What do you think?
Rate this book
Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician
Alfred Jarry is best known as the author of the proto-Dada play "Ubu Roi," but this anarchic novel of absurdist philosophy is widely regarded as the central work to his oeuvre. Refused for publication in the author's lifetime, "Exploits and Opinion of Dr. Faustroll" recounts the adventures of the inventor of "Pataphysics . . . the science of imaginary solutions." Pataphysics has since inspired artists as diverse as Marcel Duchamp and the 60s rock band Soft Machine, as well as the mythic literary organization the College de Pataphysique. Simon Watson Taylor's superb annotated translation (which in turn inspired a new French edition of the text) was first published by Grove Press in 1965 as part of their now out-of-print collection, "Selected Works of Alfred Jarry." As a result, this most important novel by Jarry has never before been published under its own title in English.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1911
50 people are currently reading
2544 people want to read
About the author
Alfred Jarry
252 books265 followersAlfred 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
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
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
February 27, 2026
Without any care for proportions Alfred Jarry courageously blended naiveté and sophistication, reason and absurdity and his desperate valiance made Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician immortal.
Bodily Doctor Faustroll was a strange hybrid of Faust and troll:
And with the genius of his impeccable mind he created cosmic science of all sciences – Pataphysics:
And armed with this powerful metascientific instrument, following in the footsteps of Ulysses, Gulliver, Pantagruel and Baron Munchausen, Faustroll daringly embarked on the fantastic jaunt across the universe of art that he has cleverly defined as “that which is the exception to oneself”, where he, “finding his soul to be abstract and naked, donned the realm of the unknown dimension”.
So now he eternally abides in his pataphysical etherity…
Weird beings are extremely tenacious.
Bodily Doctor Faustroll was a strange hybrid of Faust and troll:
...the hairs of his head alternately platinum blonde and jet black, an auburn ambiguity changing according to the sun’s position; his eyes, two capsules of ordinary writing-ink flecked with golden spermatozoa
...from his groin down to his feet, in contrast, he was sheathed in a satyric black fur, for he was man to an improper degree.
And with the genius of his impeccable mind he created cosmic science of all sciences – Pataphysics:
that is the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter's limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics.
And armed with this powerful metascientific instrument, following in the footsteps of Ulysses, Gulliver, Pantagruel and Baron Munchausen, Faustroll daringly embarked on the fantastic jaunt across the universe of art that he has cleverly defined as “that which is the exception to oneself”, where he, “finding his soul to be abstract and naked, donned the realm of the unknown dimension”.
So now he eternally abides in his pataphysical etherity…
Weird beings are extremely tenacious.
Read
August 17, 2014By way of making some introductory remarks, Roger Shattuck,Proveditor-General Propagator for the Islands and the Americas, Regent (by Transseant Susception) of the Chair of Applied Mateology, GMOGG, says, “The canons of literary taste as they have hardened in the twentieth century leave little place for Rabelais” (FMF et al had already poured that concrete already so early that it didn’t almost even have a chance). And you’ll recall what was said in Twelve and a Tilly :: "We must become as little children, for they have no difficulty with Finnegans Wake. They have no taste: they can enjoy good writing as well as bad. Only with time and teaching do they learn to prefer the bad.” “'Twas brillig and the slithy toves, Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ETC” And therewith I confess, reserving all due respect and placing no blame, that it is in fact possible to have good sense and good taste educated out of a person. I don’t think “educated out of” is the correct phrase. “Ha ha”.
So there’s no place today for a Jarry? Either that or there’s so damn many Jarry’s suffocating us all that who needs yet another Jarry from 1898? Well yes. Who needs Jarry indeed? As long as I’ve still got my ‘pataphycians card, dues paid in advance, what the hell do I care what the rest of you have to say about Jarry? Jarry Jerry quite contrary... Who’s field is this anyways? His? No I’ll be damn’ed it’s not his field any more than its yorns and be gob’d if I think it’s that. A = A.
The novel about Dr Faustroll which is really a biography, and could even be a smartly disguised autobiography or travelogue like the one about invisible cities or even one of those apocalyptic things in the tradition of Ezekiel’s wheels and John’s four horses, is really in fact a Roman a clef. On page 58 you’ll find the clef. Treble only. No bass, it bothers the neighbors. I don’t recall any of those outstanding type of Romans but I’ve no doubt they were there since they are in fact and in truth the ancestors of the Italian Mafia, after whom the Amish model’d theirs, and they, as you know can be found everywhere, even up on the top treble clef singing probably both alto and soprano. (I may be mistaken but it could have been a Roman a cliff, but then wouldn’t more likely have been a Dover cliff a weise?) You’ll know all about those Romans and their clef when you read all the answers in the back provided by the translator. But whatever you think about Romans and cliffs, it will endure beyond even the reach of pataphysics which itself reaches beyond metaphysics which itself reaches beyond physics which itself reaches beyond icks, that A = A. “Ha ha”.
And before I leave you to go drown in whatever syrupy prose you might find yourself currently-inwhich-drowning I’d just like to point to a potentially fruitful area of ‘pataphysical research. And it is quite simply and quite directly and quite obviously this :: What precisely is the status of the Apostrophe in ‘pataphysics? The answer should be obvious but then when one reads the sacred texts closely it becomes suddenly and little by little not quite so clear that there is any kind of apo’consistancy. Perhaps it is only in so far as it remains the crux of the biscuit.
La Pataphysique est la science....
So there’s no place today for a Jarry? Either that or there’s so damn many Jarry’s suffocating us all that who needs yet another Jarry from 1898? Well yes. Who needs Jarry indeed? As long as I’ve still got my ‘pataphycians card, dues paid in advance, what the hell do I care what the rest of you have to say about Jarry? Jarry Jerry quite contrary... Who’s field is this anyways? His? No I’ll be damn’ed it’s not his field any more than its yorns and be gob’d if I think it’s that. A = A.
The novel about Dr Faustroll which is really a biography, and could even be a smartly disguised autobiography or travelogue like the one about invisible cities or even one of those apocalyptic things in the tradition of Ezekiel’s wheels and John’s four horses, is really in fact a Roman a clef. On page 58 you’ll find the clef. Treble only. No bass, it bothers the neighbors. I don’t recall any of those outstanding type of Romans but I’ve no doubt they were there since they are in fact and in truth the ancestors of the Italian Mafia, after whom the Amish model’d theirs, and they, as you know can be found everywhere, even up on the top treble clef singing probably both alto and soprano. (I may be mistaken but it could have been a Roman a cliff, but then wouldn’t more likely have been a Dover cliff a weise?) You’ll know all about those Romans and their clef when you read all the answers in the back provided by the translator. But whatever you think about Romans and cliffs, it will endure beyond even the reach of pataphysics which itself reaches beyond metaphysics which itself reaches beyond physics which itself reaches beyond icks, that A = A. “Ha ha”.
