Speculations

by Alfred Jarry, R J Dent (Translator)

Alfred Jarry spent his brief and turbulent life experimenting with genres of fiction. In his last few years, he created a new fictional the absurdist speculative essay. R J Dent’s new English translation of Speculations contains 68 of Jarry’s essays, originally printed between 1901 and 1904 as a series, ‘Spéculations,’ in the French journal Le Revue Blanche . In Jarry’s darkly comic collection of surrealist and satirical prose pieces, the renowned author deploys his characteristic satirical eye and dark humor to devastating effect. These essays range in tone from the wildly comic to the deeply tragic and cover a diversity of subjects, ranging from French Trees to Cannibalism. For Jarry, nothing is sacred; everything is worthy material for his surreal satire; the Passion is presented as a sporting event; buses are the prey of big game hunters, and even the Queen is licked from behind.

Paperback

First published January 10, 1904

About the author

Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.
Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (i.e. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", has been translated into English as "Pshit!", "Shitteth!", "Shittr!", "Shikt!", "Shrit!" and "Pschitt!"), he invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Nathan Jerpe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much gratitude to Black Scat Books for introducing these Jarry essays into English, I don't think they are available anywhere else!

However I found this edition riddled with typographical errors, and there's not a single page of contextual notes. I got a sense many times that a pun in translation was lost on me, and there were a lot of unfamiliar references to fin de siecle France. As a student of Jarry without much French, I think a few pages of notes or a foreword would have gone a long way.

A good start, but these essays are over a century old and deserve a more thorough treatment than they have gotten here. I'd love to see a second edition of this text.

[Matthew Kinlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of sly investigations into fin de siècle France that reads like a beautiful & bloody handful of paper cuts, splintered essays that turn authority on its head in sharp bursts of wicked logic, R. J. Dent elegantly capturing Jarry’s iconoclastic spirit, his scandalous heart.