Broken Branches

Book excerpt: "Michel Leiris has had a substantial influence on French culture for many years--as a poet and a member of the surrealists, as an art critic, and as an anthropologist. His great contributions to modern letter are his works of confessional autobiography, the best known of which, MANHOOD (North Point, 1984), has been described by the eminent poet and translator Richard Howard as "one of the central texts of what we call modernity." In Brisées Leiris has gathered together short nonfiction pieces written throughout his career. The wide range of topics Leiris addresses in these fifty-one essays gives testimony to the vast arena of his curiosity. Here are essays on Joan Miró, Arnold Schoenberg, the Fox Movietone Follies, Jean Arp, ethnography, Fred Astaire, alchemy, Erik Satie's humor, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Eluard, Claude Lévi-Strauss, "Mouth Water," Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, "Man and His Insides," opera, Georges Bataille, and others." -- Publisher's description