And before I leave you to go drown in whatever syrupy prose you might find yourself currently-inwhich-drowning I’d just like to point to a potentially fruitful area of ‘pataphysical research. And it is quite simply and quite directly and quite obviously this :: What precisely is the status of the Apostrophe in ‘pataphysics? The answer should be obvious but then when one reads the sacred texts closely it becomes suddenly and little by little not quite so clear that there is any kind of apo’consistancy. Perhaps it is only in so far as it remains the crux of the biscuit.
La Pataphysique est la science....
Read
December 2, 2013I was sadly disappointed by this book. I had high expectations, but found the reading experience largely tedious. My principal critique would have to be that, though the book is outrageous and silly, and thus appears to court laughs, it's actually mostly unfunny.
It has produced a significant conflict within me. I have, at a certain time past, written a certain work with only one guiding principle: do not limit or constrain one's creativity in any way. That is, I aimed to write without any concern for practicality of execution, without forcing the work to make any degree of sense, and without meeting any definition of what such a work should accomplish. I found the results satisfying, though the final text remains secreted on a metaphorical shelf, hidden from prying eyes.
Point Two: I also generally believe that an artist should be entirely uncompromising, and thus should not give any regard to audience.
In this book, Exploits, etc., Jarry is absolutely unconstrained, in fact far beyond what I thought "unconstrained" could mean. He is also entirely uncompromising. So, I should like the result, right? Or else I should question my own principals, perhaps?
Well, no.
In fact, I think I will enjoy this book more in retrospect than I did while in the process of actually reading it. Will it undergo a similar transformation within my mind to what Even Dwarves Started Small--the Herzog Film--did? Only time will tell. In the case of that film, I profoundly disliked watching it, and it irked me greatly... but then I found myself talking about the film far more often than I'd have expected, and then I suspected that I really liked it and my obsession with it virtually proved that the film had had a profound impact on me. Well, hummm....
But here's another reflection. Faustroll is not "surrealism," but it may be regarded as a sort of proto-surrealism, as the surrealists were inspired by Jarry and his works. But anyway, there is a sort of literature/film/art/whatever which is difficult to label, some might call it surrealism, or absurdism, or dadaism, or Oulipo, or weirdism or whatever, and it doesn't quite matter that proponents of these various schools and movements disagreed strongly in their theories, intentions, self-images, and definitions. Let's just call it surrealism for now, just for kicks, and that will be the starting point for my next paragraph.
One more example of a faith that I hold is that "surrealism" is not a gimmick, and it's unfair to regard it as one.
"Conventional narrative" can include a near infinite variety of products, good and bad, effective and affective--or their opposites--without limit to the forms that can be produced... yet many forms may group themselves around the generic/cliche.
Anyway, if we see "surrealism" as, not a gimmick, but an alternative way, then there could be as many--or more!--"infinite" forms, effects and affects, etc., etc.--I bore myself sometimes--as what can be produced within "conventional" narrative. There's no particular reason why the world could not produce and publish 30,000 surrealist novels every year, with as much variance in quality and content as we see among more "conventional" works like The Pelican Brief and Tristram Shandy (the latter being very "odd," but NOT surreal, and thus "conventional" in only this limited sense... plus it was a bestseller in its day, so oddly enough... mainstream!)
So the point is, not all "odd" books are of a class. They can widely vary in degree of accomplishment and in what they attempt to achieve. But critiquing them can be a pain in the ass, and evaluation can be an aesthetic judgment that does not readily lend itself to the conventional terms used in critiquing conventional works.
Dr. Faustroll didn't deliver a form of greatness that I can quite enjoy or appreciate, while I allow for the fact that this somewhat adolescent antic of a book was provocative enough to inspire later, more accomplished works to venture into previously unexplored territory.
I say this despite the fact that this book reminds me of me far more than I enjoy having to admit.
It has produced a significant conflict within me. I have, at a certain time past, written a certain work with only one guiding principle: do not limit or constrain one's creativity in any way. That is, I aimed to write without any concern for practicality of execution, without forcing the work to make any degree of sense, and without meeting any definition of what such a work should accomplish. I found the results satisfying, though the final text remains secreted on a metaphorical shelf, hidden from prying eyes.
Point Two: I also generally believe that an artist should be entirely uncompromising, and thus should not give any regard to audience.
In this book, Exploits, etc., Jarry is absolutely unconstrained, in fact far beyond what I thought "unconstrained" could mean. He is also entirely uncompromising. So, I should like the result, right? Or else I should question my own principals, perhaps?
Well, no.
In fact, I think I will enjoy this book more in retrospect than I did while in the process of actually reading it. Will it undergo a similar transformation within my mind to what Even Dwarves Started Small--the Herzog Film--did? Only time will tell. In the case of that film, I profoundly disliked watching it, and it irked me greatly... but then I found myself talking about the film far more often than I'd have expected, and then I suspected that I really liked it and my obsession with it virtually proved that the film had had a profound impact on me. Well, hummm....
But here's another reflection. Faustroll is not "surrealism," but it may be regarded as a sort of proto-surrealism, as the surrealists were inspired by Jarry and his works. But anyway, there is a sort of literature/film/art/whatever which is difficult to label, some might call it surrealism, or absurdism, or dadaism, or Oulipo, or weirdism or whatever, and it doesn't quite matter that proponents of these various schools and movements disagreed strongly in their theories, intentions, self-images, and definitions. Let's just call it surrealism for now, just for kicks, and that will be the starting point for my next paragraph.
One more example of a faith that I hold is that "surrealism" is not a gimmick, and it's unfair to regard it as one.
"Conventional narrative" can include a near infinite variety of products, good and bad, effective and affective--or their opposites--without limit to the forms that can be produced... yet many forms may group themselves around the generic/cliche.
