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Blaise Cendrars: The Invention of Life
A new account of the life and work of innovative, pseudonymous French poet, novelist, essayist, and film writer Blaise Cendrars.
In 1912 the young Frédéric-Louis Sauser arrived in France, carrying an experimental poem and a new identity. Blaise Cendrars was born. Over the next half-century, Cendrars wrote innovative poems, novels, essays, film scripts, and autobiographical prose. His groundbreaking books and collaborations with artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Fernand Léger remain astonishingly modern today. Cendrars’s writings reflect his insatiable curiosity, his vast knowledge, which was largely self-taught, and his love of everyday life.
In this new account, Eric Robertson examines Cendrars’s work against a turbulent historical background and reassesses his contribution to twentieth-century literature. Robertson shows how Cendrars is as relevant today as ever and deserves a wider readership in the English-speaking world.
In 1912 the young Frédéric-Louis Sauser arrived in France, carrying an experimental poem and a new identity. Blaise Cendrars was born. Over the next half-century, Cendrars wrote innovative poems, novels, essays, film scripts, and autobiographical prose. His groundbreaking books and collaborations with artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Fernand Léger remain astonishingly modern today. Cendrars’s writings reflect his insatiable curiosity, his vast knowledge, which was largely self-taught, and his love of everyday life.
In this new account, Eric Robertson examines Cendrars’s work against a turbulent historical background and reassesses his contribution to twentieth-century literature. Robertson shows how Cendrars is as relevant today as ever and deserves a wider readership in the English-speaking world.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published August 2, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 14, 2023
A thorough and well-written study of the works of Blaise Cendrars (poetry, non-fiction, fiction, film work, reportage, and quasi-memoir) and information about his life.
Anyone who's read Cendrars will find in Robertson's book an insight or fact that's new or useful, and appreciate how clearly he writes (though there are sometimes needless repetitions of facts) when faced with the many myths Cendrars created to go alongside his remarkable life. While I would have liked more about his time in brazil and his influence there, about his children (he had three), and about his influence on named figures writing today (in france and elsewhere), those are minor matters compared to how much is provided here, especially on his writing life in the 1930s (much of that work has not been translated into english).
This is an essential book and an enjoyable book to have read.
Anyone who's read Cendrars will find in Robertson's book an insight or fact that's new or useful, and appreciate how clearly he writes (though there are sometimes needless repetitions of facts) when faced with the many myths Cendrars created to go alongside his remarkable life. While I would have liked more about his time in brazil and his influence there, about his children (he had three), and about his influence on named figures writing today (in france and elsewhere), those are minor matters compared to how much is provided here, especially on his writing life in the 1930s (much of that work has not been translated into english).
This is an essential book and an enjoyable book to have read.
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October 31, 2023The biography focused on his writing but for a writer who was so in love with life (and whoose love of life was so vital to his art) I wanted to hear more about that life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews