If my memory serves me correctly this is my first book I have ever bought on Marcel Duchamp. I think I was around 17 or 18, and Duchamp was the ultimate role model of an artist to look up to. For one great reason he was the ultimate cool. And that was (and still is) important to me.
Duchamp appeals to my sense of humor as well as a possiblity of a secret world. Duchamp work is coded in a sense or one suspects that there is a code of some sort taking place. It adds both lightness and a sense of darkness to the soup Duchmap was cooking up with his art.
I met him briefly at the Pasadena Art Museum. I was very impressed wth the bicycle wheel on a stool. For most it had an absurd quality, but to a kid of nine, it was perfectly clear. A bicycle wheel is something to admire.