Anyway, if we see "surrealism" as, not a gimmick, but an alternative way, then there could be as many--or more!--"infinite" forms, effects and affects, etc., etc.--I bore myself sometimes--as what can be produced within "conventional" narrative. There's no particular reason why the world could not produce and publish 30,000 surrealist novels every year, with as much variance in quality and content as we see among more "conventional" works like The Pelican Brief and Tristram Shandy (the latter being very "odd," but NOT surreal, and thus "conventional" in only this limited sense... plus it was a bestseller in its day, so oddly enough... mainstream!)
So the point is, not all "odd" books are of a class. They can widely vary in degree of accomplishment and in what they attempt to achieve. But critiquing them can be a pain in the ass, and evaluation can be an aesthetic judgment that does not readily lend itself to the conventional terms used in critiquing conventional works.
Dr. Faustroll didn't deliver a form of greatness that I can quite enjoy or appreciate, while I allow for the fact that this somewhat adolescent antic of a book was provocative enough to inspire later, more accomplished works to venture into previously unexplored territory.
I say this despite the fact that this book reminds me of me far more than I enjoy having to admit.
February 3, 2022
French satirical symbolist novel from just before WW1, feels astonishingly ahead of its time predicting both 1920's/1930's-era surrealism and the zany humour of hippie-era literature. For example, I can imagine a young Robert Anton Wilson taking notes to this as research for his Illuminatus Trilogy. You could have told me that this was written either in the 1930's or even the 1960's and just set in fin-de-siecle era Paris, and I would have believed it. The biggest difference is that ”Dr. Faustroll” is nowhere a selfconsciously zany as much of what it inspired. (such as, you know, the Illuminatus Trilogy)
The plot follows an eccentric inventor/magician/scientist (the title character), his lawyer and his pet deformed baboon as they sail around a flooded Paris in a boat of unusual construction, surrounded by a framing device revolving around a legal case against our hero for not paying his rent. If that sounds familiar, that is probably because author Alfred Jarry conceived ”Dr. Faustroll” as a parody of Jules Verne's work: Dr. Faustroll is in part a caricature of Captain Nemo from ”20,000 Leagues under the Sea”, several chapters and individual characters spoof ones from ”Journey to the Centre of the Earth” et cetera. The Verne parody even extends to how much of the humour serves the function of promoting Jarry's favourite theories about philosophy, religion, science and other heady subjects in exact detail. Just like the writing style, the ideas Jarry expounds upon in ”Dr. Faustroll” are incredibly ahead of their time predicting theories that are right now popular within the academic fields of post-structuralist philosophy and quantum physics. The recent Danish translation I own contains extensive footnotes explaining all the literary, philosophical, religious and scientific inside jokes as well as references to life in fin-de-siecle France that would be lost on a typical 21st century Scandinavian reader. Even then I do not get all the jokes as many of the things Jarry satirises I have a superficial knowledge of at best. The good part is that the footnotes, which take up almost 50% of the Danish translation's page count, are full of reading suggestions for anyone planning a crash course in late 19th/early 20th century French literature. (I do not know if this is the case with any of the English translations, but I think this deserves to be pointed out)
What ”Dr. Faustroll” most reminds me of, however, are Lewis Carroll's ”Alice in Wonderland” and its sequel ”Through the Looking Glass”. The protagonists of all 3 books travel through a setting that is both goofy and nightmarish at the same time, where they encounter various bizarre characters who put them through a series of increasingly strange riddles and challenges the protagonists have to solve. Note that Western occultists from Aleister Crowley to Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff interpret this type of plot structure as a metaphor for the Kabbalah's path of initiation, where each new character and their challenges correspond to the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life: A manifestation of the divine and faculty of the human mind, where each requires the cultivation of a new set of skills to solve. The Lewis Carroll comparisons do not stop there: A good chunk of the weirdness in ”Dr. Faustroll” and both Alice novels comes from literary and scientific inside jokes that were much less confusing to their initial intended audiences than people reading them in the 21st century. The main difference is that ”Dr. Faustroll” is aimed at a much older audience. Hence all the scatological and sexual humour as well as much more explicit political and religious satire which is often too complex for even most adult readers.
On a final note the cryptozoologist in me finds it amusing that a sea monk, a mediaeval cryptid thought by modern scientists to be a misidentified giant squid, appears as an important supporting character in here.
Anyway: If you want to know what a Jules Verne parody written by Lewis Carroll's French cousin, who also happens to be a distant relative of Robert Anton Wilson and Aleister Crowley at the same time, would be like? I can recommend this.
The plot follows an eccentric inventor/magician/scientist (the title character), his lawyer and his pet deformed baboon as they sail around a flooded Paris in a boat of unusual construction, surrounded by a framing device revolving around a legal case against our hero for not paying his rent. If that sounds familiar, that is probably because author Alfred Jarry conceived ”Dr. Faustroll” as a parody of Jules Verne's work: Dr. Faustroll is in part a caricature of Captain Nemo from ”20,000 Leagues under the Sea”, several chapters and individual characters spoof ones from ”Journey to the Centre of the Earth” et cetera. The Verne parody even extends to how much of the humour serves the function of promoting Jarry's favourite theories about philosophy, religion, science and other heady subjects in exact detail. Just like the writing style, the ideas Jarry expounds upon in ”Dr. Faustroll” are incredibly ahead of their time predicting theories that are right now popular within the academic fields of post-structuralist philosophy and quantum physics. The recent Danish translation I own contains extensive footnotes explaining all the literary, philosophical, religious and scientific inside jokes as well as references to life in fin-de-siecle France that would be lost on a typical 21st century Scandinavian reader. Even then I do not get all the jokes as many of the things Jarry satirises I have a superficial knowledge of at best. The good part is that the footnotes, which take up almost 50% of the Danish translation's page count, are full of reading suggestions for anyone planning a crash course in late 19th/early 20th century French literature. (I do not know if this is the case with any of the English translations, but I think this deserves to be pointed out)
What ”Dr. Faustroll” most reminds me of, however, are Lewis Carroll's ”Alice in Wonderland” and its sequel ”Through the Looking Glass”. The protagonists of all 3 books travel through a setting that is both goofy and nightmarish at the same time, where they encounter various bizarre characters who put them through a series of increasingly strange riddles and challenges the protagonists have to solve. Note that Western occultists from Aleister Crowley to Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff interpret this type of plot structure as a metaphor for the Kabbalah's path of initiation, where each new character and their challenges correspond to the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life: A manifestation of the divine and faculty of the human mind, where each requires the cultivation of a new set of skills to solve. The Lewis Carroll comparisons do not stop there: A good chunk of the weirdness in ”Dr. Faustroll” and both Alice novels comes from literary and scientific inside jokes that were much less confusing to their initial intended audiences than people reading them in the 21st century. The main difference is that ”Dr. Faustroll” is aimed at a much older audience. Hence all the scatological and sexual humour as well as much more explicit political and religious satire which is often too complex for even most adult readers.
