Jarry takes our protagonist one step further into the surreal, envisioning a better human race, where the age old philosophies of man are not only limited but are pointless idiocies. The self-inflicted trials and tribulations our protagonist endures in this story are beyond reason and ultimately absurd. But for all the absurdity, it is the story of a man's search for himself - a better self. 1920, a time of great change in the world, the dawn of the modern age, Jarry brings into question how humans can take the manifestations of their minds and thrust them into reality, and yet, with all the trinkets and machines our genius minds invent, none of them seem to better us as people.

Above all, discretely woven into this tale is a love story, a heart wrenching sad love story. And what of love? Could someone as cruel and heartless as our protagonist actually love? Love being something beyond infinite and ungraspable - a shadow. "The act of love is of no importance, since if can be performed indefinitely." For our protagonist, love is an absurdity...a sentiment...not quite and act...more of an enfeebled sensation. In order find love, one must understand God. Would Andre ever understand...could he understand? Could he see God in himself, even though his egotistical mania filled him with the belief that he actually was God. Even Jarry himself had his doubts: "If nothing is sacred and everything is absurd and meaningless, the logical conclusion is self-annihilation." Jarry was not far from the truth, even then. Love is not a means to an end - it is the end in itself, for without it, no matter how many contraptions we strap to our backs, we will perish. We are the only machines that have the capacity to generate love, and in that lies the truth: The human capacity for love is limitless.

Jarry's prose is eloquent and refined...a delicate balance of theorem and conjecture without the loss of poetry. Surrealist and Sci-Fi fans alike will be pleased with the implications of this story.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

If 'pataphysics (Jarry's literary-paradigm-shifting invention) is, quoth Roger Shattuck, the "science of imaginary solutions," then THE SUPERMALE is certainly in part undoubtedly a work concerned w/ 'pataphysics, as it does, secondarily, concern itself w/ imaginary solutions (to at-least-half-imaginary problems). But THE SUPERMALE strikes me as being a progress beyond the more famous EXPLOITS AND OPINIONS OF DR. FAUSTROLL, PATAPHYSICIAN, a novel explicitly concerned w/ half-mad analyitcs. Here we find only two chapters which could be said to engage outright the enactment of crazy theories actioned upon; the chapter where the bicyclists race the train for ten-thousand miles, and the final chapter (upon which I will discretely abstain from elaborating). Primarily this is a serious philosophical comedy about man, woman, and "the impossible." In imagining the titular SUPERMALE, Jarry is not directly engaging Nietzsche, so much as demonstrating that pushed to the extreme, the "beyond" of human potential would need to be conceived as something monstrous and even apocalyptic. The book very much presages the atomic era and the dawn of technocracy. The harnessing of cosmic energies is fielded as a kind of proto-speculative-fiction forewarning. And of course this is mordant satire. It is Jarry. It should by all rights be eminently comic. But the characterization of Jarry as some besotted shit-disturber fails to account for his exquisite prose, his powerful formal ingenuity, and the philosophical density of his vision. Rabelais has oft met w/ similar injustice. Both writers turn values topsy-turvy, denigrate the old and ossified ones, and engage in bawdy provocation. But they also do is assert new values (very much from the ashes of those they have scorched). THE SUPERMALE stands as especially superlative to me for three reasons: it is Jarry's finest formal achievement, it is unbelievably philosophically resonant, and it is very much dedicated to the sly assertion of its own set of values. EXPLOITS AND OPINIONS OF DR. FAUSTROLL, PATAPHYSICIAN is more famous, but it is also more indebted to one joke (or one kind of joke). THE SUPERMALE is just as funny and precociously brilliant, but I feel it addresses more to the general human project.

[Rupert Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having gleaned the reviews already on here about Alfred Jarry's The Supermale, I don't feel I really need to add much more. I will say however that I deeply enjoyed this work, it has the same anti-erotic absurd verve as Visits of Love, and in many ways experiments with the same themes. Like Shaw's Superman this is a character portrait that draws upon the Don Juan theme, except Jarry has fused it with Baron Munchausen, only to then give it the complete Ubu make-over. I will surely need to read this book again, if only to understand more thoroughly the metaphysics at work, especially concerning the philosophical views of Theophrastus. The level I read it at allowed for the luxurious imagery of the absurd to prick my senses - the ten thousand mile race fuelled by a super food (alcohol), seven nude tarts crashing through a window only to be tamed by a gramophone embedded amongst an arrangement of roses, and many other delights that Jarry has buried within the story. It will amuse and if not it will tickle your curiosity buds.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mad scientist tale crossed with bits of farcical high-society squabbling and one really long, bizarre passage about biking, this concerns the grand experiment of Andre Marcueil, who uses his own super-toned body to prove his theories about the infinite capacities of the human body, engaging in a weird stunt involving copulation on a grand scale. It’s tempting to the take the eventual merging of man and machine as evidence of some precursory transhumanist predictions, but it seems like Jarry is more likely engaged in general old-fashioned ubermensching, tempering the dramatics with an eye for absurdity. His conception of man’s all-powerfulness gets represented physically (in the sex stuff and the aforementioned bike rice passage), but the ending suggests that while our bodies may be weaker, our minds and spirits will keep us one step ahead of the machines, even if we have to eventually join them to beat them.

[Patrick Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another surrealist classic, Jarry dubbed himself a "pataphysician" - "one who studies the science of imaginary solutions, [pataphysics], which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments." The protagonist of the novel, Andre Marcueil can engage in sexual intercourse as many times as he wants, back to back to back to back. He describes in detail how he engages in said activity with over 50 women until doctors finally attach him to a machine, with which he becomes one. The narrative is sometimes hard to follow, like a stream-of-consciousness, and oftentimes uses invented words. This approach to creative writing reminded me of reading Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange in that the vocabulary of the author is given meaning by the context of the action. I found this approach challenging and unique.

[Adam Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jarry's madness is most evident in the latter chapters; a confusing, muddled read - but until then, it's wonderful - the 10000 mile race between a locomotive and a 5-man bicycle is superb - its crew powered by Perpetual Motion Food, their pants filled with a soil to deal with 'both needs', the strange numinous roses that appear about the train, the Irish rider who dies, but continues pedaling, the long period when the bike and the train are moving at exactly the same speed, the trumpetlike aerial craft blocking any wind so the scene takes place in a strange stillness - so many gorgeous details - a Freudian dream? A parody of industrial millennarianism - or a celebration of it? Or more likely just pure surrealism - beyond interpretation...