Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 SMI; site emacs.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!cca!emacs!joe From: joe@emacs.uucp (Joe Chapman) Newsgroups: net.motss Subject: Tricks by R. Camus in English? Message-ID: <117@emacs.uucp> Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 19:52:29 EDT Article-I.D.: emacs.117 Posted: Mon Jul 1 19:52:29 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 05:00:07 EDT Organization: CCA Uniworks, Wellesley, MA Lines: 30 I recently borrowed a copy of the novel Tricks by Renaud Camus; I believe the book attracted some interest several years ago when Gore Vidal reviewed it in one of those periodicals like The New York Review of Books where the mention of a title of a book to be reviewed is used as a starting point for an extended essay on Communism, Life in General, or The Psychological Basis for Habitually Combing the Fringe on the Edge of Throw Rugs and the mention of the actual contents or style of the book under review is considered a sort of recidivism. Vidal, of course, used the occasion to excoriate the Heterosexual Dictatorship, which I suppose deserves it. The book contains flat, unemotional descriptions of 45 of the author's tricks, written in a style similar to that of of Cavafy's poems. (Not surprising: the last few lines of Cavafy's ``So much I gazed on beauty'', together with several translations, appear as an epigraph.) The French second edition which I borrowed has a preface by Roland Barthes, and claims to have been fortified and expanded with several new episodes of dalliance which were omitted from the first. I have some friends who have no French but would love this book. I've heard that the translation was published by one of the pulp mills whose product remains in print for six months and then vanishes; on the other hand, there's a quote from Ginsberg on the back of the book attributed to the American edition. Has anyone seen a copy in English? -- -- Joseph Chapman decvax!cca!emacs!joe CCA Uniworks, Inc. emacs!joe@cca-unix.ARPA 20 William St. Wellesley, MA 02181 (617) 235-2600