On a final note the cryptozoologist in me finds it amusing that a sea monk, a mediaeval cryptid thought by modern scientists to be a misidentified giant squid, appears as an important supporting character in here.
Anyway: If you want to know what a Jules Verne parody written by Lewis Carroll's French cousin, who also happens to be a distant relative of Robert Anton Wilson and Aleister Crowley at the same time, would be like? I can recommend this.
June 30, 2022
I’ve been extended over the cliff of Metaphysics as Metaphysics extends over the cliff of Physics, and at the end of that great telescope of, literally, mind over matter, I see that I am Pata-fied. I am a Pataphysical being. I’m playing Pata-cake with the rarified air.
Here’s something really stupid: I thought I had invented Pataphysics. I know, read a book. In various collaborations and experiments I had been working towards a mode of inquiry, a series of extended space flights into metaphor and personification that was starting to look something like a system, and when I finally made my moon landing I found Alfred Jarry—Jarry of well over a century ago!—already there. He introduced me to his baboon of the French tricolor assface.
Fine.
This book was hard to follow at times, I think, because one should probably read it in the original French and be from Jarry’s Paris in order to get all the puns and inside jokes. Also, it gets really abstruse by the end, which is great, because this book should be returned to again and again like the Pataphysical Bible and so you wouldn’t want to run out of things to puzzle over would you?
Here’s something really stupid: I thought I had invented Pataphysics. I know, read a book. In various collaborations and experiments I had been working towards a mode of inquiry, a series of extended space flights into metaphor and personification that was starting to look something like a system, and when I finally made my moon landing I found Alfred Jarry—Jarry of well over a century ago!—already there. He introduced me to his baboon of the French tricolor assface.
Fine.
This book was hard to follow at times, I think, because one should probably read it in the original French and be from Jarry’s Paris in order to get all the puns and inside jokes. Also, it gets really abstruse by the end, which is great, because this book should be returned to again and again like the Pataphysical Bible and so you wouldn’t want to run out of things to puzzle over would you?
February 24, 2021
Pubblicati postumi nel 1911, le bizzarre vicende e gli strampalati precetti del dottor Faustroll (una via di mezzo tra un Faust e un troll), seguito dal suo fedele cinocefalo babbuino Bosse-de-Nage, hanno regalato all'umanità la patafisica, la scienza delle scienze, che tutte le comprende e tutte le ridimensiona alla luce della sua candela verde.
Secondo la definizione contenuta negli Elementi di Patafisica, “la patafisica è la scienza delle soluzioni immaginarie, che accorda simbolicamente ai lineamenti le proprietà degli oggetti descritti per la loro virtualità”. In altri termini, la patafisica, o meglio la 'patafisica, è “la scienza di ciò che si aggiunge alla metafisica, sia in essa, sia fuori di essa, estendendosi così ampiamente al di là di questa quanto questa al di là della fisica. Studierà le leggi che reggono le eccezioni e spiegherà l'universo supplementare a questo”.
La patafisica di Jarry, presa anche seriamente, ispirò ed influenzò generazioni successive di scrittori (da Boris Vian a Raymond Queneau, da Italo Calvino a Umberto Eco), filosofi (Sartre, Bataille, Baudrillard) ed artisti (musicisti, pittori). Alla luce di questo successo, poco importa se il Faustroll sia quasi incomprensibile, quasi illeggibile, tutto incentrato sul calembour, sul gioco di parole, sulla sperimentazione linguistica e stilistica. Questa opera ha saputo fondere le espressioni artistiche e quelle scientifiche, con il suo autore che ha saputo pescare tanto dalla tradizione picaresca (Rabelais) e dalla satira filosofica (Voltaire) quanto dal linguaggio matematico.
Ogni capitolo del Faustroll, riguardante che sia le sue gesta o le sue opinioni patafisiche, è dedicato, più o meno esplicitamente, ad una personalità nota e contemporanea a Jarry (da Schwob a Bloy, da Gauguin a Mallarmé, da Verne a Lord Kelvin), più o meno affine all'autore; dedica, questa, che oscilla tra l'omaggio affettuoso e l'irriverente dileggio.
Molto simbolico, allegorico ed allusivo; difficile da seguire, delirante e dissacrante, folle e (purtroppo solo a tratti, mi duole dirlo) divertente: ma in quale altro libro potete leggere la dimostrazione matematica dell'inestensione di Dio, fino alla sua definizione di “distanza più breve da zero all'infinito”?
Un po' superato, dunque, questo Faustroll. Ma sento anche gratitudine nei confronti di Alfred Jarry per aver dato vita a questa strana e curiosa creatura.
Secondo la definizione contenuta negli Elementi di Patafisica, “la patafisica è la scienza delle soluzioni immaginarie, che accorda simbolicamente ai lineamenti le proprietà degli oggetti descritti per la loro virtualità”. In altri termini, la patafisica, o meglio la 'patafisica, è “la scienza di ciò che si aggiunge alla metafisica, sia in essa, sia fuori di essa, estendendosi così ampiamente al di là di questa quanto questa al di là della fisica. Studierà le leggi che reggono le eccezioni e spiegherà l'universo supplementare a questo”.
La patafisica di Jarry, presa anche seriamente, ispirò ed influenzò generazioni successive di scrittori (da Boris Vian a Raymond Queneau, da Italo Calvino a Umberto Eco), filosofi (Sartre, Bataille, Baudrillard) ed artisti (musicisti, pittori). Alla luce di questo successo, poco importa se il Faustroll sia quasi incomprensibile, quasi illeggibile, tutto incentrato sul calembour, sul gioco di parole, sulla sperimentazione linguistica e stilistica. Questa opera ha saputo fondere le espressioni artistiche e quelle scientifiche, con il suo autore che ha saputo pescare tanto dalla tradizione picaresca (Rabelais) e dalla satira filosofica (Voltaire) quanto dal linguaggio matematico.
Ogni capitolo del Faustroll, riguardante che sia le sue gesta o le sue opinioni patafisiche, è dedicato, più o meno esplicitamente, ad una personalità nota e contemporanea a Jarry (da Schwob a Bloy, da Gauguin a Mallarmé, da Verne a Lord Kelvin), più o meno affine all'autore; dedica, questa, che oscilla tra l'omaggio affettuoso e l'irriverente dileggio.
