Rules of the Game

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This confessional autobiography by Leiris, French anthropologist, surrealist poet and critic, often seems like one more exercise in French intellectual gamesmanship. Originally published in 1948, it's filled with baroque, convoluted sentences as Leiris obsessively analyzes himself, his childhood dreams and his associations to scores of words and phrases. Yet readers who stay the course will find some reward in this verbal thicket as Leiris, who died last year at the age of 89, offers occasional indelible reflections on gnomes, photography, war, Stravinsky, hedgehogs and anything else that enters his field of consciousness. In this first of four volumes, Leiris recollects his youth, life in Paris under the German occupation and travels in North Africa. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Anthropologist and surrealist poet Leiris, who died in 1990 at age 89, was well known for his autobiographical work. In this first of a four-volume self-study, originally published in 1948, the author meticulously reflects upon his hopes, fears, and obsessions during his childhood in Paris, experiences under the German occupation, and military service in Africa. He does so in the absence of sustained narrative. Instead, the text unwinds through analysis of specific words that unleash a Proustian flood of sensations and memories. To retain this emphasis on French language, the translator has wisely chosen to maintain many words in the original French. Leiris's style is ponderous and convoluted and his sentence structure complex. The appearance of his works in English--translations of the remaining volumes are planned--will give a wider audience to this important French author. This is recommended for academic French literature collections.-- Mary Ellen Beck, Troy P.L., N.Y.