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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
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