Molto simbolico, allegorico ed allusivo; difficile da seguire, delirante e dissacrante, folle e (purtroppo solo a tratti, mi duole dirlo) divertente: ma in quale altro libro potete leggere la dimostrazione matematica dell'inestensione di Dio, fino alla sua definizione di “distanza più breve da zero all'infinito”?
Un po' superato, dunque, questo Faustroll. Ma sento anche gratitudine nei confronti di Alfred Jarry per aver dato vita a questa strana e curiosa creatura.
May 7, 2020
Re-reading all the stuff that I wrote my master thesis about, and realising (with thankfulness) what an impact these ideas have had on my life. Will write about these books at more length in my blog when I can find the time.
May 28, 2019
Consciousness-raising and mind-blowing. I know immediately that I am keeping this book in my possession and it will go on my shelf (indefinitely). I wish I could carry it around in my pocket (also indefinitely), and turn to it in future, whenever I might wish.
Such a slim, slender, easy-to-read little volume, but powerfully and shockingly impactful even just a few pages in. Alfred Jarry is one of those precocious writers who's word-play and mind-games make every word count, howsoever few there are. Y'know, the writings of the symbolists and the surrealists are always like this. They seal plutonium in small packages.
What's the writing consist of? Utter preposterous-ness; intellectual hooliganism; verbal cartwheels, and mental horseplay taken to the nth and umpteenth exponent. Imagine Kurt Vonnegut on LSD. This is the kind of book that Vonnegut probably wanted to write all his life.
Well, Jarry got there first. And his words reek of his achievement. For, (as one learns) Jarry didn't just write his philosophy, he lived it. Jarry was a pata-physician in the most manifest sense. He suited his deeds to his words, and he suited his words to his deeds, and vice versa and verse vicea. (You grasp my meaning, I think).
Though standing just under five feet tall (dwelling in 'half of an apartment' sandwiched between the first and second floors, sleeping in a bed which was also a copper mesh colander, and also an amphibious land skiff) this irreverent imp was a rebel and iconoclast who --even though diminutive, careened through the wild 1890s and still turned neighborhoods on their head. This forgotten little firebrand mesmerized Pablo Picasso. Yep --big names like these doted on him --does this say anything to you? Jarry is an individual to know about.
Why do these symbolists grow more vital as time wears on? In my opinion its because there's simply too much meaning happening. Meaningless meaning. Super-practical, super-pragmatic, results in a stultifyingly listless 'information age' which extinguishes all the truly fiery, unique or ravenous individuals seen in previous eras. There are no more two-legged, upright moray-eels like Alfred Jarry slithering around in today's hyper-organized society.
I for one, am thoroughly sick of it! I'm sick of 'hive mind' and groupthink and social correctness and netiquette! What do we get out of this great, big, hierarchical, pecking order? Roaming these giant plains of info, each of us munching wheat-field-sized harvests of bland, uniform, mental fodder every day? Bah! Over-consuming 'information' ...turns us bovine. It's tranquilizing; it is 'analysis paralysis'. Why do we need information?
Think about it: with what prerogative do our neighbors, schoolmates, teachers and co-workers continually wield over us, in order to impress us with what they think 'things mean'? What is this constant tsunami of 'meaning' which we gargle down every day? It's ridiculous! Why should we all constantly ascribe to the same assumptions --without ever even pausing to consider our own notions? What are our own notions? Do we have any? Are we allowed to have any anymore?
This --I might presume to assert --is the same kind of sentiment that drove Jarry to such excesses. Jarry was one who insisted on his precious cerebral freedom. Freedom to spurn and snub all 'common' sense, freedom to insist on inhabiting a world he willed for himself. Such is almost unknown these days.
Jarry was a hero to all thinking men. His hilarious 'pata-physics' is so batshit berserk, so off the map....so counter-logical...y'know it reminds me of a time when I was once stranded overseas in a locale so far from western culture, that there were not just nil spoken English anywhere around me for hundreds of miles--there weren't even any written, painted, typed, or stenciled English words or letters anywhere in sight. Not a single road sign, store sign, or menu contained an English phrase. Frightening, but also so liberating!
This book re-creates that sensation for me, and its frankly wonderful. Stop making sense! Stop making us all slaves to your sense. Why does every little item in modern life have to make such damn conformity? Leave it out. Let it go. Toss it aside. Live without it once in a while. Flee the information highway!
You live your life, I will live mine, you go your way and let me go mine. I will do like Alfred Jarry who --on his deathbed, moments before expiring --requested a toothpick. Hurrah!
Such a slim, slender, easy-to-read little volume, but powerfully and shockingly impactful even just a few pages in. Alfred Jarry is one of those precocious writers who's word-play and mind-games make every word count, howsoever few there are. Y'know, the writings of the symbolists and the surrealists are always like this. They seal plutonium in small packages.
What's the writing consist of? Utter preposterous-ness; intellectual hooliganism; verbal cartwheels, and mental horseplay taken to the nth and umpteenth exponent. Imagine Kurt Vonnegut on LSD. This is the kind of book that Vonnegut probably wanted to write all his life.
Well, Jarry got there first. And his words reek of his achievement. For, (as one learns) Jarry didn't just write his philosophy, he lived it. Jarry was a pata-physician in the most manifest sense. He suited his deeds to his words, and he suited his words to his deeds, and vice versa and verse vicea. (You grasp my meaning, I think).
Though standing just under five feet tall (dwelling in 'half of an apartment' sandwiched between the first and second floors, sleeping in a bed which was also a copper mesh colander, and also an amphibious land skiff) this irreverent imp was a rebel and iconoclast who --even though diminutive, careened through the wild 1890s and still turned neighborhoods on their head. This forgotten little firebrand mesmerized Pablo Picasso. Yep --big names like these doted on him --does this say anything to you? Jarry is an individual to know about.
Why do these symbolists grow more vital as time wears on? In my opinion its because there's simply too much meaning happening. Meaningless meaning. Super-practical, super-pragmatic, results in a stultifyingly listless 'information age' which extinguishes all the truly fiery, unique or ravenous individuals seen in previous eras. There are no more two-legged, upright moray-eels like Alfred Jarry slithering around in today's hyper-organized society.
