Flesh Unlimited (Creation Classics)
by Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis Aragon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis AragonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09
ISBN: 1840680156
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Creation Books
Book Reviews of Flesh Unlimited (Creation Classics)
Book Review: Intimidated?
Summary: 4 Stars
I've got something of a selective taste. For instance, I can read a book of depravity should the style resonate something within myself. Bataille's Story of the Eye did not reach me in a positive way, I found its grotesqueries too vivid and realistic to enjoy...and since reading it I have been wary of this sort of "Surrealist Erotica."
Meanwhile, Flesh Unlimited has continued to pop up on my reccomended page, so after a bit of hesitation, I ordered and read the thing. I must say I find it more enjoyable than Story of the Eye due to the manner in which it was written.
Apollinaire's first story (The Eleven Thousand Rods) is absolutely hilarious. The "action" in it is so over the top, cartoonishly scatological...expulsions of all sorts from the body descibed in almost campy detail. The characters in the story have no repercussions in mind regarding their actions, and the text feels as though Apollinaire felt the same in the way in which he wrote it. The story is essentially that of an unfulfilled promise (made in the throes of passion) and follows a man's quest across Eurasia and his various sexual conquests (featuring loads of "buggering," incest, sexual violence...even pedophelia and necrophelia). This may all sound shocking, but I assure you, it is written is such a manner that makes you snicker with an "O god" as opposed to shuddering.
Apollinaire's second story, the infamous Confessions of a Young Don Juan, is written with less brevity. It is about a young man's early sexual awakening. While the boy's age is about 17 at the time of the story, the narration and content make him seem very, very, very young - around 12. This can add all sorts of disturbing overtones to the story if that sort of thing bothers you. I found this selection less enjoyable than the first.
Finally the book closes with Louis Aragon's classic story Le C** d'Irene, which, as mentioned in an earlier review, is written in more of a "classic" surrealist style than anything else. If, at the very least, you are familiar with the chaotic "cut-up" style of William S. Burroughs, you should be more than able to handle and enjoy it.
Overall the collection is entertaining and sometimes (albiet, for me, less frequently) titillating. If you're apprehensive as to whether or not this will offend you after this review, maybe you should hold off until you're more confident. However, I was not put off by Flesh Unlimited in the slightest, much to my surprise.
Summary of Flesh Unlimited (Creation Classics)
Flesh Unlimited is a compendium edition of three classic erotic/ surrealist novellas: Les Onze Mille Verges and Les Mémoires d'un Jeune Don Juan by Guillaume Appollinaire and Le Con d'Irène by Louis Aragon.Dadaist poet Guillaume Apollinaire fine-tuned his uniquely poetic and surreal vision to produce these two materpieces of the explicit erotic imagination at the turn of the century, works which compare with the best of the Marquis de Sade. In Les Onze Milles Verges, debauched aristocrat Mony Vibescu and a circle of fellow sybarites blaze a trail of uncontrollable lust, bloody cruelty and depravity across the streets of Europe. Whilst in Les Mémoires d'un Jeune Don Juan, a young man reminisces his sexual awakening at the hands of his aunt, his sister and their friends as he is utterly corrupted in a season of carnal excess.
Louis Aragon's Le Con d'Irène is the intense story of a man's torment when he becomes fixated upon the genitalia of an imaginary woman and is reduced to voyeuristically scoping her erotic encounters in-between describing various events in brothels and other sexual adventures.
Translated from the original, complete and unexpurgated versions by Alexis Lykiard (translator of Lautréamonts Maldoror), Flesh Unlimited has a general introduction and notes section.
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