Collection of essays, letters, poems and fragments from the genius who suffered the indignities of institutionalization, psychiatric torture and critical neglect. Includes “All Writing Is Pigshit,” “Fragments of a Journal in Hell,” “Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society,” “Electroshock,” “Theatre and Science” and “Letter Against the Kabbala”… “Every dream is a piece of suffering torn out of us by other beings, by chance, with the monkey paw they throw upon me every night, the cinder in repose in our self, which isn’t a cinder but a machine—gunning as if the blood were a scrapiron and the self the ferruginous one.”

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 252 pages
Illustrated

Only Breton would have the nerve to call this book the “autobiography” of Surrealism. It is in fact a truer portrait of him than of the history of Surrealism. Breton had a profound need for what is now called “damage control,” and was guarded about what he said about the Surrealist movement. His circumspect view and the manner in which he presents it provide an eerie and intriguing look into the workings of his mind. The book consists of a series of what might loosely be termed “interviews.” But Breton not only carefully crafts each and every response long in advance, he also provides the interviewer with the appropriate questions—giving the reader a stimulating, interesting yet wholly selective view of Breton and Surrealism. A marvelous, tantalizing book. MM

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 264 pages

Dali collaborates with the famous portrait photographer Philippe Halsman who has more than a hundred Life magazine covers to his credit. Dali was one of Halsman’s favorite subjects. Dali would envision a seemingly impossible picture to shoot (always revolving around his mustache) and Halsman would in turn find a way to do it. The book is presented as a question-and-answer interview, with Dali’s cynical , cryptic answers being the caption for each photo. This combination of wit, humor and experimental photography originally published in 1954, is an enduring look at these two artists. The current faithfully reproduced volume includes publisher’s notes on how some of these unusual photos were achieved (such as gluing flies to Dali’s mustache). “Someday perhaps someone will discover a truth almost as strange as this mustache, namely that Salvador Dali was possibly also a painter.” DW

Publisher: Flammarion
Hardback: 128 pages
Illustrated

The popular conception of Surrealism views it as a visual means of expression; as in the paintings of Dali and Ernst or in the films of Buñuel. However, Surrealism yielded substantial output inliterary form. Surrealist literature is often overlooked since it eschews the traditions of modernism, embracing fragmentation and disintegration. Drawing on traditional forms of storytelling, the fairy tale and the Gothic novel, Surrealist fiction, according to Julien Gracq, “had the essential virtue of laying claim to express, at each moment, man’s totality… by maintaining at its most extreme point the tension between two simultaneous attitudes—bedazzlement and fury—that do not cease to respond to this fascinating and unlivable world in which we exist.” The first collection, The Identity of Things, brings together approximately 50 stories and fragments by authors from 17 countries, including such familiar names as Breton, Crevel, Unik, Paz and Aragon. The Myth of the World, the second volume, groups approximately 45 works of less familiar authors from 20 countries which explore the importance of myth, myth being the core around which human sensibility and societies are based. Wishing to “transform the world,” the Surrealists made myth the focus of their fiction. JAT

Publisher: Dedalus
Paperback: 277 pages

The popular conception of Surrealism views it as a visual means of expression; as in the paintings of Dali and Ernst or in the films of Buñuel. However, Surrealism yielded substantial output inliterary form. Surrealist literature is often overlooked since it eschews the traditions of modernism, embracing fragmentation and disintegration. Drawing on traditional forms of storytelling, the fairy tale and the Gothic novel, Surrealist fiction, according to Julien Gracq, “had the essential virtue of laying claim to express, at each moment, man’s totality… by maintaining at its most extreme point the tension between two simultaneous attitudes—bedazzlement and fury—that do not cease to respond to this fascinating and unlivable world in which we exist.” The first collection, The Identity of Things, brings together approximately 50 stories and fragments by authors from 17 countries, including such familiar names as Breton, Crevel, Unik, Paz and Aragon. The Myth of the World, the second volume, groups approximately 45 works of less familiar authors from 20 countries which explore the importance of myth, myth being the core around which human sensibility and societies are based. Wishing to “transform the world,” the Surrealists made myth the focus of their fiction. JAT

Publisher: Dedalus
Paperback: 292 pages

A collection of poems from the controversial director and engineer of the Surrealist movement dating from 1919 to 1936, spanning Breton’s involvement with Dadaism, Cubism and his founding and development of Surrealism. Written to such friends and fellow Surrealists as Picasso, André Derain, Robert Desnos, Picabia, Pierre Reverdy and Max Jacob, Earthlight displays Breton’s range of poetic forms, from the early collage compositions (“Five Dreams”) to the incantatory, feverish love poem “Free Union.” At times pretentious, contorted, tangled and strained; at other times gorgeous, wild and unexpected. In the best of these poems the reader gets to watch Breton follow his own mind: a compelling and finely tuned instrument of metaphor capable of fluidity and simplicity. MDG

Publisher: Sun and Moon
Paperback: 213 pages

Essays by Breton, leader of the French Surrealists, that cover a broad spectrum of his interests including philosophical and literary topics as well as his arguments for the autonomy of art and poetry. Here are insights into his personal character, and his humor, obsessions and unique way of thought. Writings reflect on cinema, music and contain major statements on Surrealism. DW

Publisher: University of Nebraska
Hardback: 288 pages

A wonderful, unforgettable novel by Surrealist painter-sculptor Leonora Carrington, back in print at last. The story chronicles the beautifully strange and, indeed, surreal adventures of Marian Leatherby, a 92-year-old woman whose family has placed her in an old-ladies home. It’s a mysterious old place, full of odd crimes, occult manifestations and, finally, murder. Our heroine is determined to unravel the truth. In doing so she encounters the secret of the Holy Grail, the Leering Abbess and other bizarre marvels. The ensuing cosmic upheaval and evocation of the old gods by Marian and her “co-inmates” will never be forgotten by the reader. As Luis Buñuel once wrote, “Reading The Hearing Trumpet liberates us from the miserable reality of our days.” CS

Publisher: Exact Change
Paperback: 199 pages
Illustrated

Dali’s only novel depicts the lives and loves of a group of aristocratic characters who, in their beauty, luxury and extravagance, symbolize the decadence of Europe in the ‘30s.

Publisher: Dufour
Paperback: 319 pages
Illustrated

“The last ‘lost’ masterpiece of Surrealist erotica… an intensely poetic account. Aragon charts an inner monologue which is often, in its poetic/surreal intensity reminiscent of the work of Lautréamont and of Artaud in its evocation of physical disgust as the dark correlative to spirtiual illumination.”

Publisher: Creation
Paperback: 96 pages