I for one, am thoroughly sick of it! I'm sick of 'hive mind' and groupthink and social correctness and netiquette! What do we get out of this great, big, hierarchical, pecking order? Roaming these giant plains of info, each of us munching wheat-field-sized harvests of bland, uniform, mental fodder every day? Bah! Over-consuming 'information' ...turns us bovine. It's tranquilizing; it is 'analysis paralysis'. Why do we need information?
Think about it: with what prerogative do our neighbors, schoolmates, teachers and co-workers continually wield over us, in order to impress us with what they think 'things mean'? What is this constant tsunami of 'meaning' which we gargle down every day? It's ridiculous! Why should we all constantly ascribe to the same assumptions --without ever even pausing to consider our own notions? What are our own notions? Do we have any? Are we allowed to have any anymore?
This --I might presume to assert --is the same kind of sentiment that drove Jarry to such excesses. Jarry was one who insisted on his precious cerebral freedom. Freedom to spurn and snub all 'common' sense, freedom to insist on inhabiting a world he willed for himself. Such is almost unknown these days.
Jarry was a hero to all thinking men. His hilarious 'pata-physics' is so batshit berserk, so off the map....so counter-logical...y'know it reminds me of a time when I was once stranded overseas in a locale so far from western culture, that there were not just nil spoken English anywhere around me for hundreds of miles--there weren't even any written, painted, typed, or stenciled English words or letters anywhere in sight. Not a single road sign, store sign, or menu contained an English phrase. Frightening, but also so liberating!
This book re-creates that sensation for me, and its frankly wonderful. Stop making sense! Stop making us all slaves to your sense. Why does every little item in modern life have to make such damn conformity? Leave it out. Let it go. Toss it aside. Live without it once in a while. Flee the information highway!
You live your life, I will live mine, you go your way and let me go mine. I will do like Alfred Jarry who --on his deathbed, moments before expiring --requested a toothpick. Hurrah!
July 11, 2022
This novel does not have much of a plot. It depicts a three-men-in-a-tub situation (to be exact, two men and a baboon). The three experience a series of adventures, some with mortal consequences, as they visit different fantastic islands. The novel includes a lecture by Faustroll on ’Pataphysics.
The writing, with sentences like “The place where the sun sets has the appearance, between the folds comprising the Town’s mesentery, of the vermiform appendix of a caecum” (59), will send some readers scrambling for their dictionaries. Others, though, may enjoy Jarry’s sense of humor (but for pure farce, Jarry’s play Ubu Roi is probably a better choice than Doctor Faustroll).
Jarry was a Dadaist, and Dadaism was a paradoxical movement, seeking to produce anti-art (one of the better-known Dadaist works was a signed urinal, a “readymade” attributed to Marcel Duchamp). In this context, perhaps the ridiculously mannered style and the episodic, and ultimately pointless, narrative reflect an anti-artistic, anti-literary impulse—although an argument could be made that Jarry intends the episodic narrative as a parody of travel journals and picaresque novels. If, though, Faustroll is intended as anti-literary, how is one to rank it? As George Carlin asks, “If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?”
I’m giving to this book three stars: one for its indifference to literary convention and readers’ expectations, a second for the way it throws a Godelian monkey wrench into the machinery of critical ranking systems, half a star for the sophomoric story, and another half a star for its style (consider this, for instance: “The meshed base, unsinkable because of its oily coating, rested upon the waves’ denticulation like a sturgeon upon several harpoons, and beneath it was a keyboard of water and air alternately” [95]).
Acquired Mar 26, 2012
amazon.com
The writing, with sentences like “The place where the sun sets has the appearance, between the folds comprising the Town’s mesentery, of the vermiform appendix of a caecum” (59), will send some readers scrambling for their dictionaries. Others, though, may enjoy Jarry’s sense of humor (but for pure farce, Jarry’s play Ubu Roi is probably a better choice than Doctor Faustroll).
Jarry was a Dadaist, and Dadaism was a paradoxical movement, seeking to produce anti-art (one of the better-known Dadaist works was a signed urinal, a “readymade” attributed to Marcel Duchamp). In this context, perhaps the ridiculously mannered style and the episodic, and ultimately pointless, narrative reflect an anti-artistic, anti-literary impulse—although an argument could be made that Jarry intends the episodic narrative as a parody of travel journals and picaresque novels. If, though, Faustroll is intended as anti-literary, how is one to rank it? As George Carlin asks, “If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?”
I’m giving to this book three stars: one for its indifference to literary convention and readers’ expectations, a second for the way it throws a Godelian monkey wrench into the machinery of critical ranking systems, half a star for the sophomoric story, and another half a star for its style (consider this, for instance: “The meshed base, unsinkable because of its oily coating, rested upon the waves’ denticulation like a sturgeon upon several harpoons, and beneath it was a keyboard of water and air alternately” [95]).
Acquired Mar 26, 2012
amazon.com
September 22, 2016
Since, by the laws of pataphysics, each thing defines and supersedes it's opposite thing, this worst of all novels--because lacking an acceptable narrative or believable characters or a coherent point--is, of course, the greatest of all novels for its scientific complexity, utterly trivial silliness, homage to so many friends, send up of Sir john Mandeville's travels, and the finest-drawn of all loquacious characters in the history of literature, Bosse-de-Nage, the butt-cheek-faced baboon cabin boy of the bed-sieve-boat that sails upon land into and beyond time and space at last to find God through the mathematical-geometrical formulae of lord Kelvin. I would have added, "Ha Ha," but decided, in this instance, to hold my tongue and to make no further comment.
(It is obvious by now that I am a descendant of this novel's protagonist except the Americans misspelled my last name somewhat. Up to now the disguise seems to be working.)
(It is obvious by now that I am a descendant of this novel's protagonist except the Americans misspelled my last name somewhat. Up to now the disguise seems to be working.)
March 17, 2009
An amazing title. Concerns the surreal odyssey of one Dr. Faustroll who, among other things, sails in a sieve with his baboon and visits a series of bizarre and satirical islands (all apparently located within downtown Paris) before transforming into an astral body and attempting to calculate the surface of God. Along the way he invents "pataphysics," which is described as "the science of imaginary solutions." It's all very Rabelaisan and loads of fun.
January 22, 2023
I think this is the weirdest book I've read. It felt like having synesthesia while trapped in a moving Dalí scene while boating through the streets and buildings of Paris while a baboon provided commentary by repeating Ha Ha, with a different meaning for each repeated utterance. Alice in Wonderland seems positively pedestrian in comparison. Definitely a unique reading experience.
February 3, 2020
It is impossible to summarize this book with any clarity. Suffice it to say it feels like a mash-up of Rabelais and vivid proto-Daliesque imagery (he would have made the perfect illustrator!), with loads of absurdist humor and allusions to Jarry’s friends in the Symbolist and Decadent movements of fin-de-siècle France woven into the ‘narrative’. Beyond his iconic and better known ‘Ubu’ plays, it’s certainly easy to see here how he became a hero and inspiration to the Dadaists and Surrealists decades later.
This particular edition is also beautifully presented, graphically, and features an insightful introduction by Roger Shattuck, who introduced me to Jarry so unforgettably in his “The Banquet Years” long ago, and also includes helpful footnotes to explain the esoteric references that pop up often. Not for everyone, but a real pleasure if you’re inclined to this sort of thing. Vive Bosse-de-Nage, ha ha!
This particular edition is also beautifully presented, graphically, and features an insightful introduction by Roger Shattuck, who introduced me to Jarry so unforgettably in his “The Banquet Years” long ago, and also includes helpful footnotes to explain the esoteric references that pop up often. Not for everyone, but a real pleasure if you’re inclined to this sort of thing. Vive Bosse-de-Nage, ha ha!
Read
September 11, 2014I read Ubu Roi in high school, and remember it as being rather surreal and wacky, but in his novel, Jarry is more or less stringing together Tom Waits lyrics. Well, really Frenchy ones-- he's cut from the same black-and-white striped cloth as Raymond Queneau and Blaise Cendrars, all bicycles and wine bottles and accordions and what not, which I don't mind at all. The text itself is barely a narrative, but you kind of just groove on the images, and, this is important, it's short enough that the being-barely-a-narrative doesn't grate.
November 16, 2017
A surreal boat trip, utter garbage. You can't even picture its absurdities due to the impenetrable style of writing. Keeping a dictionary beside you might help a very little. Also its made up of references or homages to other works few of which i or anyone else is likely to have read.
There are many other things which make it hard to read, such as its scientific references or mathematical jokes.
But i know this must be ART. I can tell because i got the exact same feeling from this as i do when i see a sculpture worth a €100,000, made out of cat-teeth and the artists own faeces .
There are many other things which make it hard to read, such as its scientific references or mathematical jokes.
But i know this must be ART. I can tell because i got the exact same feeling from this as i do when i see a sculpture worth a €100,000, made out of cat-teeth and the artists own faeces .
July 15, 2019
Either I am too stupid, or this book is stupid. Am I stupid? No. is this book stupid? Well define stupid. I use this word actually to point some facts:
- pretentious
- too visual, but not in the surrealist / Boris Vian kind of visual.
- tries to joggle with the idea of journey. At least in a journey book, you get some interesting story everywhere where the hero lands. Here there are only boring descriptions.
- if you don't know all those characters quite accurately, you stand no chance. The preface and the postface say, there are allegories concerning those to me unknown artists (but Gauguin where there was no allegory and Mallarme where i did not get it)
I stopped reading before i got the chance to throw it away
- pretentious
- too visual, but not in the surrealist / Boris Vian kind of visual.
- tries to joggle with the idea of journey. At least in a journey book, you get some interesting story everywhere where the hero lands. Here there are only boring descriptions.
- if you don't know all those characters quite accurately, you stand no chance. The preface and the postface say, there are allegories concerning those to me unknown artists (but Gauguin where there was no allegory and Mallarme where i did not get it)
I stopped reading before i got the chance to throw it away
November 4, 2019
In his novel, Jarry gives the (in)famous definition of pataphysics as the science of imaginary solutions, therefore kickstarting a whole movement that blends science and literature in the weirdest, paradoxical ways. Here is a mild starter:
The book is far more extreme. Strange things lurk in its arid seas that surround lakes of water. Like Faustroll, I suggest you set sail in a sieve.
He [Faustroll] confided to me that he was afraid of being caught unawares by the ebb tide, since the period of syzygy was nearing its end. And I was seized with fear, because we were still rowing where there was no water, between the aridity of the houses, and soon we were coasting along the pavements of a dusty square. As far as I could understand, the doctor was talking about the earth’s tides, and I thought that one of us must be drunk, and that the ground was sinking toward its nadir, like a fathomless depth revealed in a nightmare. I know now that apart from the flux of its hummers and the diastole and systole which pump its circulatory blood, the earth is bulging with intercostal muscles and breathes according to the moon’s rhythm. But the regularity of this breathing is very gentle, and few people are aware of it.
The book is far more extreme. Strange things lurk in its arid seas that surround lakes of water. Like Faustroll, I suggest you set sail in a sieve.
July 12, 2007
Reading this is like having a gas enter your ear and float about just touching some neurons and just as quickly float back out. Maybe it leaves a molecule. The molecule is pronounced "HA HA".
July 29, 2007
This book is a blissful bomb...
July 18, 2008
The root of 'pataphysics and an unrelentingly weird novel by the master of such, Faustroll is really funny in an occluded way and has much to teach burgeoning lunatics.
February 14, 2026
uyumak için kullandığımı itiraf etmek zorundayım
izlemek için elimden geleni yaparken yorulup uykuya dalıyordum
jarry olduğu için bırakmadım
ama metnin doğası gereği ciddiye almayı da başaramadım
bin yıl önce rabelais okurken yaşadığımda olduğu gibi, onları da rabelais oldukları için bırakmamıştım,
gençken daha sabırlı olmam(o zaman iki kitabı sürüne sürüne de olsa okumuştum) da ayrı bir konu
izlemek için elimden geleni yaparken yorulup uykuya dalıyordum
jarry olduğu için bırakmadım
ama metnin doğası gereği ciddiye almayı da başaramadım
bin yıl önce rabelais okurken yaşadığımda olduğu gibi, onları da rabelais oldukları için bırakmamıştım,
gençken daha sabırlı olmam(o zaman iki kitabı sürüne sürüne de olsa okumuştum) da ayrı bir konu
February 1, 2016
I cracked open my copy because it was the most bizarre volume that I had at hand. It quelled my fears of dwelling on too many mundane thoughts for my writing, but it's no great aid or inspiration, not that it had to be.
Scanning through these reviews, there's a lot of blind praise and a lot of not so blind disgust that this writing is rife with references and structures that ask for the reader to turn elsewhere for understanding--a less rewarding Joyce, basically. They're both right.
There are segments with a cadence so remarkable that I was compelled to read them aloud. The Dr.'s description of his skiff or when he shrinks to a mite and meets the water droplet, for example. The book is quite funny, much of the laughter revolving around the ridiculous "Ha Ha" baboon. The book touches on black comedy and ideas of laughter, but it's no Les Chants de Maldoror. There are many clever, warming twists that only a story as bizarre as this can spark. It's storytelling in the space of Lautreamont and Lewis Carroll. And there are many crazy metaphors scattered throughout that are enviable still today.
Unfortunately, from the skiff journey on, there's a lot of text that doesn't say much to the naked reader. While what Jarry does with the Dr.'s library was delightful, there's not much there to the 14 islands of writers. Knowing their works isn't much help. You get the feeling that you need the text to be decrypted, and the story or the playfulness of what you're reading falls away. Without the pleasure that I got from the earlier parts of the text, I just don't know why I'd fall into that project but as a historian.
In short, I take this and remind myself to break rules and pursue the unrestrained freedom of the story. But getting caught up in external Pataphysical meaning, historical or constructed, really interrupts that freedom. I'm just getting fragments of usefulness on my first visit. Would do better reading a paper, I think.
Scanning through these reviews, there's a lot of blind praise and a lot of not so blind disgust that this writing is rife with references and structures that ask for the reader to turn elsewhere for understanding--a less rewarding Joyce, basically. They're both right.
There are segments with a cadence so remarkable that I was compelled to read them aloud. The Dr.'s description of his skiff or when he shrinks to a mite and meets the water droplet, for example. The book is quite funny, much of the laughter revolving around the ridiculous "Ha Ha" baboon. The book touches on black comedy and ideas of laughter, but it's no Les Chants de Maldoror. There are many clever, warming twists that only a story as bizarre as this can spark. It's storytelling in the space of Lautreamont and Lewis Carroll. And there are many crazy metaphors scattered throughout that are enviable still today.
Unfortunately, from the skiff journey on, there's a lot of text that doesn't say much to the naked reader. While what Jarry does with the Dr.'s library was delightful, there's not much there to the 14 islands of writers. Knowing their works isn't much help. You get the feeling that you need the text to be decrypted, and the story or the playfulness of what you're reading falls away. Without the pleasure that I got from the earlier parts of the text, I just don't know why I'd fall into that project but as a historian.
In short, I take this and remind myself to break rules and pursue the unrestrained freedom of the story. But getting caught up in external Pataphysical meaning, historical or constructed, really interrupts that freedom. I'm just getting fragments of usefulness on my first visit. Would do better reading a paper, I think.
August 19, 2014
Jarry's greatest novel. It tells the tale of Dr Fuastroll, an arse faced baboon called Bose-de-Nage and a Baliff in their travels around Paris in a sieve.
This Paris is a 'Pataphysical reinversion of the actual Paris whereby it constructed as a series of islands. The Islands themselves depict the essence of certain artists - friends and enemies of Jarry.
Dr Faustroll dies although what that actually means is up for conjecture, and the end of the novel is his scientific equation for the surface of God.
Full of humour - both implied and real - it is a strange novel, but there is nothing else quite like it.
This Paris is a 'Pataphysical reinversion of the actual Paris whereby it constructed as a series of islands. The Islands themselves depict the essence of certain artists - friends and enemies of Jarry.
Dr Faustroll dies although what that actually means is up for conjecture, and the end of the novel is his scientific equation for the surface of God.
Full of humour - both implied and real - it is a strange novel, but there is nothing else quite like it.
January 21, 2024
Leí este libro por tres razones; la primera es que soy fan de Jarry desde que leí Ubú, la segunda es mi tesis y la tercera es que me causaba mucho interés la fórmula para medir a Dios.
Es un libro que se puede llegar a complicar por la cantidad de referencias que tiene del siglo pasado (por lo que recomiendo leer la edición de tératos) y el humor agrio del espíritu lúdico del autor. A destacar sus imágenes grotescas sacadas de Gargantúa y Pantacruel, lo incisivo de su crítica y sus personajes etéreos.
Es un libro que se puede llegar a complicar por la cantidad de referencias que tiene del siglo pasado (por lo que recomiendo leer la edición de tératos) y el humor agrio del espíritu lúdico del autor. A destacar sus imágenes grotescas sacadas de Gargantúa y Pantacruel, lo incisivo de su crítica y sus personajes etéreos.
Read
January 13, 2008I know I read it but I can't remember a damn thing about it.
October 12, 2012
Ha ha.
October 4, 2016
No wonder I have a blog with a very similar title, you need to read it to find out the total surface of god, the real shape of the clocks or even all the exceptions.
July 10, 2021
Frankly dazzling - it’s hugely enjoyable just as a proto-surrealist novel, with ideas and concepts thrown together with such gusto it’s no surprise the surrealists loved him (he even seems to predict Tzara and Ball’s poetry at one point); it’s also stunningly clever and has one of the most thoughtful introductions, translations and notes I have ever seen which all combine to show how much intelligence and thought has gone into something as seemingly dumb as the dogfaced baboon assistant. That it’s also creating pataphysics whilst also not just titting about in the margins of actual science but seemingly is in dialogue with it is even more astonishing
It’s sharp, pithy, howlingly funny, incredibly clever and wonderfully sly. Jarry is the real deal and this edition is a perfect introduction to his brilliance
It’s sharp, pithy, howlingly funny, incredibly clever and wonderfully sly. Jarry is the real deal and this edition is a perfect introduction to his brilliance
November 7, 2024
The book is not the easiest to understand, and to fully appreciate it, you need to be aware of the context it was written in. There are however plenty of revisions and reprints available which include this. For those wanting to find an understanding on the founding grounds of 'Pataphysics, this book is a must. For those looking for an introduction on what 'Pataphysics is, other books might be better suited.
September 21, 2021
like a metaphysical (or pataphysical i suppose more appropriately) ode to rabelais with all the toilet humor and grossout scenes of the master, with a greater focus on surreal language and imagery. both intensely silly and profound, somewhat like the plus/minus god mathematical construction at the end. a wild ride, frequently bewildering, but often very funny and ultimately extremely rewarding. portions of this were excerpted as "elements of pataphysics" in the big book of sf anthology, but i'm not sure why the editors made that decision as it doesn't stand on its own, and the full text is much easier to read and have the mathematical portions make 'sense' (in a sense)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews